Working at Camp K has already been a life-changing experience. It has changed the way I think about a lot of things, as cliche as that sounds. I look at people with disabilities differently, I look at myself differently, and I look at the future differently. I think it has made me a better person, and has made me realize just how awesome of a person I already am. (I mean, who else could remain patient after someone has been in the bathroom for 25 minutes, remaining in there after repeated pounding on the door and hearing "Please hurry up! Someone else needs to use the bathroom!" And then the person who is waiting with crossed legs pees her pants and starts crying because she is so embarrassed and thinks everyone will be mad at her. And just then, the person in the bathroom comes out whistling and carrying a drawing of Ratatouille that they have been working on using the counter by the sink. Who else wouldn't ring that Ratatouille drawing neck?) I now know that if I had a child with a disability, physical or mental, I could handle it. I now know a little bit more just how hard it can be to be a parent.
When I got this job at Camp K, I had a totally different picture in my head of what it would be like. My job title is "Trip Camp Leader." Due to a few mix-ups in communication, and my own assumptions, what I imagined I would be doing is very different from what I am doing. I imagined myself traveling from national park to national park with eight campers and the other trip camp leader, getting paid to see the western United States. I imagined white water rafting on Camp K's dime while helping people with disabilities, but not really having to work all that hard to do it. I imagined it would be like hiking with a few friends, we would all stick together and sing songs in the car and help put up the tents and they would need a little help with directions or we would need to hike a little slower, but it wouldn't be all that hard.
What is it really like? At first I was disappointed to learn that the other trip camp leader and I trade off taking trips, so I will go one week and her the next, each time picking a new intern to take with us. (To reward the interns for working so hard for no pay.) So I was to go on four trip camps and the other leader goes on three, and then we both stay at camp the other weeks, being a group leader here.
After last week's trip, I am more than content to go on ONLY three more camps.
The first week of camp was, looking back, relatively easy. Although I had never changed an adult's diaper, showered an adult, or fed an adult before, I was surprised how quickly it became a non-issue. My group (obviously, I feel this every week) had the best campers, and there were a few who really endeared themselves to me. There was T, the 80 year old camper, who smiled at everyone and made me want to be as fit and healthy as him at 80. Although, I don't want to wake up thirteen times a night to pee. There was B. the guy who answered everything with "Really good." "How's horseback riding going B?" "Really Good" There was J. who was sooooo effing slow about everything! You could get her up and get her started, go change and clothe two other people who needed complete assistance and return to find her just barely getting out of her pajamas. All she wanted to do was sit and draw pictures of Ratatuille. Guess what we let her do all morning Friday when we were so exhausted from working 60 hours already, not counting a night of cabin duty? (I'll give you a hint, paper, markers, and rats were involved) M the whole week asking to please call her mother, crying from homesickness, wanting to go home, and blowing kisses in the air towards the direction of home...and guess what she does on Friday? She lies down on her bed refusing to let us roll up her sleeping bag because she wants to stay at Camp K so badly.
The second week was my first week being group leader. It was pretty stressful. The first week, I had been a normal counselor to get the feel of it, but this week I was in charge. I counted campers probably five times an hour, always nervous I would lose one. It was teen week, so I had good cause to worry. There were two boys in my group with no less than three girlfriends throughout the week and one guy with two girlfriends. They were always wanting to hold hands or sneak a kiss. It was middle school to the nth degree. The boys were little players, trying to get as many phone numbers and hugs as they could (from other campers and counselors alike) and the girls were constantly hysterical because their boyfriend of 45 minutes had dumped them for a new piece of tail. The creepiest part was the camper who always thought he was such a catch and would always say, "Timber....." "Yes?" I would ask, always in a hurry and being pulled in four directions, "Can I have a hug?" He would stand there, getting ready for bed, with his shirt off and arms out....I told him I didn't give out hugs.
PS everyone here has a camp name. Mine is Timber.
It is so hard because you are working all the time. It's not like you just get them up in the morning and walk with them to breakfast, you cajole them out of bed, and pull off sleeping bags and change and dress them, then walk down and then get them sitting down and then dish up their food, and then cram some food in your mouth while you feed a camper, and if you have to help a camper, you take your food with you because they will take it or touch it or eat it, and you have to keep the other kids from saying mean things to each other and/or keep them from going through the garbage for more food. Then you push a wheelchair up a hill to horses and keep the 8 campers occupied and happy while four ride at a time....on and on and on. Swimming is the best part because most of the time you can just lounge in the pool and watch them play, but about half the time, you need to pull a kid out because he refuses to wear a life jacket even though he failed his swim test, and you then have to restrain him from hurting himself or others. You get your hair pulled and they try to kick or bite you, and it's hard to pull a teenager out of a pool when they are all slippery and wet and either limp or trying to kick you in the mouth.
Last week though, undoubtedly was the worst week yet. Before I tell you how hard it was, let me preface it with what happened at the end of the week. Pickup for campers is at 12:00. Since Monday morning at 8:30 am, I had been telling myself, "I can make it till Friday at 12:00, I can make it!" Well, Fri at 12:00 rolled around and four of my campers still hadn't been picked up. I still had to deal with them! I began dishing up lunch and swallowing to hold back tears. I'm not normally a crying person, but I couldn't help it. I had made it till Fri at 12:00. I had made it to 12 o'clock and I needed to be done. For four days I had steeled myself to stay strong till 12 and when 12 rolled around and I still wasn't free, it just wasn't fair. A few hours later, after cleanup we had a staff meeting and the other staff who had been on the trip with me, Rocky, leaned over and said, "I feel like crying, but I don't know why." I said, "It's because we're done. We're finally done!" She nodded her head and broke down into gut-wrenching sobs. Full on gasping for air and weeping for ten minutes. It was exactly how I felt. One more example of how bad this week was before I launch into description, because no description will do me justice. The week after Moab I was working with a very low-funtioning child who had anger issues. While I was changing his diaper, and trying to keep him from injuring himself I got poo on every single article of clothing I had on, and had to throw away a bracelet. I had to go up and change clothes and even, yes, wipe a touch of poo off of my face. (no time for a shower) I did have time to shoot a quick text off to my friend saying that even with that, the week was still going better than Moab.
Ok, anyhow. So Monday rolls around and Rocky and I are all set up with our sign-in sheets and smiley faces. Outside the van is all ready to go, food and tents packed, and a full tank of gas. The first boy to show up is named J. He is a tall, awkward looking kid who is 13. (This week will be all teens) He asks when his friend Steven is coming, and I draw a blank on the name and look down on the sheet to be sure. No Steven signed up for trip camp. In a cheerful voice I let him know that Steven isn't coming, but we're going to have lots of fun anyways. J starts scowling. "Listen, no offense, but you guys really screw things up. You are so un-organized. I should sue you. I mean, I just talked to Steven and he said he was coming, I should sue you." As J keeps talking, I look past J to his dad. J isn't in my custody yet, so I don't feel comfortable disciplining him, but surely his Dad wouldn't let him talk that way, right? His dad laughs quietly, "Now, J, don't say that, you're going to have lots of fun." They then walk away as J continues to moan. A few minutes later, his pal Steven walks past, sleeping bag under his arm and a smile on his face explaining he was confused, he is going to stay at Camp K this week, but it'll still be a cool week, he'll see J on Fri, bye dude!
The rest of our campers check in, none of them really standing out. One girl is deaf, R, and carries a notepad with her everywhere to communicate. I start brushing up on my finger spelling immediately and R helps me make up a sign language name for Timber. As everyone starts situating in the van, the boys shuffle towards the back and the girls (only two) sit up front. L immediately tells us, "If I get too hot I have a seizure. If I get to cold I get a seizure. If it is too loud I have a seizure." Rocky and I look at her. This might not have been the best trip for her. Moab is the desert. The weather says it will hit 105 and at night get down to 45. The rowdy boys in the back are laughing and making farting noises and L keeps shouting at them to be quiet as Rocky and I run back and forth getting last minute things ready.
Finally, it happens, L has a seizure. Just like she said she would. She walks out of the car, and goes to sit in a chair inside the building and Rocky and I find her there. We look at each other. It doesn't look like what we've seen people do in the past when they have seizure. A seizure isn't always a grand mal limb shaking thing, it can be just a temporary zoning out, or a muscle twitch, but L isn't doing that. We wait with her, but as it gets closer to 10:30, and we're supposed to leave by 10, we call the camp nurse over. The nurse tells us in private that although everyone seizures differently, it sure doesn't look like a seizure to her. Another staff comes up and warns us that L is famous for faking seizures. Right. So we somehow get her in the van and when she does she warns all the other passengers that they need to be silent the whole ride or she'll have another seizure. It's a 6 hour drive. With 6 teenage boys. We warn L that silence is not an option.
The ride down takes us from 10:30 to 6:00. We stop for lunch and take over a playground. C climbs a tree, J starts going through the landscaper's wheelbarrow, and N jaw breaks. (Not really, he has these super complicated braces that come apart if he opens his mouth too wide, and then he needs to to get both hands in his mouth to pry them back together. It's a two person job.) We get C down from the tree, J gets all up in my face when I won't let him play with the landscaper's tools, and literally tries to push me over to get past them. He's not a little kid. He's used to getting his way. Not this week pal. We go to get things out of the van and realize that this week is going to suck worse than we thought it would.
The van we take has a wheelchair lift in the back. We don't need it this week, but use the space to store out luggage and food. However, to get in the back you have to put the wheelchair ramp down. The wheelchair ramp isn't working. At all. We can't get in the back of the van. We can't get to the coolers and food. You can put it down manually, but you have to do that from the inside. A skinny person CAN squeeze inside, but they can't crank it down with all the suitcases and coolers in the way, which we can't get out until the ramp is down. So the only thing I can grab out for lunch is chips, bread, apples, and jelly. So we're having jelly sandwiches with chips because of course, no one is touching the fruit.
We get back in the car and start driving again. Whoever isn't driving has to manage the kids in the back, and I don't know how I didn't get the job driving, being the "Trip Camp Leader" and all. N is sitting towards the back and we realize a habit he has. He likes to shout out the names of the trucks as we go past. He is obsessed with transportation. Every time we pass a semi, he shouts out the type it is, "Timber! Timber! Look! There's a Walmart truck! A Walmart truck!" I see N. His favorite, we learn quite quickly are trains, England trucks and Swift trucks. However, no matter what we say or do, we can't get him to stop shouting with his deep voice, "Timber! I saw a train! Where is the train? Timber! I want to see the train! Timber! Look! A swift truck! Swift! Swift! Timber!" This didn't really bother us too much, but the other campers hated it. A chorus of shouts came from the back, "Make him be quiet! Make him shut up! We SEE the truck N! You don't need to tell us every time you see a truck! Why is he like that?" Oh it was a nightmare. One of the times we stopped to pee, two of the boys refused to get back in the van. J especially was irritated. He told Rocky she was a crappy counselor, and grew incensed when she responded that she wasn't even a counselor, she was a intern. He told me that he was going to call his parents, and then the cops, then my boss and get us fired. I gave him my phone. "Go ahead. I don't want anyone having any secrets. You go ahead and call them." Sigh.
Fast Forward to Sept 7th. The job has been done for a month now, and I'm back in school. I tried to come back to this a few times to finish it and write more, but I couldn't do it. That week was the hardest week of my life. I couldn't re-live it in the detail necessary to express how horrible it was, and I couldn't re-live it the number of times needed to re-read through and through. I still don't think I can, and even if I could, I don't think anyone but Rocky and I can ever really know how hard that week was. So I will leave you with a few highlights.
We finally got to Moab. Of course the camp was full where we were supposed to camp, so we drove around until we found another campsite. It was the only one that had openings, and was located right on the Colorado River but didn't have any sort of electricity or running water. We set up the tents, with no help from the campers, although we tried to get them involved. One camper was busy having a seizure, the rest were busy fighting or listening to music on their ipods. As storm clouds started rolling in, Rocky and I got nervous and just set up the two large canvas tents and our smaller two-person tent ourselves. Once set up we realized that the tents are made for four people, and we had two girls and six boys. Six big boys in a four person tent, plus all their suitcases made bedtime a nightmare every night. Plus one kid snored...which didn't help the others sleep....which didn't help us sleep. I realize now that I should have just given them all granola bars and sent them to bed, but it was only eight o'clock and we had spaghetti on the menu. While we were trying to set up tents I started some water boiling for the noodles. We had unpacked kind of helter-skelter, unloading everything to get to the tents on the bottom, so when the dust storm blew up and the wind was so fast that it blew the boiling water off the propane stove and spilled all over the dry goods we had packed to eat. I ran over to try and save some of the food and looked back to see the boy's tent collapse in the wind. At this point I nearly packed up and went home. However, we somehow got everyone fed, teeth brushed, bathroom used, in pajamas, and in bed by just before midnight. Midnight. Rocky and I hadn't had time to eat, I had put some spaghetti in our tent to eat later, and when we got to it, we tried, but couldn't force it down. That set the tone for the rest of the week. Rocky and I never had time to eat anything. The kids would eat a bite or two, then sneak away to push each other in the fast-flowing Colorado river. Rocky and I would look at each other and one of us would round them up, ignore the insults, make them change shoes before getting the van, because they had been walking in mud, while the other would be cleaning up camp, washing dishes and ruing that she spent fifteen minutes standing by the burning propane stove in 103 degree weather to cook a meal no one wanted. Every moment outside was too hot, too dusty, too thirsty, the water we had was never cold enough, the bug spray never worked, the activities never fun enough, etc. R did nothing but ask questions all the time, "why? why? why?" for everything. She was deaf, so you always had to be conversing through writing things down. It makes it hard to keep two boys from fighting, help one boy brush his teeth, and gather garbage from the campsite all at once when you have to be writing things down. We never had time for anything. Neither Rocky nor I brushed our teeth once on this whole week, much less brushed our hair or washed our faces. The kids were never asleep before eleven o'clock. Not because we didn't start getting ready at seven o'clock though.
So I will finish there. And be glad it is in the past and glad that I am a better person for it.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Car Crash
I was driving on a highway the other day and noticed the two semis ahead of me starting to slow down. I wasn’t too surprised because we were reaching the peak of a mountain (10% grade) and my little Chevy Cavalier wasn’t going any faster than forty miles an hour anyhow, I didn’t imagine they would do any better. One semi had been trying to pass the other, but slowed and changed into the right lane behind the first.
As the semi moved over I saw a truck stopped on the side of the road, and as I peaked the mountain, I saw a crushed car. It had obviously rolled over a number of times just seconds before, and there were people standing around outside it, peering inside the crushed body of the car and thirty yards away, I could see two people huddled over another body. I thought about how just the day before I had refreshed my first aid training. I pulled my car over and grabbed a jacket and towel before jumping out of my car.
As I stood up, the first thing I head was a man standing in front of another woman saying, “Don’t look, don’t look over there.” She was trying to see past him to the body on the ground. At that point, I’m ashamed to say I was afraid.
I’ve dealt with minor injuries before. I’ve helped people who have had seizures, people who have fallen from horses and hurt themselves, and I once bled almost a pint of blood all over myself after a mistake at a plasma donation site. I’ve seen pretty horrible animal injuries and I’ve always thought myself a pretty solid person in an emergency. But the way that man spoke as he blocked the woman’s view and the small size of the body scared me. I avoided it, thinking that the two people kneeling in the mud had whoever it was under control and ran to the other group of people.
I ran up and looked under the car, everyone was safely out. It was a family of five, Mother, Father, and three children. I looked over the two kids, they seemed relatively uninjured, some cuts and scrapes, scared and crying. It was a cold, stormy day, but they were wearing shorts and t-shirts and scattered around, in the path the car had rolled were flip-flops and beach bags. I wrapped one kid up in my jacket and found the mother’s shoe so she would stop walking around in the broken glass covering the ground. I asked her if anyone needed more help. She told me her daughter, her twelve-year old daughter had been thrown from the car. She had been the one forbidden from looking and she answered my question and pointed over at her daughter.
I swallowed and ran over to the body on the ground. The father was kneeling over her, and a woman was pulling a needle out of a bag sitting on the rocky, muddy ground. I blurted out my phrase. The phrase my friends and I have jokingly said to each other dozens of time, when someone stubs a toe, or trips, or is a wimp and complains about some trivial thing. I said it for real and was terrified of what they would say. “I’m trained in CPR and First Aid, can I help?” The woman looked up, said she was an ER nurse and told me to hold up the IV bag.
I’ve never been so relieved in my life. At this point I could stop worrying, she surely had everything under control. Looking back, I realized that she couldn’t do everything. That someone, me, should have known to shout at the bystanders to bring blankets to cover up the girl immediately, to keep her warm. I don’t know how much time went by before I noticed someone on the phone to 911. I had assumed someone else had called and it hadn‘t even crossed my mind to make sure, but I’m sure they assumed the same.
Another man came by and held the IV for me and I ran to my car to get whatever I could to cover up the girl. She was laying in a small running stream of water and wearing shorts. It must have been just barely above forty degrees. I grabbed a t-shirt and a towel and laid it over her bare legs, and other people ran to get blankets from their cars too.
I stepped back. The nurse was shouting at the man on the line to EMT that they needed to send a life flight immediately, and I heard the mother weeping in the background, still staying out of sight.
The father had been doing mouth to mouth on his daughter, but she had started breathing again, and he crouched next to her, his fingers keeping track of her pulse. I want to say there was blood everywhere, but that’s not true. There was blood on the crown of the father’s head, no open scar, just an undefined smear dying his thin blond hair red. He had a clean dribble of blood down the right side of his face, from a cut above his eye, but the left side of his face was clean. There was a thick ¾ inch ring of blood around his mouth. (That’s the snapshot of the event that stays in my mind. That still of him kneeling in the freezing running water, fingers pressed against her pulse, staying calm as he tells the guy on the phone his daughter’s age, how clean his nose and chin and cheeks were, with a perfectly formed ring of blood around his mouth.) His forearms and hands were so thick with wet and clotted blood that I grabbed a clean pillowcase to try and stop the bleeding on his wrists. I pulled back a second before asking him if I could bandage his arms, realizing, horrified, that the blood was all his daughter’s.
She was thin, and had brown hair. If I hadn’t known she was white from her pale dirty legs and her white parents, I wouldn’t have known what race she was, so covered in blood was her face. She was stretched out flat and I couldn’t see her breathing, it was so shallow. I wanted to go back to the mother and tell her good news, but I couldn’t think of anything to tell her.
I don’t know how long we stood there. The other bystanders and I. We had done what we could, wrapped up the injured in warm clothing and blankets, and looked around helplessly when the nurse shouted that she needed a syringe, tubing, anything so that she could suction blood. We didn’t have anything like that in our cars. My first aid kit I had grabbed from my glove box, I didn’t even bother opening. It was full of Band-Aids and one inch antiseptic wipes and two inch gauze pads and disposable Neosporin packets. There was nothing else we could do but wait.
Although we were only a few minutes out of a moderately sized town (15,000), it seemed to take forever for the fist rescue person to arrive. I have no way of saying accurately, but it felt to me like 15 or 20 minutes. It may be been only five, I have no way of knowing. The volunteer rescue guy arrived, put a neck brace on the girl, put her on a backboard and just then the ambulance arrived.
The girl was put in the ambulance with her father, and the children and mother got in the police or volunteer rescue trucks. Those people who had stopped to help stood around confused as to what to do. I gathered from the ground my towel and shirt. When the EMT workers had picked up the girl, they had pushed off the blankets covering her. My things were soaked in mud and sand, but surprisingly little blood and I threw them in the unused pillowcase. I realized later that someone must have returned one of my jackets to my car, and I was selfishly glad that my favorite jacket had been returned while a jacket I didn’t like all that much was the one that I saw the five year old girl clutch around herself as she was placed in the rescue truck.
Later that night I realized that in my frantic search of my car for anything that the nurse could use, I had forgotten about the pens I have in there. The pens I have can be taken apart easily and one piece is a four inch tube. Probably exactly what the nurse could have used to suction blood.
I think now, about how little help I actually was, other than the fact that I was going away for the weekend and happened to have lots of coats and towels in the car. I think about the father stoically asking the nurse if he can flush out his daughter’s wounds with water, while his blood drips off his jaw. I think about how dangerous driving is and how quickly people can die. I also think about how strong a body can be. Just before the girl was loaded onto a backboard, she started moaning. A soft, terrible, weak, pain-filled moan that in any other case would have been the worst sound in the world, but at that point, a noise we all felt hope at hearing.
I wonder if the little girl was buckled in, and if she wasn’t, why not? I wonder if she survived and will recover fully. I want to think she did. I called the highway patrol the next day and asked them if they could just tell me if she was alive or not, and they couldn’t tell me anything until there was a press release. I looked online and couldn’t find anything, but I’m hoping that the girl survived and the newspapers deemed a non-fatal car crash not news worthy enough to write about. I’m hoping that’s why I can’t find any information online.
As the semi moved over I saw a truck stopped on the side of the road, and as I peaked the mountain, I saw a crushed car. It had obviously rolled over a number of times just seconds before, and there were people standing around outside it, peering inside the crushed body of the car and thirty yards away, I could see two people huddled over another body. I thought about how just the day before I had refreshed my first aid training. I pulled my car over and grabbed a jacket and towel before jumping out of my car.
As I stood up, the first thing I head was a man standing in front of another woman saying, “Don’t look, don’t look over there.” She was trying to see past him to the body on the ground. At that point, I’m ashamed to say I was afraid.
I’ve dealt with minor injuries before. I’ve helped people who have had seizures, people who have fallen from horses and hurt themselves, and I once bled almost a pint of blood all over myself after a mistake at a plasma donation site. I’ve seen pretty horrible animal injuries and I’ve always thought myself a pretty solid person in an emergency. But the way that man spoke as he blocked the woman’s view and the small size of the body scared me. I avoided it, thinking that the two people kneeling in the mud had whoever it was under control and ran to the other group of people.
I ran up and looked under the car, everyone was safely out. It was a family of five, Mother, Father, and three children. I looked over the two kids, they seemed relatively uninjured, some cuts and scrapes, scared and crying. It was a cold, stormy day, but they were wearing shorts and t-shirts and scattered around, in the path the car had rolled were flip-flops and beach bags. I wrapped one kid up in my jacket and found the mother’s shoe so she would stop walking around in the broken glass covering the ground. I asked her if anyone needed more help. She told me her daughter, her twelve-year old daughter had been thrown from the car. She had been the one forbidden from looking and she answered my question and pointed over at her daughter.
I swallowed and ran over to the body on the ground. The father was kneeling over her, and a woman was pulling a needle out of a bag sitting on the rocky, muddy ground. I blurted out my phrase. The phrase my friends and I have jokingly said to each other dozens of time, when someone stubs a toe, or trips, or is a wimp and complains about some trivial thing. I said it for real and was terrified of what they would say. “I’m trained in CPR and First Aid, can I help?” The woman looked up, said she was an ER nurse and told me to hold up the IV bag.
I’ve never been so relieved in my life. At this point I could stop worrying, she surely had everything under control. Looking back, I realized that she couldn’t do everything. That someone, me, should have known to shout at the bystanders to bring blankets to cover up the girl immediately, to keep her warm. I don’t know how much time went by before I noticed someone on the phone to 911. I had assumed someone else had called and it hadn‘t even crossed my mind to make sure, but I’m sure they assumed the same.
Another man came by and held the IV for me and I ran to my car to get whatever I could to cover up the girl. She was laying in a small running stream of water and wearing shorts. It must have been just barely above forty degrees. I grabbed a t-shirt and a towel and laid it over her bare legs, and other people ran to get blankets from their cars too.
I stepped back. The nurse was shouting at the man on the line to EMT that they needed to send a life flight immediately, and I heard the mother weeping in the background, still staying out of sight.
The father had been doing mouth to mouth on his daughter, but she had started breathing again, and he crouched next to her, his fingers keeping track of her pulse. I want to say there was blood everywhere, but that’s not true. There was blood on the crown of the father’s head, no open scar, just an undefined smear dying his thin blond hair red. He had a clean dribble of blood down the right side of his face, from a cut above his eye, but the left side of his face was clean. There was a thick ¾ inch ring of blood around his mouth. (That’s the snapshot of the event that stays in my mind. That still of him kneeling in the freezing running water, fingers pressed against her pulse, staying calm as he tells the guy on the phone his daughter’s age, how clean his nose and chin and cheeks were, with a perfectly formed ring of blood around his mouth.) His forearms and hands were so thick with wet and clotted blood that I grabbed a clean pillowcase to try and stop the bleeding on his wrists. I pulled back a second before asking him if I could bandage his arms, realizing, horrified, that the blood was all his daughter’s.
She was thin, and had brown hair. If I hadn’t known she was white from her pale dirty legs and her white parents, I wouldn’t have known what race she was, so covered in blood was her face. She was stretched out flat and I couldn’t see her breathing, it was so shallow. I wanted to go back to the mother and tell her good news, but I couldn’t think of anything to tell her.
I don’t know how long we stood there. The other bystanders and I. We had done what we could, wrapped up the injured in warm clothing and blankets, and looked around helplessly when the nurse shouted that she needed a syringe, tubing, anything so that she could suction blood. We didn’t have anything like that in our cars. My first aid kit I had grabbed from my glove box, I didn’t even bother opening. It was full of Band-Aids and one inch antiseptic wipes and two inch gauze pads and disposable Neosporin packets. There was nothing else we could do but wait.
Although we were only a few minutes out of a moderately sized town (15,000), it seemed to take forever for the fist rescue person to arrive. I have no way of saying accurately, but it felt to me like 15 or 20 minutes. It may be been only five, I have no way of knowing. The volunteer rescue guy arrived, put a neck brace on the girl, put her on a backboard and just then the ambulance arrived.
The girl was put in the ambulance with her father, and the children and mother got in the police or volunteer rescue trucks. Those people who had stopped to help stood around confused as to what to do. I gathered from the ground my towel and shirt. When the EMT workers had picked up the girl, they had pushed off the blankets covering her. My things were soaked in mud and sand, but surprisingly little blood and I threw them in the unused pillowcase. I realized later that someone must have returned one of my jackets to my car, and I was selfishly glad that my favorite jacket had been returned while a jacket I didn’t like all that much was the one that I saw the five year old girl clutch around herself as she was placed in the rescue truck.
Later that night I realized that in my frantic search of my car for anything that the nurse could use, I had forgotten about the pens I have in there. The pens I have can be taken apart easily and one piece is a four inch tube. Probably exactly what the nurse could have used to suction blood.
I think now, about how little help I actually was, other than the fact that I was going away for the weekend and happened to have lots of coats and towels in the car. I think about the father stoically asking the nurse if he can flush out his daughter’s wounds with water, while his blood drips off his jaw. I think about how dangerous driving is and how quickly people can die. I also think about how strong a body can be. Just before the girl was loaded onto a backboard, she started moaning. A soft, terrible, weak, pain-filled moan that in any other case would have been the worst sound in the world, but at that point, a noise we all felt hope at hearing.
I wonder if the little girl was buckled in, and if she wasn’t, why not? I wonder if she survived and will recover fully. I want to think she did. I called the highway patrol the next day and asked them if they could just tell me if she was alive or not, and they couldn’t tell me anything until there was a press release. I looked online and couldn’t find anything, but I’m hoping that the girl survived and the newspapers deemed a non-fatal car crash not news worthy enough to write about. I’m hoping that’s why I can’t find any information online.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Summer Camp
So, I got a job this summer at Camp K. Kids and adults come here who have mental or physical disabilities, and we help them have fun....
I've learned how to properly empty out a fully submerged canoe if it's out in the middle of the lake, I've learned how to tie a half fisherman's knot on the ropes course, how to help transfer a person who uses a wheelchair (if they need help) from their chair into/onto any of the following,
-the back of a horse
-the pool
-a canoe.
-the grass
-a different chair
This summer I'm a "trip camp leader" and I'll be away a lot for trip camps. So far I am signed up to go to Moab, Jackson Hole, Dinosaur, and one that is in Salt Lake, where we see the wonderful sights that are Salt Lake! I may also go to Bryce Canyon and Maynard Dixon, which I really want to do, if I can weasel my way in...I will update later if I'm going or not.
I'm excited for the campers to get here, although I know it will be super stressful and busy, (You work Monday through Thursday from 8 AM to 9 PM and Friday from 8 AM to 4 PM) I think it will be a lot of fun too. I am nervous about the small amount of money I'll have come the end of the summer though. To put it in perspective...in one month of work here, I will make as much as I did in eight days working in Korea. However, the people here, including me, didn't take the job to get rich...
I'm thinking about my future and this summer job. There aren't a lot of 25 year olds here working for the summer. Most everyone is between the 18 and 22 age range.
I'm hitting that point in my life where I don't really want summer jobs anymore. I want a stable job. I don't want to move twice a year and always have half my stuff in storage. I don't want to have to make new friends for four months and I'm tired of none of my best friends knowing each other. My best pals live in Idaho, Utah, Minnesota, Norway, Taiwan, Korea, and Britain. When friends get together to reminisce I can't share that funny Ecuador story with my Idaho friend because she never met Marcelo, and I can't tell funny college stories with my Minnesota friends because they don't know about Comic Frenzy. It's strange how much I like reminiscing about the past, and how little I can do that. Not that I don't like to make new memories, mind you, but there is something so fun about sitting around someone's basement, telling the same stories you've all heard five times about that time you drove down to Vegas reading aloud to each other from the book you checked out from the library, "Angels Don't Knock," and writing constructive criticisms in the margins. (Including my favorite, from Claire, "This book has made me realize my dreams of being published are all too attainable.")
I fully plan to enjoy this job to the fullest, but I don't know if I want to have another summer job next year. My limited finances might make it necessary, but if possible, I'm going to settle down somewhere for a while. (River Falls) (For two years.) (Then I'll get a teaching job somewhere and buy a house) (Then I can travel in the summer)
I've learned how to properly empty out a fully submerged canoe if it's out in the middle of the lake, I've learned how to tie a half fisherman's knot on the ropes course, how to help transfer a person who uses a wheelchair (if they need help) from their chair into/onto any of the following,
-the back of a horse
-the pool
-a canoe.
-the grass
-a different chair
This summer I'm a "trip camp leader" and I'll be away a lot for trip camps. So far I am signed up to go to Moab, Jackson Hole, Dinosaur, and one that is in Salt Lake, where we see the wonderful sights that are Salt Lake! I may also go to Bryce Canyon and Maynard Dixon, which I really want to do, if I can weasel my way in...I will update later if I'm going or not.
I'm excited for the campers to get here, although I know it will be super stressful and busy, (You work Monday through Thursday from 8 AM to 9 PM and Friday from 8 AM to 4 PM) I think it will be a lot of fun too. I am nervous about the small amount of money I'll have come the end of the summer though. To put it in perspective...in one month of work here, I will make as much as I did in eight days working in Korea. However, the people here, including me, didn't take the job to get rich...
I'm thinking about my future and this summer job. There aren't a lot of 25 year olds here working for the summer. Most everyone is between the 18 and 22 age range.
I'm hitting that point in my life where I don't really want summer jobs anymore. I want a stable job. I don't want to move twice a year and always have half my stuff in storage. I don't want to have to make new friends for four months and I'm tired of none of my best friends knowing each other. My best pals live in Idaho, Utah, Minnesota, Norway, Taiwan, Korea, and Britain. When friends get together to reminisce I can't share that funny Ecuador story with my Idaho friend because she never met Marcelo, and I can't tell funny college stories with my Minnesota friends because they don't know about Comic Frenzy. It's strange how much I like reminiscing about the past, and how little I can do that. Not that I don't like to make new memories, mind you, but there is something so fun about sitting around someone's basement, telling the same stories you've all heard five times about that time you drove down to Vegas reading aloud to each other from the book you checked out from the library, "Angels Don't Knock," and writing constructive criticisms in the margins. (Including my favorite, from Claire, "This book has made me realize my dreams of being published are all too attainable.")
I fully plan to enjoy this job to the fullest, but I don't know if I want to have another summer job next year. My limited finances might make it necessary, but if possible, I'm going to settle down somewhere for a while. (River Falls) (For two years.) (Then I'll get a teaching job somewhere and buy a house) (Then I can travel in the summer)
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Timber's Haircut
I've only had Timber for about 8 months now, so I've never had her in the summer months. Even in fall, winter and spring, she sheds like you wouldn't believe, leaving clumps of hair everywhere. As it has started to get warmer I find more and more of her hairs in my lunch, and decided it was time to give her a shave. Also because she is staying with my family this summer and I fear that if I dropped her off unshaven she would get a Mohawk and poofy tail like the poor family Golden Retriever did. She would probably get pretty hot this summer too.
So, the first photos are the good looking dog before her shave. She is so unsuspecting.
Well, about halfway through the shave, the electric razor started to overheat, so I let Timber have a break. As you can probably tell, she knows that she is in for more shaving and isn't very happy about it.
The final product wasn't amazing. It's not easy to shave a shivering dog who is trying to crawl away and lick your face at the same time. I'll post a photo in a few days when the cut has started to grow out a little bit, and isn't so mangy looking.
Well, it hasn't grown out yet, but here she is...both on dry ground and swimming, one of her favorite hobbies, only slightly behind licking herself when company is over in terms of habitual actions.
So, the first photos are the good looking dog before her shave. She is so unsuspecting.
Well, about halfway through the shave, the electric razor started to overheat, so I let Timber have a break. As you can probably tell, she knows that she is in for more shaving and isn't very happy about it.
The final product wasn't amazing. It's not easy to shave a shivering dog who is trying to crawl away and lick your face at the same time. I'll post a photo in a few days when the cut has started to grow out a little bit, and isn't so mangy looking.
Well, it hasn't grown out yet, but here she is...both on dry ground and swimming, one of her favorite hobbies, only slightly behind licking herself when company is over in terms of habitual actions.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Things that make me smile....and those that don't.
Things that make me smile...
-Joyful dancing (both watching and doing)
-The first day after winter when I can wear a T-shirt outside
-English spoken as a second language
-CCR -Eagles -Joplin -Boston (OK, I'll just say all classic rock)
-Communicating in a language that isn't English
-My dog sitting at the door wriggling with happiness because she saw from the window that I was walking up the path
-Spell check
-Bike rides
-Meeting new people (as long as they are the type of people who make the world a better place)
-Horseback rides
-My job
-Good TV and/or Movies
-Sharing memories
-Beginning to accomplish or learn something new
Things that don't make me smile...
-People who don't share
-Republicans
-People who hate other groups of people
-Dogs who bark, chew, or try to jump on me
-Children who have to go without all the things I had as a child
-Horses that get all up in my face
-Poor drivers
-People who are rude on the phone
-Rap music
-The Doors (yeah, I know, I tried to like Morrison, I just can't get into it)
-Realizing that I forgot my wallet after I've filled my cart at the grocery store
-Filling out job applications (I think I've broken the three digit mark)
-Standing in front of the white board trying vainly to spell "naive" or other such word in front of a class full of students with pencils poised to copy it down.
-Bad memories
-Joyful dancing (both watching and doing)
-The first day after winter when I can wear a T-shirt outside
-English spoken as a second language
-CCR -Eagles -Joplin -Boston (OK, I'll just say all classic rock)
-Communicating in a language that isn't English
-My dog sitting at the door wriggling with happiness because she saw from the window that I was walking up the path
-Spell check
-Bike rides
-Meeting new people (as long as they are the type of people who make the world a better place)
-Horseback rides
-My job
-Good TV and/or Movies
-Sharing memories
-Beginning to accomplish or learn something new
Things that don't make me smile...
-People who don't share
-Republicans
-People who hate other groups of people
-Dogs who bark, chew, or try to jump on me
-Children who have to go without all the things I had as a child
-Horses that get all up in my face
-Poor drivers
-People who are rude on the phone
-Rap music
-The Doors (yeah, I know, I tried to like Morrison, I just can't get into it)
-Realizing that I forgot my wallet after I've filled my cart at the grocery store
-Filling out job applications (I think I've broken the three digit mark)
-Standing in front of the white board trying vainly to spell "naive" or other such word in front of a class full of students with pencils poised to copy it down.
-Bad memories
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Sponser a child.
So, I was surfing the web, avoiding studying for tests and putting off writing papers that are due soon, (in fact papers and tests that are still due soon) and I found the website, Children.org. I want desperatly to move to Kenya and volunteer there and teach, but between being a full-time student, being pretty broke, and having a dog, I can't really afford it. I like to live vicariously through my website browsing.
Well, I looked through the Children.org website, and it is a little strange. What you can do is choose a country, choose an age, and choose a gender. Then you see photos of children and you pick one to sponsor. This felt wrong to me, something about flipping casually through photos of children and arbitrarily picking one based on what they looked like just seemed a little too much like going to the zoo. (They also have little ten word blurbs about the children, and their family's monthly income.) And as I'm clicking through, if I'm being totally honest, I'm thinking to myself, couldn't they spend a little more time on photos? I mean, I found myself clicking on kids who were smiling. Shouldn't the person taking the photo know that a smiling face could mean the difference between this child getting picked or not? And therefor, between this child getting an education, health care, clothing, and regular meals?
Then I felt a little sick about being the person who makes the decision which child gets to get a sponsorship that would change their life, and which child doesn't. (Which child has to keep begging on the streets and not getting enough to eat at the end of the day, much less an education. Then I felt sick about the vast disparity between their lives and mine, and the money I spend on a regular basis on my dog.) So what I ended up doing was inserting a country, (Zambia) and a gender (girl) and simply choosing the first girl that came up.
Nyamgu lives with her three siblings and their mother, and family of five lives on 25 dollars a month. She is ten years old, but looks a lot older. At first I thought she looked about 14. I think she might look so old because her face is so serious.
I am now financially responsible for Nyamgu's health care, schooling, and regular meals. It's kind of a heady feeling. I mean, you use canvas bags when you go grocery shopping to help the environment, you donate to Red Cross and you even volunteer abroad for five months, and you wonder if you have made any sort of a difference. You wonder if the 1,000 plastic bags you save over your lifetime mean anything, if the money to Red Cross changed anything, you wonder if the students you taught remember any of the things you taught them...it just seems like nothing you do makes a difference. And if you do do your part, it seems like you can never get rid of all the injustice in the world, so why try?
I feel like, I am finally making a difference. This little girl just had a world of opportunities opened to her, just because I decided to stop buying a cup of coffee every day and spend the money on something else. (I know this is starting to sound a little bit too much like the commercial, "For less than the price of a cup of coffee, you could save a child..." but I can't help it! It's true!)
And then I think to myself, why am I sharing this with people? No one else is going to care about my little sponsorship. Well, the main reason is that this blog is mostly for me, as a journal. Also, as lame as this sounds, this little sponsorship has made me really happy. I don't even know this little girl, and I already feel a connection with her. If anyone else wants to feel happy for about the same price you'd spend on a meal for two at AppleBees, you should check out Children.org too.
Well, I looked through the Children.org website, and it is a little strange. What you can do is choose a country, choose an age, and choose a gender. Then you see photos of children and you pick one to sponsor. This felt wrong to me, something about flipping casually through photos of children and arbitrarily picking one based on what they looked like just seemed a little too much like going to the zoo. (They also have little ten word blurbs about the children, and their family's monthly income.) And as I'm clicking through, if I'm being totally honest, I'm thinking to myself, couldn't they spend a little more time on photos? I mean, I found myself clicking on kids who were smiling. Shouldn't the person taking the photo know that a smiling face could mean the difference between this child getting picked or not? And therefor, between this child getting an education, health care, clothing, and regular meals?
Then I felt a little sick about being the person who makes the decision which child gets to get a sponsorship that would change their life, and which child doesn't. (Which child has to keep begging on the streets and not getting enough to eat at the end of the day, much less an education. Then I felt sick about the vast disparity between their lives and mine, and the money I spend on a regular basis on my dog.) So what I ended up doing was inserting a country, (Zambia) and a gender (girl) and simply choosing the first girl that came up.
Nyamgu lives with her three siblings and their mother, and family of five lives on 25 dollars a month. She is ten years old, but looks a lot older. At first I thought she looked about 14. I think she might look so old because her face is so serious.
I am now financially responsible for Nyamgu's health care, schooling, and regular meals. It's kind of a heady feeling. I mean, you use canvas bags when you go grocery shopping to help the environment, you donate to Red Cross and you even volunteer abroad for five months, and you wonder if you have made any sort of a difference. You wonder if the 1,000 plastic bags you save over your lifetime mean anything, if the money to Red Cross changed anything, you wonder if the students you taught remember any of the things you taught them...it just seems like nothing you do makes a difference. And if you do do your part, it seems like you can never get rid of all the injustice in the world, so why try?
I feel like, I am finally making a difference. This little girl just had a world of opportunities opened to her, just because I decided to stop buying a cup of coffee every day and spend the money on something else. (I know this is starting to sound a little bit too much like the commercial, "For less than the price of a cup of coffee, you could save a child..." but I can't help it! It's true!)
And then I think to myself, why am I sharing this with people? No one else is going to care about my little sponsorship. Well, the main reason is that this blog is mostly for me, as a journal. Also, as lame as this sounds, this little sponsorship has made me really happy. I don't even know this little girl, and I already feel a connection with her. If anyone else wants to feel happy for about the same price you'd spend on a meal for two at AppleBees, you should check out Children.org too.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Illegal immigrants pay billions in taxes
Don't have time to read the entire article? Here is my favorite quote, from the last line, "If anything we need more immigrants coming into the country, not less, especially with the baby boomers retiring..." Read on, republicans....
NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) -- The tax system collects its due, even from a class of workers with little likelihood of claiming a refund and no hope of drawing a Social Security check.
Martha Pantoja helps Jose Aguilera prepare his income taxes at a community center in Nashville, Tennessee.
Illegal immigrants are paying taxes to Uncle Sam, experts agree. Just how much they pay is hard to determine because the federal government doesn't fully tally it.
But the latest figures available indicate it will amount to billions of dollars in federal income, Social Security and Medicare taxes this year. One rough estimate puts the amount of Social Security taxes alone at around $9 billion per year.
Paycheck withholding collects much of the federal tax from illegal workers, just as it does for legal workers.
The Internal Revenue Service doesn't track a worker's immigration status, yet many illegal immigrants fearful of deportation won't risk the government attention that will come from filing a return even if they might qualify for a refund. Economist William Ford of Middle Tennessee State University says there are no firm figures on how many taxpayers are in that situation.
"The real question is how many of them pay more than they owe. There are undoubtedly hundreds of thousands of people in that situation," Ford said.
But some illegal immigrants choose to file taxes and write a check come April 15, using an alternative to the Social Security number offered by the IRS so it can collect income tax from foreign workers.
"It's a mistake to think that no illegal immigrants pay taxes. They definitely do," said Martha Pantoja, who has been helping Hispanic immigrants this tax season as an IRS-certified volunteer tax preparer for the nonprofit Nashville Wealth Building Coalition.
Among those she has assisted is Eric Jimenez, a self-employed handyman who has worked in Nashville for several years. He feels obliged to pay taxes -- even though, as Pantoja said, "nothing would happen" to him if he did not.
"I have an idea, a mentality, that to be a good citizen you have to pay taxes," he said. "Also, I'm conscious of the fact that the money we pay in taxes supports the schools and all the public services."
Pantoja said she has helped a number of construction workers who, because they are classified as independent contractors by their employers and have no taxes withheld, owe big tax bills come April. Beyond income tax, they have to pay the full Social Security and Medicare taxes due.
The Social Security Administration estimates that about three-quarters of illegal workers pay taxes that contribute to the overall solvency of Social Security and Medicare.
The agency estimates that for 2005, the last year for which figures are available, about $9 billion in taxes was paid on about $75 billion in wages from people who filed W2 forms with incorrect or mismatched data, which would include illegal immigrants who drew paychecks under fake names and Social Security numbers.
Spokesman Mark Hinkle says Social Security does not know how much of the $9 billion can be attributed to illegal immigrants. The number is certainly not 100 percent, but a significant portion probably comes from taxes paid by illegal immigrants.
Nine billion dollars sounds like a lot of money, and it is, but it is only about 1.5 percent of the total $593 billion paid into Social Security in 2005.
The impact on Social Security is significant, though, because most of that money is never claimed by the people who pay it but instead helps cover retirement checks to legal workers.
Federal law prohibits paying Social Security to illegal immigrants, but the administration factors in both legal and illegal immigration when projecting the trust fund's long-term solvency.
This is especially important as the 78 million-member baby boom generation begins to leave the work force and draw Social Security checks.
"Overall, any type of immigration is a net positive to Social Security. The more people working and paying into the system, the better," Hinkle said. "It does help the system remain solvent."
The Social Security Administration drew from census and Immigration and Customs Enforcement data in 2007 to project the effects of higher and lower immigration patterns.
If net immigration is high at 1.3 million people a year, the SSA's combined trust fund would be exhausted in 2043. But the fund runs out four years earlier if annual net immigration amounts to about half that -- 472,500 legal immigrants and 250,000 illegal immigrants.
The Internal Revenue Service doesn't have an estimate of how many illegal immigrants pay income tax.
But one indicator is the 9 million W-2 forms with mismatched names and Social Security numbers it received in 2004. The IRS said the W-2 forms with invalid Social Security numbers reported about $53 billion in wages and about three-fourths of that, $40 billion in wages, had taxes withheld.
The IRS also has been issuing Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers, or ITINs, for 12 years to foreigners without a Social Security number. It's believed that many workers who seek the ITINs are in the country illegally, and the IRS reported that there were 2.5 million tax returns filed with an ITIN in 2004.
In 2006, then IRS Commission Mark Everson told Congress that "many illegal aliens, utilizing ITINs, have been reporting tax liability to the tune of almost $50 billion from 1996 to 2003."
An IRS spokesman said more recent figures aren't available.
The Social Security and Medicare taxes from mismatched W2s for the same period was $41.4 billion, Hinkle said.
That adds up to roughly $90 billion in federal taxes during they eight-year period.
The IRS defends the ITIN system, despite criticism that some illegal immigrants have used it to open bank accounts, get mortgages and establish a record of residency and taxpaying they hope might someday lead to legal status.
"The ITIN program is bringing taxpayers into the system," Everson told Congress.
Middle Tennessee State University economics professor William Ford, who has studied taxes and immigration, says a majority of economists agree that illegal immigrants are a net benefit for the U.S. economy.
He said the tax contributions from illegal immigrants, including sales taxes, property taxes and excise taxes (such as the gas tax), are significant.
He calculates that illegal immigrants contributed $428 billion dollars to the nation's $13.6 trillion gross domestic product in 2006. That number assumes illegal immigrants are 30 percent less productive than other workers.
"If anything we need more immigrants coming into the country, not less, especially with the baby boomers retiring," he said.
NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) -- The tax system collects its due, even from a class of workers with little likelihood of claiming a refund and no hope of drawing a Social Security check.
Martha Pantoja helps Jose Aguilera prepare his income taxes at a community center in Nashville, Tennessee.
Illegal immigrants are paying taxes to Uncle Sam, experts agree. Just how much they pay is hard to determine because the federal government doesn't fully tally it.
But the latest figures available indicate it will amount to billions of dollars in federal income, Social Security and Medicare taxes this year. One rough estimate puts the amount of Social Security taxes alone at around $9 billion per year.
Paycheck withholding collects much of the federal tax from illegal workers, just as it does for legal workers.
The Internal Revenue Service doesn't track a worker's immigration status, yet many illegal immigrants fearful of deportation won't risk the government attention that will come from filing a return even if they might qualify for a refund. Economist William Ford of Middle Tennessee State University says there are no firm figures on how many taxpayers are in that situation.
"The real question is how many of them pay more than they owe. There are undoubtedly hundreds of thousands of people in that situation," Ford said.
But some illegal immigrants choose to file taxes and write a check come April 15, using an alternative to the Social Security number offered by the IRS so it can collect income tax from foreign workers.
"It's a mistake to think that no illegal immigrants pay taxes. They definitely do," said Martha Pantoja, who has been helping Hispanic immigrants this tax season as an IRS-certified volunteer tax preparer for the nonprofit Nashville Wealth Building Coalition.
Among those she has assisted is Eric Jimenez, a self-employed handyman who has worked in Nashville for several years. He feels obliged to pay taxes -- even though, as Pantoja said, "nothing would happen" to him if he did not.
"I have an idea, a mentality, that to be a good citizen you have to pay taxes," he said. "Also, I'm conscious of the fact that the money we pay in taxes supports the schools and all the public services."
Pantoja said she has helped a number of construction workers who, because they are classified as independent contractors by their employers and have no taxes withheld, owe big tax bills come April. Beyond income tax, they have to pay the full Social Security and Medicare taxes due.
The Social Security Administration estimates that about three-quarters of illegal workers pay taxes that contribute to the overall solvency of Social Security and Medicare.
The agency estimates that for 2005, the last year for which figures are available, about $9 billion in taxes was paid on about $75 billion in wages from people who filed W2 forms with incorrect or mismatched data, which would include illegal immigrants who drew paychecks under fake names and Social Security numbers.
Spokesman Mark Hinkle says Social Security does not know how much of the $9 billion can be attributed to illegal immigrants. The number is certainly not 100 percent, but a significant portion probably comes from taxes paid by illegal immigrants.
Nine billion dollars sounds like a lot of money, and it is, but it is only about 1.5 percent of the total $593 billion paid into Social Security in 2005.
The impact on Social Security is significant, though, because most of that money is never claimed by the people who pay it but instead helps cover retirement checks to legal workers.
Federal law prohibits paying Social Security to illegal immigrants, but the administration factors in both legal and illegal immigration when projecting the trust fund's long-term solvency.
This is especially important as the 78 million-member baby boom generation begins to leave the work force and draw Social Security checks.
"Overall, any type of immigration is a net positive to Social Security. The more people working and paying into the system, the better," Hinkle said. "It does help the system remain solvent."
The Social Security Administration drew from census and Immigration and Customs Enforcement data in 2007 to project the effects of higher and lower immigration patterns.
If net immigration is high at 1.3 million people a year, the SSA's combined trust fund would be exhausted in 2043. But the fund runs out four years earlier if annual net immigration amounts to about half that -- 472,500 legal immigrants and 250,000 illegal immigrants.
The Internal Revenue Service doesn't have an estimate of how many illegal immigrants pay income tax.
But one indicator is the 9 million W-2 forms with mismatched names and Social Security numbers it received in 2004. The IRS said the W-2 forms with invalid Social Security numbers reported about $53 billion in wages and about three-fourths of that, $40 billion in wages, had taxes withheld.
The IRS also has been issuing Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers, or ITINs, for 12 years to foreigners without a Social Security number. It's believed that many workers who seek the ITINs are in the country illegally, and the IRS reported that there were 2.5 million tax returns filed with an ITIN in 2004.
In 2006, then IRS Commission Mark Everson told Congress that "many illegal aliens, utilizing ITINs, have been reporting tax liability to the tune of almost $50 billion from 1996 to 2003."
An IRS spokesman said more recent figures aren't available.
The Social Security and Medicare taxes from mismatched W2s for the same period was $41.4 billion, Hinkle said.
That adds up to roughly $90 billion in federal taxes during they eight-year period.
The IRS defends the ITIN system, despite criticism that some illegal immigrants have used it to open bank accounts, get mortgages and establish a record of residency and taxpaying they hope might someday lead to legal status.
"The ITIN program is bringing taxpayers into the system," Everson told Congress.
Middle Tennessee State University economics professor William Ford, who has studied taxes and immigration, says a majority of economists agree that illegal immigrants are a net benefit for the U.S. economy.
He said the tax contributions from illegal immigrants, including sales taxes, property taxes and excise taxes (such as the gas tax), are significant.
He calculates that illegal immigrants contributed $428 billion dollars to the nation's $13.6 trillion gross domestic product in 2006. That number assumes illegal immigrants are 30 percent less productive than other workers.
"If anything we need more immigrants coming into the country, not less, especially with the baby boomers retiring," he said.
Sunday, April 06, 2008
Con Teaching Unions
So, I've been preparing to be a teacher and I'm realizing that there is so much more to being a teacher than inspiring the future of the world. There is a curriculum to follow, standards to address, unions to deal with, and on and on and on.
I've decided I'm against Teaching Unions. They served a purpose in the past, and now they just make it easy for teachers to remain adequate and underpaid. See, one thing they've done is keep tenure in place and they have also standerdized payment scales.
Tenure- Tenure is a stupid thing. Why should having a job ever be a good enough reason to keep your job? This is another thing of the past, it kept professors/teachers safe when they published things that went against the grain in publishing papers. This seems to only apply to University professors, so why make it applicable to public school teachers?
Pay Scale- The way this works is that when you start teaching you make a certain wage that changes from district to district. Every year you work you get a tiny raise. If you change schools/districts/states and get a new job up until year seven, you can transfer your years worked and start at the same or close to the same status as where you left. However, if you've worked 14 years at one school and move to another, you can only transfer seven years of work. (Seven years is the maximum, this is something that has been agreed upon by the unions.) Then, you go back down the pay scale and have to start at year seven working your way up year by year again. Why does this suck? It prevents schools from paying great teachers more than crappy teachers. The pay scale is set (and agreed upon by the union) and as long as you've got tenure you're going to get paid the same no matter if you're a good teacher or not. It prevents teachers from changing schools after seven years. Maybe this isn't a bad thing, but then schools aren't scouting other good teachers to steal them away. Maybe this sounds like another good things. But then the schools aren't going out of their way to keep their teachers. In fact they don't generally do anything except the mandatory tiny raise each year.
Now, I personally don't have a problem with the wage teachers make. (Most teachers hate hearing what I'm about to say) But summers off, all major holidays, weekends, plus like 20 sick/personal days? Sign me up. However, do I think that money matters more to people with a family to support? Does money matter more to some people, for any reason? Would it be a better world if being and staying a teacher were harder and teachers got paid for being great teachers? (And less for being crappy teachers?) Yes, I do. And I think the best way to get there is to get rid of the union.
Of course, the second way to get there would for people to stop WANTING to be teachers. And as soon as there was a significant dip in prospective teachers, schools would get on the ball offering signing bonuses and better pay. That, I don't think is going to happen. Because people don't become teachers for the money. They do it because they have either failed at what they really want to do, or they like teaching.
I've decided I'm against Teaching Unions. They served a purpose in the past, and now they just make it easy for teachers to remain adequate and underpaid. See, one thing they've done is keep tenure in place and they have also standerdized payment scales.
Tenure- Tenure is a stupid thing. Why should having a job ever be a good enough reason to keep your job? This is another thing of the past, it kept professors/teachers safe when they published things that went against the grain in publishing papers. This seems to only apply to University professors, so why make it applicable to public school teachers?
Pay Scale- The way this works is that when you start teaching you make a certain wage that changes from district to district. Every year you work you get a tiny raise. If you change schools/districts/states and get a new job up until year seven, you can transfer your years worked and start at the same or close to the same status as where you left. However, if you've worked 14 years at one school and move to another, you can only transfer seven years of work. (Seven years is the maximum, this is something that has been agreed upon by the unions.) Then, you go back down the pay scale and have to start at year seven working your way up year by year again. Why does this suck? It prevents schools from paying great teachers more than crappy teachers. The pay scale is set (and agreed upon by the union) and as long as you've got tenure you're going to get paid the same no matter if you're a good teacher or not. It prevents teachers from changing schools after seven years. Maybe this isn't a bad thing, but then schools aren't scouting other good teachers to steal them away. Maybe this sounds like another good things. But then the schools aren't going out of their way to keep their teachers. In fact they don't generally do anything except the mandatory tiny raise each year.
Now, I personally don't have a problem with the wage teachers make. (Most teachers hate hearing what I'm about to say) But summers off, all major holidays, weekends, plus like 20 sick/personal days? Sign me up. However, do I think that money matters more to people with a family to support? Does money matter more to some people, for any reason? Would it be a better world if being and staying a teacher were harder and teachers got paid for being great teachers? (And less for being crappy teachers?) Yes, I do. And I think the best way to get there is to get rid of the union.
Of course, the second way to get there would for people to stop WANTING to be teachers. And as soon as there was a significant dip in prospective teachers, schools would get on the ball offering signing bonuses and better pay. That, I don't think is going to happen. Because people don't become teachers for the money. They do it because they have either failed at what they really want to do, or they like teaching.
ha ha!
So, like I've said before, I do this online dating thing. It's funny, a little fun, and below is a test people can take, just copy and paste it to go here and take a quiz to see how well you match me. Just FYI though, I wanted to see if it would work, so I took my own test, and I only match myself 69%. So I don't know how accurate it is.
Also, before you take the test, be warned, there are some PG-13 issues discussed.
http://www.okcupid.com/matchme?u=SaraTravel
Also, before you take the test, be warned, there are some PG-13 issues discussed.
http://www.okcupid.com/matchme?u=SaraTravel
Friday, March 14, 2008
HPV
I am going to be PISSED if I get cervical cancer. I want to be ONE LESS, like all the commercials are telling me I could be. But I might be ONE MORE.
Apparently cancer, and especially cervical cancer, runs in the family, and I should have gotten the shot. However, my insurance doesn't cover it and it is incredibly expensive. (600+ dollars) (Actually, that's what my doctor told me a year ago, but I looked online a few minutes ago and now I see that it is just under 400 dollars. It's getting more affordable.)
It's just f#&@%ing right wing, conservative people like this guy
http://dallasisdblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/03/this-is-not-necessarily-a.html
that drive me nuts!
My favorite phrase from this guy's blog is this
"I've heard from some teen students on the issue, and they say that too many of their female classmates believe having sex is cool. We used to have a name for girls like that in my teen days back in the '80s."
This is so typical. You've heard it, I've heard it, and for some reason it is infuriating me now when I used to just shake my head at it. When girls have sex, they are whores. Girls need to keep their legs glued together and it is THEIR FAULT when STDs get passed around and pregnancies happen. Even when the vast majority of girls are sleeping with boys who are older than they are. (Not in a statutory rape sort of way, just that the fact that a 17 year old boy should know more (based solely on the fact that he has been alive a year longer) than a 16 year old girl.)
And lots of places want to make this vaccine legal, but conservative people think that if girls get this vaccine it will encourage them to sleep around. One of the comments on the blog that I posted a link to above is this,
"I believe that perhaps the HPV vaccination should be made AVAILABLE to those who wish to have their daughter vaccinated but to have it be a REQUIREMENT is an insult to my parenting."
Ok, so this parent believes that, A not only is her parenting style the best, but B her daughter isn't sexually active. And maybe, right now, this daughter isn't. But, who's to say that once this girl moves out of the house, she isn't going to have sex once or even twice in college? Who's to say that she totally protected from rape? Who's to say that children aren't going to be sexually active against their parent's wishes? As long as people like this parent continue getting their voices heard in political arenas, this vaccine will stay a dirty word. If some people are right, (and they aren't) this is a shot that only future prostitutes and whores need. This is a shot that EVERY girl should get, regardless of how they, or their parents think they, plan on acting sexually.
I just don't see the problem with continuing to teach your children whatever you want to ("remain a virgin till you're married" to "everyone experiments" to anything in between) but have them get this vaccine just in case.
Do you?
Apparently cancer, and especially cervical cancer, runs in the family, and I should have gotten the shot. However, my insurance doesn't cover it and it is incredibly expensive. (600+ dollars) (Actually, that's what my doctor told me a year ago, but I looked online a few minutes ago and now I see that it is just under 400 dollars. It's getting more affordable.)
It's just f#&@%ing right wing, conservative people like this guy
http://dallasisdblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/03/this-is-not-necessarily-a.html
that drive me nuts!
My favorite phrase from this guy's blog is this
"I've heard from some teen students on the issue, and they say that too many of their female classmates believe having sex is cool. We used to have a name for girls like that in my teen days back in the '80s."
This is so typical. You've heard it, I've heard it, and for some reason it is infuriating me now when I used to just shake my head at it. When girls have sex, they are whores. Girls need to keep their legs glued together and it is THEIR FAULT when STDs get passed around and pregnancies happen. Even when the vast majority of girls are sleeping with boys who are older than they are. (Not in a statutory rape sort of way, just that the fact that a 17 year old boy should know more (based solely on the fact that he has been alive a year longer) than a 16 year old girl.)
And lots of places want to make this vaccine legal, but conservative people think that if girls get this vaccine it will encourage them to sleep around. One of the comments on the blog that I posted a link to above is this,
"I believe that perhaps the HPV vaccination should be made AVAILABLE to those who wish to have their daughter vaccinated but to have it be a REQUIREMENT is an insult to my parenting."
Ok, so this parent believes that, A not only is her parenting style the best, but B her daughter isn't sexually active. And maybe, right now, this daughter isn't. But, who's to say that once this girl moves out of the house, she isn't going to have sex once or even twice in college? Who's to say that she totally protected from rape? Who's to say that children aren't going to be sexually active against their parent's wishes? As long as people like this parent continue getting their voices heard in political arenas, this vaccine will stay a dirty word. If some people are right, (and they aren't) this is a shot that only future prostitutes and whores need. This is a shot that EVERY girl should get, regardless of how they, or their parents think they, plan on acting sexually.
I just don't see the problem with continuing to teach your children whatever you want to ("remain a virgin till you're married" to "everyone experiments" to anything in between) but have them get this vaccine just in case.
Do you?
Monday, February 18, 2008
1st Dates
I am in a dating mode of mind, so I thought I would post below the two of the worst first dates I've ever been on. The first one was both a first and LAST date and the second one was the first date in a pretty long relationship.
OK, so don't laugh, but I worked at a potato factory when was in college. It was one of the temp agencies placements and my first night there I was reveling in the excitement of making sure the hashbrown machine didn't get clogged by poking it with a stick from time to time. I would break up my time with an occasional sweep around the machine while making sure I dodged the shooting streams of hot water that would burst out at boiling temperature from time to time. As if that job wasn't fun enough, a kind of awkward guy came up and asked me out. I didn't know how to say no, so I I said yes, then pretended to be busy and avoided him the rest of my shift. I went home at 8:00 am, secure in the knowledge that he hadn't been able to get my number. Surprise of surprises, he calls the next day, having gotten my number from somewhere, and I hesitantly say yes. He says he'll pick me up at six and we'll figure out what we're going to do then.
I realize that this date could be quite a waste of a delightful Friday night, so I decide to take charge. I get all my roommates together and instruct them to get dates. Within fifteen minutes their little black books are put away and they all have dates. Then we plan together and come with the idea to go out and go night rock climbing. There is a great spot about 20 minutes away and we can bring firewood and smores and head lamps.
So, my date shows up on time and we ambush him with the idea. I think he liked the idea of not having to pay for anything, and not having to think up anything, but not really the idea of rock climbing. (He was on the heavier side.)
So we go and everyone is having this great time, we're eating roasted sweet potatoes from the fire, we're climbing at night and chatting and playing games, but (I don't even remember his name! We'll call him Jose.) but Jose keeps pulling me aside into the darkness to try and get some alone time. I'm not really up for that and so the night ends without him getting the chance to try for a kiss. He asks me as he drops me off back at my house if he can call me again, and like a doofus, I say, "Ummm, sure." (I'm no longer this chicken about dating, this was four or five years ago.)
The next day I get home and see a note for me, someone named Sandy has called me twice. Hmmmmm, I don't know a Sandy, so I ignore it. Then I get the dreaded call from Jose. But he doesn't want me to go on another date, no, he wants me to lie to his wife for him. He says she found my number in his car and wants to know what happened. He told her that he only had my number from work, and we never saw each other. I was pretty flabbergasted at his audacity.
So I hang up without making any promises and in the next few seconds Sandy calls me back. She sounded like a pretty with-it girl, so I don't know why she was so stupid. I told her the truth, that we had gone out, but i wasn't interested in seeing him again, and she told me this whole long story about how he has done this before and how they have a daughter together and then she started getting really mad, as though it was my fault that he had asked me out. As though I should have given him a background check before going out with him.
Anyhow, I hung up and and that was the last of Jose and my little attempt to break up the Gomez family.
This next date happened in Ecuador. I had met a Korean guy named Chan-He at the school I went to to learn Spanish. Since I had lived in Korea for a year, we had struck up a conversation and liked talking. So then he asked me on a date, and I was pretty pumped about it. We decide to go see "The Departed," which is playing at the movie theater just a ten minute walk from my house. So he picks me up and we start walking. We both know that Quito is not a safe city. But it is still dusk and we can walk and talk on the way there and take a taxi back home once it is properly dark. As we are walking I am talking about how two guys tried to mug me in the very park we are walking past, and he scoffs at me, "Yo llegue aqui hace ocho meses, y nunca he tuve problemas." (Or something like that, I don't remember exactly and his Spanish was better than mine is.) My Korean was pretty crappy, and his English was nothing to write home about, so we communicated in Spanish) Basically, he said, "I've been living here for eight months, and nothing has ever happened to me."
So, if you want to take a guess at what happens next. Yep, I turn around and see two big guys walking quickly towards us. I have enough time to grab Chan-He's arm and say his name before the guys are between us. The smaller guy takes me and tries to pull my bag out of my arms. This is something that I will NOT let happen. My passport is in this bag. But at first I am so stunned I don't do anything except clutch my bag tighter and back away. After a few seconds I come to my senses and start fighting back and screaming. The mugger is in the process of trying to rip my watch off my arm at this point, and I kick him pretty hard, (good old Tae Kwon Do lessons) and he backs off. And his pal joins him. It was pretty terrifying in every way. Especially because that day a friend of a friend had gotten stabbed for resisting a mugging. So, I was pretty shook up, and Chan-He comforted me and calmed me down and hugged me....and in only a few short days we were officially dating.
OK, so don't laugh, but I worked at a potato factory when was in college. It was one of the temp agencies placements and my first night there I was reveling in the excitement of making sure the hashbrown machine didn't get clogged by poking it with a stick from time to time. I would break up my time with an occasional sweep around the machine while making sure I dodged the shooting streams of hot water that would burst out at boiling temperature from time to time. As if that job wasn't fun enough, a kind of awkward guy came up and asked me out. I didn't know how to say no, so I I said yes, then pretended to be busy and avoided him the rest of my shift. I went home at 8:00 am, secure in the knowledge that he hadn't been able to get my number. Surprise of surprises, he calls the next day, having gotten my number from somewhere, and I hesitantly say yes. He says he'll pick me up at six and we'll figure out what we're going to do then.
I realize that this date could be quite a waste of a delightful Friday night, so I decide to take charge. I get all my roommates together and instruct them to get dates. Within fifteen minutes their little black books are put away and they all have dates. Then we plan together and come with the idea to go out and go night rock climbing. There is a great spot about 20 minutes away and we can bring firewood and smores and head lamps.
So, my date shows up on time and we ambush him with the idea. I think he liked the idea of not having to pay for anything, and not having to think up anything, but not really the idea of rock climbing. (He was on the heavier side.)
So we go and everyone is having this great time, we're eating roasted sweet potatoes from the fire, we're climbing at night and chatting and playing games, but (I don't even remember his name! We'll call him Jose.) but Jose keeps pulling me aside into the darkness to try and get some alone time. I'm not really up for that and so the night ends without him getting the chance to try for a kiss. He asks me as he drops me off back at my house if he can call me again, and like a doofus, I say, "Ummm, sure." (I'm no longer this chicken about dating, this was four or five years ago.)
The next day I get home and see a note for me, someone named Sandy has called me twice. Hmmmmm, I don't know a Sandy, so I ignore it. Then I get the dreaded call from Jose. But he doesn't want me to go on another date, no, he wants me to lie to his wife for him. He says she found my number in his car and wants to know what happened. He told her that he only had my number from work, and we never saw each other. I was pretty flabbergasted at his audacity.
So I hang up without making any promises and in the next few seconds Sandy calls me back. She sounded like a pretty with-it girl, so I don't know why she was so stupid. I told her the truth, that we had gone out, but i wasn't interested in seeing him again, and she told me this whole long story about how he has done this before and how they have a daughter together and then she started getting really mad, as though it was my fault that he had asked me out. As though I should have given him a background check before going out with him.
Anyhow, I hung up and and that was the last of Jose and my little attempt to break up the Gomez family.
This next date happened in Ecuador. I had met a Korean guy named Chan-He at the school I went to to learn Spanish. Since I had lived in Korea for a year, we had struck up a conversation and liked talking. So then he asked me on a date, and I was pretty pumped about it. We decide to go see "The Departed," which is playing at the movie theater just a ten minute walk from my house. So he picks me up and we start walking. We both know that Quito is not a safe city. But it is still dusk and we can walk and talk on the way there and take a taxi back home once it is properly dark. As we are walking I am talking about how two guys tried to mug me in the very park we are walking past, and he scoffs at me, "Yo llegue aqui hace ocho meses, y nunca he tuve problemas." (Or something like that, I don't remember exactly and his Spanish was better than mine is.) My Korean was pretty crappy, and his English was nothing to write home about, so we communicated in Spanish) Basically, he said, "I've been living here for eight months, and nothing has ever happened to me."
So, if you want to take a guess at what happens next. Yep, I turn around and see two big guys walking quickly towards us. I have enough time to grab Chan-He's arm and say his name before the guys are between us. The smaller guy takes me and tries to pull my bag out of my arms. This is something that I will NOT let happen. My passport is in this bag. But at first I am so stunned I don't do anything except clutch my bag tighter and back away. After a few seconds I come to my senses and start fighting back and screaming. The mugger is in the process of trying to rip my watch off my arm at this point, and I kick him pretty hard, (good old Tae Kwon Do lessons) and he backs off. And his pal joins him. It was pretty terrifying in every way. Especially because that day a friend of a friend had gotten stabbed for resisting a mugging. So, I was pretty shook up, and Chan-He comforted me and calmed me down and hugged me....and in only a few short days we were officially dating.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Heath Ledger Died Today.
(I saw this on "Fathom_Works" journal posted on (yes, believe it.) okcupid.com. It affected me, and he said I could post it here.)
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Online Dating! Yea!
So, I did it. I joined an online (free) dating service. I haven't made many friends here at school, and I know I haven't been here this long, but I'm already tired of weekends sitting at home working ahead on my homework. And as most of my fellow students are drastically younger or older than I am, or female, it looks unlikely that I will meet many potential dates from there. I have been getting involved in the community and I start work in a few weeks, and hope to make friends through that, but what I really want is someone to go out with on a Friday night. Someone to dress up for and a reason to put makeup on, and the excitement of going out on a date. And sooner rather than later.
So, I signed up for this dating service. Apparently it is hugely popular. There are hundreds of people signed up for it within ten miles of where I live and thousands once you count 45 minutes away from where I live.
So, I've set up my little profile and put some photos of myself on, and even taken the personality tests and checked out the people I match most closely with, and rather than learning things about other people, I'm learning things about myself. And not nice things either.
As much as I hate the Millionaire Matchmaker, and her emphasis on looks, on hair and clothes, and her insistence that we live in a visually driven society, I can't debate it. And my best arguments that it will continue to be a visually driven society until we stop making it that way fall by the wayside as I click past the men that don't strike me in some way visually.
I want to meet people who know that what's on the inside is most important, people who will look at the real me. People that scoff at the importance society puts on appearance. And while maybe those people exist, I have learned that I'm not one of them.
Plenty of nice, respectable, funny guys have sent me messages on the service. After a perfunctory glance through their profile, I usually delete their messages without even a reply back. And to be 100% honest, it doesn't really even matter how witty or original their profile is, the deal was made or broken on the photo. Sure it matters to me what they’re doing in their photo. A guy rock climbing is more attractive to me than a guy in his favorite basketball jersey, all other things being the same. But the most important thing was (and always will be, at least on dating sites) looks.
I look through their photos and discard them because they are 1)-too boring 2)-too ugly 3)-too fat 4)-too anything else I don't like. And if, again, I'm being 100% honest with myself, number 1 should be number 3, because looks are more important than boringness, I just hated to put that first.
I hate that I put so much importance on looks. I've always thought that it was "other people" that were superficial and shallow. I guess that's either not true, or I have become an “other person.”
With the utmost respect to my ex-boyfriends, who have all been kind, respectable, funny, exciting, smart, great guys, I wouldn't have given most of them a second glance if I had seen their profiles on a dating service. And then I would have missed out on meeting some of the best people I have ever known, because of the value I place on looks.
What I have loved about past boyfriends hasn't been their jaw line or trim stomach, it's been their humor, their spontaneity, their ability to challenge me, to make me try to be a better person, and their efforts to give me experiences that I wouldn't have had on my own. And 90% of them, I started off not attracted to them in the least, but grew to be attracted to them through our friendship.
So, what do I do? Option 1)-Online dating/matchmaking is not for me. Not a big deal, go back to meeting guys the old fashioned way, which has worked perfectly well in the past. That way I can get to know a guy and rate him based on the whole package, rather then a photo and a blurb about themselves. 2)-Ignore my initial desire to click past people because their physical aspect doesn't appeal to me 3)-deal with the fact that while I'm not a "Real Housewife of Orange County," looks do matter to me, and it is a visually driven society, and that I am more superficial than I thought. And maybe that isn't the worst thing in the world.
So, I signed up for this dating service. Apparently it is hugely popular. There are hundreds of people signed up for it within ten miles of where I live and thousands once you count 45 minutes away from where I live.
So, I've set up my little profile and put some photos of myself on, and even taken the personality tests and checked out the people I match most closely with, and rather than learning things about other people, I'm learning things about myself. And not nice things either.
As much as I hate the Millionaire Matchmaker, and her emphasis on looks, on hair and clothes, and her insistence that we live in a visually driven society, I can't debate it. And my best arguments that it will continue to be a visually driven society until we stop making it that way fall by the wayside as I click past the men that don't strike me in some way visually.
I want to meet people who know that what's on the inside is most important, people who will look at the real me. People that scoff at the importance society puts on appearance. And while maybe those people exist, I have learned that I'm not one of them.
Plenty of nice, respectable, funny guys have sent me messages on the service. After a perfunctory glance through their profile, I usually delete their messages without even a reply back. And to be 100% honest, it doesn't really even matter how witty or original their profile is, the deal was made or broken on the photo. Sure it matters to me what they’re doing in their photo. A guy rock climbing is more attractive to me than a guy in his favorite basketball jersey, all other things being the same. But the most important thing was (and always will be, at least on dating sites) looks.
I look through their photos and discard them because they are 1)-too boring 2)-too ugly 3)-too fat 4)-too anything else I don't like. And if, again, I'm being 100% honest with myself, number 1 should be number 3, because looks are more important than boringness, I just hated to put that first.
I hate that I put so much importance on looks. I've always thought that it was "other people" that were superficial and shallow. I guess that's either not true, or I have become an “other person.”
With the utmost respect to my ex-boyfriends, who have all been kind, respectable, funny, exciting, smart, great guys, I wouldn't have given most of them a second glance if I had seen their profiles on a dating service. And then I would have missed out on meeting some of the best people I have ever known, because of the value I place on looks.
What I have loved about past boyfriends hasn't been their jaw line or trim stomach, it's been their humor, their spontaneity, their ability to challenge me, to make me try to be a better person, and their efforts to give me experiences that I wouldn't have had on my own. And 90% of them, I started off not attracted to them in the least, but grew to be attracted to them through our friendship.
So, what do I do? Option 1)-Online dating/matchmaking is not for me. Not a big deal, go back to meeting guys the old fashioned way, which has worked perfectly well in the past. That way I can get to know a guy and rate him based on the whole package, rather then a photo and a blurb about themselves. 2)-Ignore my initial desire to click past people because their physical aspect doesn't appeal to me 3)-deal with the fact that while I'm not a "Real Housewife of Orange County," looks do matter to me, and it is a visually driven society, and that I am more superficial than I thought. And maybe that isn't the worst thing in the world.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
New Plan
Ok, this is how plans change.
January - May 2008 Go to school
Summer 2008 Work in Ireland at a kids camp
Fall, Winter, Spring 2008-2009 Go to School.
Summer 2009 two months volunteering in Africa or China, then one month working in Taiwan (This may be changed around with Summer 2010)
Fall 2009 Student teach.
Jan -May 2010 Go to School
Summer 2010 Who knows? Maybe work in Ireland again.
December 2010 Graduate with my Masters
January - September 2011 Lok for work and who knows what else?
2011 Have a real job and maybe buy a house.....who knows?
January - May 2008 Go to school
Summer 2008 Work in Ireland at a kids camp
Fall, Winter, Spring 2008-2009 Go to School.
Summer 2009 two months volunteering in Africa or China, then one month working in Taiwan (This may be changed around with Summer 2010)
Fall 2009 Student teach.
Jan -May 2010 Go to School
Summer 2010 Who knows? Maybe work in Ireland again.
December 2010 Graduate with my Masters
January - September 2011 Lok for work and who knows what else?
2011 Have a real job and maybe buy a house.....who knows?
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Monday, January 07, 2008
Top 5 Issues
I've never been good at arguing with people. I like listening to discussions about politics and so forth from time to time, but I don't generally join in. I don't like explaining why I feel the way I do, or convincing other people that my opinion is better than theirs, even though it is. So here are my over-simplified issues that are important to me in the upcoming presidential election. And I have read up on all the information, and know the pros and cons of each issue, and that things aren't as easy as they look on paper, and that change takes time, and that no issue is black and white good and bad and it's not like I just want to live in some happy-go-lucky world where everyone eats peach cobbler and no one goes hungry. (Well, I do want to live in that world, but I know it isn't feasable. People would try and eat flan and malted milk shakes and other gross desserts) Anyhow, posted below are the issues that are important to me.
Foreign Policy/Relations - Help other countries more. Not with bullets, but with education, technology, and vaccines.
Social Security - This is such an easily solved problem. Make really rich people put more money into social security.
National Defense - Spend less money on defense and more money on issue number one.
Immigration - Pave pathways to legalize immigrants already living in the States and offer them more support in things like learning English, acclimation and so forth.
Gay Rights - I think Gays should have the right to marry.
Foreign Policy/Relations - Help other countries more. Not with bullets, but with education, technology, and vaccines.
Social Security - This is such an easily solved problem. Make really rich people put more money into social security.
National Defense - Spend less money on defense and more money on issue number one.
Immigration - Pave pathways to legalize immigrants already living in the States and offer them more support in things like learning English, acclimation and so forth.
Gay Rights - I think Gays should have the right to marry.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Crazy Dog Lady
So, I have been living in my little motel room for the past four months, not really getting out except to go to work and walk the dog and maybe go grocery shopping. I hadn't realized just how crazy I had become in that short amount of time. I have prematurely turned into the crazy cat lady. Except that I am the crazy dog lady. It took me a few days of spending time with people who really aren't dog people for me to see myself in their eyes. I hold conversations with my dog, and not just, "You wanna go for a walk?" But more like, "I know you're tired, but we have a few things to do before we can go home." I'm the lady who talks to her dog in a baby voice and feeds her dog the last bit of food off her plate. I think I haven't traveled totally to the dark side though.
I need to be brutaly honest, and I am sane enough to only do some of these things when there are no other people around, but I still do them.
Things I Do
-Let my dog sleep on my bed
-Lose sleep if my dog is sick or uncomfortable
-Feed her from the table on a regular basis
-Talk to her in baby talk
-Talk to her like she is a real human being
-Apologize out loud for stepping on her
-Plan my day around her walk
-Plan my travels around taking care of her
-Brag about my dog and share cute anectdotes as though she is my child
-Take her with me whenever I go out
-Feed her expensive canned dog food
Things I don't do yet, and when I do do them, I am officially the crazy dog lady.
-Have more pictures of dogs in the the house than people
-Think my dog can understand English
-Buy her gifts on her birthday
-Take her to the groomers
-Let her eat from plates
-Let her lick me on the mouth
-Have more than one dog
-Heat her food in the microwave
I need to be brutaly honest, and I am sane enough to only do some of these things when there are no other people around, but I still do them.
Things I Do
-Let my dog sleep on my bed
-Lose sleep if my dog is sick or uncomfortable
-Feed her from the table on a regular basis
-Talk to her in baby talk
-Talk to her like she is a real human being
-Apologize out loud for stepping on her
-Plan my day around her walk
-Plan my travels around taking care of her
-Brag about my dog and share cute anectdotes as though she is my child
-Take her with me whenever I go out
-Feed her expensive canned dog food
Things I don't do yet, and when I do do them, I am officially the crazy dog lady.
-Have more pictures of dogs in the the house than people
-Think my dog can understand English
-Buy her gifts on her birthday
-Take her to the groomers
-Let her eat from plates
-Let her lick me on the mouth
-Have more than one dog
-Heat her food in the microwave
Monday, December 17, 2007
Schedule
I love making schedules for my life, planning ahead what I'm going to be doing. They almost never work out the way I plan them, which is even more fun, because as soon as I change the first thing on my schedule, the rest of my docket has to change to reflect the new plan. This upcoming plan is not as exciting as plans I've made in years past, but here it is.
-Jan. 2008 through Dec. 2010 Go to River Falls University and get my teaching certificate and Masters degree, taking off summers to work as needed.
-Summer 2009 Live in either Ireland and work at a camp for sick kids or live in Jackson WY and take people on horseback rides.
-Jan. 2010 Go live on a Native American reservation and teach ESL. Buy a few horses to work with during the summer.
-Spend the next few summers either working with my horses, and by now, my kids, or spend them in South America with my new philanthropic husband working in rural schools and practicing my spanish...or maybe China, who knows.
-Jan. 2008 through Dec. 2010 Go to River Falls University and get my teaching certificate and Masters degree, taking off summers to work as needed.
-Summer 2009 Live in either Ireland and work at a camp for sick kids or live in Jackson WY and take people on horseback rides.
-Jan. 2010 Go live on a Native American reservation and teach ESL. Buy a few horses to work with during the summer.
-Spend the next few summers either working with my horses, and by now, my kids, or spend them in South America with my new philanthropic husband working in rural schools and practicing my spanish...or maybe China, who knows.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Random Thoughts
Well, I was laughing with a few friends the other day and was telling some story about my work and it made me think of all the times I haven't added anything to my blog because I don't have anything interesting to say. So what follows will just be a collection of memories of my travels and friends that make me giggle. Mind you, they make me giggle, they might not make you even crack a smile. Expect more to follow, but not soon.....
Jackson, WY Summer of 2007
Ok, so I had worked and lived in Jackson Wy for a few months when some co-workers and I went out dancing. Now, Wyoming isn't the most diverse place in the world. There are white people, a few latinos, and everyone else is probably a tourist. So I no longer was suprised to look around at a hopping dance floor and see only pale skin under cowboy hats. Well, one night we are standing around, waiting for the band to return from a break when all of the sudden people either stop talking or lower their voices. I looked up from whatever I was doing to see everyone staring at the door.
Yes a black man had walked in the door. With his white girlfriend.
Everyone stared as the bouncer took the cover charge and the couple walked in. The hushed voices got a little louder, and people even started pointing. The guys seemed the most upset, talking louder and not taking their eyes off of him, while for the most part, the girls had glanced up to see what was going on and gone back to their conversations.
Except me. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Was it 1942? How could people think that is was ok to stare like that? Just because someone of a different race came in? What were they thinking? I was starting to get really furious when I noticed my friend standing up to go talk to him. I didn't know what he thought he was doing.
He came back a few minutes later to tell us that "yes, he was the football player for the cowboys." Just like all the guys staring had been wondering.
Quito, Ecuador Fall of 2006
My friend was trying to pay her rent and use her limited Spanish. She figured out the sentence she wanted to say and said it, "Yo quiero pegarte con platanos." (I want to pay you with cash) The guy who was to take her rent just stared at her, so she repeated it. "Yo quero pegarte con platanos." He started laughing and got someone who spoke english to translate. She had meant to say, "Yo quiero pagarte con plata." What she had said instead was "I want to stick you with bannanas."
My friend had been having a lot of problems with her stomach. She tried to eat healthy and not drink water from the tap and wash all her fruits with bottled water, but it hadn't helped much, she just couldn't get over these issues. But it didn't stop her from making the most of her South American experience. We were walking one day, on our way to buy books for the library she was building, after stopping at a quaint little resaurant for breakfast when she stopped and said calmly, "Hey, Sara, wait up a bit." I stopped and looked back, she had a calm expression on her face, like she had just forgotten her leftovers at the table and wanted to go back to get them.
She tilted her head to the side a bit and said, "I think I just shit myself." (apologies to those offended by language, but I have to quote it how I heard it) My eyes went big, "What?"
She said matter-of-factly, "Yeah, yeah, I just shit myself."
After a second I said, "Well, let's go find a bathroom so you can clean yourself up." We started walking back to the restaurant, she walking a little stifly, and then added, "Of all the days to wear a thong."
Rexburg, Idaho Spring of 2002
My friend and I took a horse training class together at BYU-Idaho. It was an awesome class, we trained and had our own horse for two semesters. It was suprisingly dangerous, especially given the state that we live in, where coffee cups have warnings on them, seatbelts are the law, and you need parental permission to hand out aspirin at school. For example, to start the class they had about 18 or 20 horses, who were totally wild, had never been around humans, had been born in the wild and their only experience with humans was to be rounded up and forced in a trailer, then taken on a very long scary ride, and set loose in a big arena. Ok, so instead of giving them some time to calm down, he has his T.A. crack the whip a few time and get them good and terrified. They start galloping frantically in a cirle, their fear feeding off of the other horse's fear until they are out of control. Then the teacher says, "grab your halters and go get your horse."
What?! Walk out in that mix of out-of-control horses? They are easily galloping at close to 30 miles per hour, running on sharp little hooves and nothing is going to stop them except time. But wait! That girl is going out there! And it looks like she wants to catch the pretty little palomino! (A gold horse with a white mane and tail) I want that palomino! And all of the sudden all the students are out in the middle of this rearing kicking mass. There were three or four horses that everyone wanted, and all the students were set on getting the horse they wanted, regardless of the injury they risked to get it. (I got the palomino by the way.)
Anyhow, that wasn't my point. My point was the funny thing that happened. After we had had our horses for about two months, the intermediate riding class came to ride our half-broke horses. One by one, they were paired up with us, and who do I get but the heaviest girl in the class? (Really heavy) Now, there's nothing wrong with being heavy. I mean, these are horses we're talking about, right? They are massive creatures and my horse probably weighed around 900 pounds, she could totally carry any person we put on her, right?
So, with the help of a stepping stool, and two people pushing and Theresa (my horse) being better than she usually is and standing still, this girl got on. I imagine that this is funnier if you have the image in your head, rather than the words I'm about to write, but try and create a picture in your mind. This horse, a petite, delicate little horse, who has only ever carried 160 pounds, tops, now has to carry twice that. And not only carry that, but walk, trot and lope with that weight. So Theresa takes one step, then stops. She spreds her hooves a little farther apart. But after another kick in the ribs, Theresa starts to walk, a little lopsided, and little crooked, her back end going off to the side, leaving strange hoofprints in the dirt, like that horse costume with people where the front half moves independent of the other. Another kick and she is up to a trot, but a bouncier, head-tossier, akwarder trot you never saw. Theresa refused to go any faster, no matter how hard the kicks come.
Sokcho South Korea Summer 2006-Summer 2007
Ok, so this didn't happen to me, it actually happened to Shaun, from Birmingham England, another English teacher where I worked. This might be another story where you had to be there, seeing the facial expressions, and hearing the accent to appreciate how funny it was.
Shaun had to teach this strange little boy. The boys parents, pretty much just wanted a babysitter who spoke english, and told Shaun to just play games with this boy, and have fun, no books or lessons. So Shaun at first was excited, he imagined class periods spent playing soccer, walking to the local park to hit baseballs, playing board games or watching movies. The class didn't turn out that way. This kid turned out to be uncontrolable, he couldn't study, sit still, or learn English. In hopes of helping the student, Shaun started teaching actual English lessons. Well, one day this boy came in to class with a toy light saber. Shaun, after a brief battle, took it away and put it up high on a shelf. He told the student that he could have his light saber back when class was over. Well, midway through the lesson, when Shaun was focused on something else, he looked back at his student to see him covertly pointing his hand at his light saber and focusing his eyes and all his energy on actually using the force to make his toy float off the shelf and come to his hand.
Sokcho, South Korea
My friend, Kelly, was looking up a work in an English to English to Korean Dictionary. (This type of dictionary is for adavanced learners of English, they can look up an English word, and try to read the English definition, but if they are still confused, there is a Korean translation there as well. Well, it has been lost to history what word she was looking up, but she came accross the word, Harlem in the dictionary. She glanced at the definition and saw this phrase, as well as I can remember it. "A large city in the United States of America. Also known as Nigger-Heaven. Other helpful phrases: Work like a nigger. Nigger-hair. Nigger-toes......." Can you imagine a young Korean coming to the states and mentioning to the hotel clerk that he or she wants to visit "nigger heaven?" Or heading into Seoul and walking past the seedy bar for GIs (there is a real bar called Harlem) and saying, "Look! Nigger Heaven!" As the GI's lounging outside hear only, "Blah! Nigger Blah!" Which would be just as bad as them hearing what he was actually saying, considering that 21% of people in the military are black, and there would probably be a few of them hanging out at Harlem bar.
Sokcho
The fun thing about learning Korean is that it is a lot like learning Spanish. In Spanish you add an "o" to the end of everything. In Korean, you just say it in a Korean accent. Not because the languages have anything in common, no latin roots or anything like that. Just that a lot of new technology, created in English Speaking Countries, mostly the US, had english names, and the Koreans used those as their names, like the internet. They also liked taking other words and making them their own, like veranda (berandah), snack (Suneguh), ice cream (ice-uh cureemuh), and lots others. In fact, we made it a game to figure out how many Korean words we could learn, like the Korean word for athelete (Sports-man, Suportzu-manuh). When we would go into stores and wanted to buy something that we didn't know the name for, we would just look around and give it a try, it worked more often than not. "Do you have any posters?" "Posutoruh issoyo?" (Issoyo is "do you have?")
Jackson, WY Summer of 2007
Ok, so I had worked and lived in Jackson Wy for a few months when some co-workers and I went out dancing. Now, Wyoming isn't the most diverse place in the world. There are white people, a few latinos, and everyone else is probably a tourist. So I no longer was suprised to look around at a hopping dance floor and see only pale skin under cowboy hats. Well, one night we are standing around, waiting for the band to return from a break when all of the sudden people either stop talking or lower their voices. I looked up from whatever I was doing to see everyone staring at the door.
Yes a black man had walked in the door. With his white girlfriend.
Everyone stared as the bouncer took the cover charge and the couple walked in. The hushed voices got a little louder, and people even started pointing. The guys seemed the most upset, talking louder and not taking their eyes off of him, while for the most part, the girls had glanced up to see what was going on and gone back to their conversations.
Except me. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Was it 1942? How could people think that is was ok to stare like that? Just because someone of a different race came in? What were they thinking? I was starting to get really furious when I noticed my friend standing up to go talk to him. I didn't know what he thought he was doing.
He came back a few minutes later to tell us that "yes, he was the football player for the cowboys." Just like all the guys staring had been wondering.
Quito, Ecuador Fall of 2006
My friend was trying to pay her rent and use her limited Spanish. She figured out the sentence she wanted to say and said it, "Yo quiero pegarte con platanos." (I want to pay you with cash) The guy who was to take her rent just stared at her, so she repeated it. "Yo quero pegarte con platanos." He started laughing and got someone who spoke english to translate. She had meant to say, "Yo quiero pagarte con plata." What she had said instead was "I want to stick you with bannanas."
My friend had been having a lot of problems with her stomach. She tried to eat healthy and not drink water from the tap and wash all her fruits with bottled water, but it hadn't helped much, she just couldn't get over these issues. But it didn't stop her from making the most of her South American experience. We were walking one day, on our way to buy books for the library she was building, after stopping at a quaint little resaurant for breakfast when she stopped and said calmly, "Hey, Sara, wait up a bit." I stopped and looked back, she had a calm expression on her face, like she had just forgotten her leftovers at the table and wanted to go back to get them.
She tilted her head to the side a bit and said, "I think I just shit myself." (apologies to those offended by language, but I have to quote it how I heard it) My eyes went big, "What?"
She said matter-of-factly, "Yeah, yeah, I just shit myself."
After a second I said, "Well, let's go find a bathroom so you can clean yourself up." We started walking back to the restaurant, she walking a little stifly, and then added, "Of all the days to wear a thong."
Rexburg, Idaho Spring of 2002
My friend and I took a horse training class together at BYU-Idaho. It was an awesome class, we trained and had our own horse for two semesters. It was suprisingly dangerous, especially given the state that we live in, where coffee cups have warnings on them, seatbelts are the law, and you need parental permission to hand out aspirin at school. For example, to start the class they had about 18 or 20 horses, who were totally wild, had never been around humans, had been born in the wild and their only experience with humans was to be rounded up and forced in a trailer, then taken on a very long scary ride, and set loose in a big arena. Ok, so instead of giving them some time to calm down, he has his T.A. crack the whip a few time and get them good and terrified. They start galloping frantically in a cirle, their fear feeding off of the other horse's fear until they are out of control. Then the teacher says, "grab your halters and go get your horse."
What?! Walk out in that mix of out-of-control horses? They are easily galloping at close to 30 miles per hour, running on sharp little hooves and nothing is going to stop them except time. But wait! That girl is going out there! And it looks like she wants to catch the pretty little palomino! (A gold horse with a white mane and tail) I want that palomino! And all of the sudden all the students are out in the middle of this rearing kicking mass. There were three or four horses that everyone wanted, and all the students were set on getting the horse they wanted, regardless of the injury they risked to get it. (I got the palomino by the way.)
Anyhow, that wasn't my point. My point was the funny thing that happened. After we had had our horses for about two months, the intermediate riding class came to ride our half-broke horses. One by one, they were paired up with us, and who do I get but the heaviest girl in the class? (Really heavy) Now, there's nothing wrong with being heavy. I mean, these are horses we're talking about, right? They are massive creatures and my horse probably weighed around 900 pounds, she could totally carry any person we put on her, right?
So, with the help of a stepping stool, and two people pushing and Theresa (my horse) being better than she usually is and standing still, this girl got on. I imagine that this is funnier if you have the image in your head, rather than the words I'm about to write, but try and create a picture in your mind. This horse, a petite, delicate little horse, who has only ever carried 160 pounds, tops, now has to carry twice that. And not only carry that, but walk, trot and lope with that weight. So Theresa takes one step, then stops. She spreds her hooves a little farther apart. But after another kick in the ribs, Theresa starts to walk, a little lopsided, and little crooked, her back end going off to the side, leaving strange hoofprints in the dirt, like that horse costume with people where the front half moves independent of the other. Another kick and she is up to a trot, but a bouncier, head-tossier, akwarder trot you never saw. Theresa refused to go any faster, no matter how hard the kicks come.
Sokcho South Korea Summer 2006-Summer 2007
Ok, so this didn't happen to me, it actually happened to Shaun, from Birmingham England, another English teacher where I worked. This might be another story where you had to be there, seeing the facial expressions, and hearing the accent to appreciate how funny it was.
Shaun had to teach this strange little boy. The boys parents, pretty much just wanted a babysitter who spoke english, and told Shaun to just play games with this boy, and have fun, no books or lessons. So Shaun at first was excited, he imagined class periods spent playing soccer, walking to the local park to hit baseballs, playing board games or watching movies. The class didn't turn out that way. This kid turned out to be uncontrolable, he couldn't study, sit still, or learn English. In hopes of helping the student, Shaun started teaching actual English lessons. Well, one day this boy came in to class with a toy light saber. Shaun, after a brief battle, took it away and put it up high on a shelf. He told the student that he could have his light saber back when class was over. Well, midway through the lesson, when Shaun was focused on something else, he looked back at his student to see him covertly pointing his hand at his light saber and focusing his eyes and all his energy on actually using the force to make his toy float off the shelf and come to his hand.
Sokcho, South Korea
My friend, Kelly, was looking up a work in an English to English to Korean Dictionary. (This type of dictionary is for adavanced learners of English, they can look up an English word, and try to read the English definition, but if they are still confused, there is a Korean translation there as well. Well, it has been lost to history what word she was looking up, but she came accross the word, Harlem in the dictionary. She glanced at the definition and saw this phrase, as well as I can remember it. "A large city in the United States of America. Also known as Nigger-Heaven. Other helpful phrases: Work like a nigger. Nigger-hair. Nigger-toes......." Can you imagine a young Korean coming to the states and mentioning to the hotel clerk that he or she wants to visit "nigger heaven?" Or heading into Seoul and walking past the seedy bar for GIs (there is a real bar called Harlem) and saying, "Look! Nigger Heaven!" As the GI's lounging outside hear only, "Blah! Nigger Blah!" Which would be just as bad as them hearing what he was actually saying, considering that 21% of people in the military are black, and there would probably be a few of them hanging out at Harlem bar.
Sokcho
The fun thing about learning Korean is that it is a lot like learning Spanish. In Spanish you add an "o" to the end of everything. In Korean, you just say it in a Korean accent. Not because the languages have anything in common, no latin roots or anything like that. Just that a lot of new technology, created in English Speaking Countries, mostly the US, had english names, and the Koreans used those as their names, like the internet. They also liked taking other words and making them their own, like veranda (berandah), snack (Suneguh), ice cream (ice-uh cureemuh), and lots others. In fact, we made it a game to figure out how many Korean words we could learn, like the Korean word for athelete (Sports-man, Suportzu-manuh). When we would go into stores and wanted to buy something that we didn't know the name for, we would just look around and give it a try, it worked more often than not. "Do you have any posters?" "Posutoruh issoyo?" (Issoyo is "do you have?")
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Midnight Ride (or, why you never ride at night with two stoned/drunk cowboys)
This happened in July
So the other night we were finished with quite a long day of hard work. We, referring to myself and my coworkers up here at the A-OK Corral. Someone then got the idea to go for a "midnight ride" rather than go dancing like we had planned. So we all dispersed to get ready for this ride. I gathered a sweater and warm jacket, granola bars, my cell phone, and bottled water. I began to get nervous when I saw that their preparations included a 24 pack of Bud and mari-j. I should have recognized this as foreshadowing. But, I thought, they're big boys, they can take care of themselves. We start up the mountain, all of us on our favorite horses only to see the boss coming down the road. Now, all the horses have an 8 o'clock curfew, and it's nine right now, so this probably isn't a good thing that there are three of us leaving the barn. The boys, pretty lamely, try and hide their beer cans, behind their legs, or slip them in their saddle bags, only to have the beer drip out and down their horses legs. The boss stands there for an eternity shooting the breeze and relishing that he caught us doing something we shouldn't have done. Finally after the boys promise to have the horses back within the hour and I keep silent, the boss leaves and we continue on.
Now, the wilderness we were going to be exploring was pretty rough. It was not a rolling meadow with flowers and cell phone towers and trails, it was mountainus, with steep drop-offs, there were creeks and ditches and holes, no cell phone coverage, and it wasn't the best place to go for a midnight ride, but we went anyways, and we decided to avoid the one trail there was.
For two months we had been taking people on trail rides and we were sick of the same old trail day after day. We wanted to explore and find new places that we could take dudes on rides. We chose a particularily steep side of the mountain to climb. The horses had a hard time getting to the top, nearly slipping back or falling sideways, but we were finally at the top. Once we got to the top we took in the last few minutes of the sunset and looked around to see where we wanted to go next. I rolled my eyes at the boys while they rolled a joint. Then we continued on.
We had not planned ahead and looked at the calendar to find out if the moon would be out that night, but it turned out not to matter, as the sky was cloudy. So, between clouds and no moon, it was hard to see where we were going. This is about the time when you are glad that you brought a horse you trust. You have to have a horse that is smart enough to ignore you when it knows better, like when you tell it to go straight down a cliff, because you can't see where you're going.
We had a bit of fun, galloping down the road, shouting and hollering. Well, Mike and I had fun, Ryan, not so much. His horse had been a dude horse for so long that it didn't know how to run anymore. No matter how hard Ryan kicked him and shouted and the other horses galloped, his horse (Matt) would not gallop. He would, however, trot. He would trot as fast as a gallop, bouncing Ryan up and down at light speed.
Once we had gone out a few miles, we took a right into wilderness we were unfamiliar with. (I know what you're thinking right now, that that is not the smartest thing to do, to get lost at night, but out horses would have taken us home whever we wanted to go home. Getting lost wasn't a big concern.) So we start climbing this mountain and wondering if the land we are on is part of the land that people are not allowed to be on. A few minutes later we get our answer.
A truck came bouncing towards us with a huge spotlight jumping up an down with every pothole in the dirt road. It is still about two hundred yards away, and there is no way that it can come closer up the mountain. But we still start freaking out, there are no trees or scrub to hide behind on this ountain side! Ryan starts cursing me and my white-ass horse. My horse, Nell, stands out like a beacon on the mountain with her dappled grey hair when they shine the light directly on her. Mike's horse; Jenny and Ryan's horse; Matt are practically invisable, blending in with the mountian behind them. We take off as people start getting out of the truck, visable only by their bouncing flashlight beams. We find a stand of trees and I guide Nell behind them. We wait for a second, hoping that the forrest service guys are out here for some unrelated reason, that it is just a coinsedence. A few minutes go by and we don't think they are.
We take off up the mountain. If we can get over the ridge, then there is no way they will find us. It is again steep going, and the horses are having a rough time of it, but eventually we get to the other side and start back down the mountain. We rest on the other side, giving the horses a breather, and letting our pulses calm down.
We ride on a little ways and decide we want to make a loop to get back to the ranch. So we need to cut through this valley, and then there should be a creek, and we will cross a road, and so forth as we decide where we are going. Ryan decides to take charge. He says we need to go straight between two high hills. I look over at where he has decided we need to turn. See, where I am, all I see is a fence. But he must have found a break in the nence that he is going over. He coaxes his horse and kicks his horse, guides his horse, but Matt refuses to go forward a single step. So I ask Nell to walk over and I ask confused. "Um, are you trying to go through the fence?" It is hard for me to understand that someone can't see that fence, but that turns out to be exactly what happened. He had been getting angry with his horse for refusing to walk through a fence. That's how dark it is, and/or how drunk or stoned they are. He couldn't see a fence no more than 30 inches in front of him.
So, Mike decides to take charge. He decides that his horse, Jenny is going to take the lead. Now, in any normal horse, this would mean that we would go straight home. But Jenny is not any normal horse. She wants to explore as much as Michael does. So she takes us up and down a few mountains, going left or right with no sense of a final destination. A few hours later we look around to find that we are just outside of the game warden's house. We find this out by hearing the pounding of hooves coming straight at us. Our horses spooked and ran through some trees, which isn't too much fun when you can't see where the branches are, or control your frightened horse. During this excapade, Michael realized that his cinch (The strap that holds the saddle on) was loose, so he hopped off to fix it as soon as the horses were under control. When he went to get back on, those horses came galloping up the the fence again and Jenny jumped sideways in fear. Michael had been jumping up to get on her, and as she jumped toward him, he went directly over her back and flopped to the ground on the other side. At first Ryan and I started laughing, but Michael wasn't moving. And he had kind of landed on his head. So I started freaking out. "Michael, you answer me right now, are you ok? Michael? Michael?" A few seconds later we hear giggling coming from the ground. Apparently he's ok.
Over the next hour or so, we try and get over this mountain. But we can't figure it out. It is pitch black, we can't see each other from the backs of our horses, and from time to time out horse will walk too close to a tree and scrape our knees painfully, or under a branch and nearly scrape us off. At this point I can't be sure that it was accidental anymore. We decide to turn around and once we get to the bottom of the mountain again, we decide to try a different route.
Except that Jenny doesn't want to go that way. Jenny wants to explore over there, and Michael sees nothing wrong with going over there. But I am tired and I want to go home, and my horse is tired and I am feeling for her. (I'm no lightweight) But Michael is uncontrolable. We follow him and Jenny around as he waves his hands in the air, letting Jenny walk wherever she wants. He's almost out of beer at this point and has to keep getting off to pee. Eventually we give up and just follow Jenny for a while. Soon enough I decide I am tired of this. I have followed these stupid boys around enough. They galloped at night when we couldn't see the ground and I let them even though I shouted after them how unsafe it was, as their horse could step in a hole and break its leg. I followed them as they tried to find a way over a mountain we were unfamiliar with, even at night, and I had even followed around Michael's horse, but now I was done. My cell phone wasn't getting reception and wouldn't tell me what time it was, but I knew it was late and we had to work at six-thirty the next morning.
I got in front of Michael and told him. "Michael stop. We're going home and I'm taking you." Ryan followed me as I got in front of them both and pointed Nell for home. She could see better than I could and started heading for home, avoiding all the fences and ditches and streams and fallen trees that we had run into on our way out. The way back was just as nighmareish for the boys as the way out had been. Ryan lost his saddle twice. The first time we walked around for 10 minutes looking for his saddle blanket with the light from my cell phone until we found it. In between loosing his saddle blanket for the first and second time he fell off twice. Matt apparently wasn't very excited about the late hour. And Ryan was being pretty stupid, like running his horse up and down extreemly steep trails. The second time he fell off, Michael and I were walking our horses down the trail and we hear a plaintive voice coming from around the bend. "Don't step on me! I'm on the ground. Matt threw me, then stopped on my leg." We rounded the bend to see Matt calmly eating grass a few steps away from Ryan. Matt's saddle was hanging around his belly, and his saddle blanket was nowhere to be seen. We couldn't find it that night at all. Ryan ended up being able to hop back on his horse just in time to finish the night off with another stupid idea, to race Matt home on the road. Matt's shoes sending up sparks, Ryan's hat flying off, all this with no saddle blanket. Matt's back must have been pretty sore. I ended up getting off Nell and walking beside her, and so Michael felt like he had to walk Jenny too, even though he wanted to run home and send up sparks too. He couldn't understand why I wasn't on my horse. When I said she was tired and didn't have to carry me the last .3 mile, he couldn't comprehend it. "But, why are you walking?" He was a true cowboy, only getting off his horse to pee, unsaddle, and walk in the house that night.
We walked in the door and noticed that it was just after two-thirty. We had been riding for five and a half hours, after putting in a 13 hour day working that whole previous day. I personally rode 11 and a half hours that day. It is a testament to how hard we worked every day that none of us were saddle sore the next day.
The next day we instructed the guy who took out the first trail ride to look for the missing saddle blanket somewhere on the trail and so hide it where we could go back and find it later. We also spent the next few rides we went on picking up all the beer cans, empty and full that had fallen out of the saddle bags, or been thrown by drunk boys during the ride. Matt, Nell, and Jenny also got the next two days off work and enough treats to make them sick.
So the other night we were finished with quite a long day of hard work. We, referring to myself and my coworkers up here at the A-OK Corral. Someone then got the idea to go for a "midnight ride" rather than go dancing like we had planned. So we all dispersed to get ready for this ride. I gathered a sweater and warm jacket, granola bars, my cell phone, and bottled water. I began to get nervous when I saw that their preparations included a 24 pack of Bud and mari-j. I should have recognized this as foreshadowing. But, I thought, they're big boys, they can take care of themselves. We start up the mountain, all of us on our favorite horses only to see the boss coming down the road. Now, all the horses have an 8 o'clock curfew, and it's nine right now, so this probably isn't a good thing that there are three of us leaving the barn. The boys, pretty lamely, try and hide their beer cans, behind their legs, or slip them in their saddle bags, only to have the beer drip out and down their horses legs. The boss stands there for an eternity shooting the breeze and relishing that he caught us doing something we shouldn't have done. Finally after the boys promise to have the horses back within the hour and I keep silent, the boss leaves and we continue on.
Now, the wilderness we were going to be exploring was pretty rough. It was not a rolling meadow with flowers and cell phone towers and trails, it was mountainus, with steep drop-offs, there were creeks and ditches and holes, no cell phone coverage, and it wasn't the best place to go for a midnight ride, but we went anyways, and we decided to avoid the one trail there was.
For two months we had been taking people on trail rides and we were sick of the same old trail day after day. We wanted to explore and find new places that we could take dudes on rides. We chose a particularily steep side of the mountain to climb. The horses had a hard time getting to the top, nearly slipping back or falling sideways, but we were finally at the top. Once we got to the top we took in the last few minutes of the sunset and looked around to see where we wanted to go next. I rolled my eyes at the boys while they rolled a joint. Then we continued on.
We had not planned ahead and looked at the calendar to find out if the moon would be out that night, but it turned out not to matter, as the sky was cloudy. So, between clouds and no moon, it was hard to see where we were going. This is about the time when you are glad that you brought a horse you trust. You have to have a horse that is smart enough to ignore you when it knows better, like when you tell it to go straight down a cliff, because you can't see where you're going.
We had a bit of fun, galloping down the road, shouting and hollering. Well, Mike and I had fun, Ryan, not so much. His horse had been a dude horse for so long that it didn't know how to run anymore. No matter how hard Ryan kicked him and shouted and the other horses galloped, his horse (Matt) would not gallop. He would, however, trot. He would trot as fast as a gallop, bouncing Ryan up and down at light speed.
Once we had gone out a few miles, we took a right into wilderness we were unfamiliar with. (I know what you're thinking right now, that that is not the smartest thing to do, to get lost at night, but out horses would have taken us home whever we wanted to go home. Getting lost wasn't a big concern.) So we start climbing this mountain and wondering if the land we are on is part of the land that people are not allowed to be on. A few minutes later we get our answer.
A truck came bouncing towards us with a huge spotlight jumping up an down with every pothole in the dirt road. It is still about two hundred yards away, and there is no way that it can come closer up the mountain. But we still start freaking out, there are no trees or scrub to hide behind on this ountain side! Ryan starts cursing me and my white-ass horse. My horse, Nell, stands out like a beacon on the mountain with her dappled grey hair when they shine the light directly on her. Mike's horse; Jenny and Ryan's horse; Matt are practically invisable, blending in with the mountian behind them. We take off as people start getting out of the truck, visable only by their bouncing flashlight beams. We find a stand of trees and I guide Nell behind them. We wait for a second, hoping that the forrest service guys are out here for some unrelated reason, that it is just a coinsedence. A few minutes go by and we don't think they are.
We take off up the mountain. If we can get over the ridge, then there is no way they will find us. It is again steep going, and the horses are having a rough time of it, but eventually we get to the other side and start back down the mountain. We rest on the other side, giving the horses a breather, and letting our pulses calm down.
We ride on a little ways and decide we want to make a loop to get back to the ranch. So we need to cut through this valley, and then there should be a creek, and we will cross a road, and so forth as we decide where we are going. Ryan decides to take charge. He says we need to go straight between two high hills. I look over at where he has decided we need to turn. See, where I am, all I see is a fence. But he must have found a break in the nence that he is going over. He coaxes his horse and kicks his horse, guides his horse, but Matt refuses to go forward a single step. So I ask Nell to walk over and I ask confused. "Um, are you trying to go through the fence?" It is hard for me to understand that someone can't see that fence, but that turns out to be exactly what happened. He had been getting angry with his horse for refusing to walk through a fence. That's how dark it is, and/or how drunk or stoned they are. He couldn't see a fence no more than 30 inches in front of him.
So, Mike decides to take charge. He decides that his horse, Jenny is going to take the lead. Now, in any normal horse, this would mean that we would go straight home. But Jenny is not any normal horse. She wants to explore as much as Michael does. So she takes us up and down a few mountains, going left or right with no sense of a final destination. A few hours later we look around to find that we are just outside of the game warden's house. We find this out by hearing the pounding of hooves coming straight at us. Our horses spooked and ran through some trees, which isn't too much fun when you can't see where the branches are, or control your frightened horse. During this excapade, Michael realized that his cinch (The strap that holds the saddle on) was loose, so he hopped off to fix it as soon as the horses were under control. When he went to get back on, those horses came galloping up the the fence again and Jenny jumped sideways in fear. Michael had been jumping up to get on her, and as she jumped toward him, he went directly over her back and flopped to the ground on the other side. At first Ryan and I started laughing, but Michael wasn't moving. And he had kind of landed on his head. So I started freaking out. "Michael, you answer me right now, are you ok? Michael? Michael?" A few seconds later we hear giggling coming from the ground. Apparently he's ok.
Over the next hour or so, we try and get over this mountain. But we can't figure it out. It is pitch black, we can't see each other from the backs of our horses, and from time to time out horse will walk too close to a tree and scrape our knees painfully, or under a branch and nearly scrape us off. At this point I can't be sure that it was accidental anymore. We decide to turn around and once we get to the bottom of the mountain again, we decide to try a different route.
Except that Jenny doesn't want to go that way. Jenny wants to explore over there, and Michael sees nothing wrong with going over there. But I am tired and I want to go home, and my horse is tired and I am feeling for her. (I'm no lightweight) But Michael is uncontrolable. We follow him and Jenny around as he waves his hands in the air, letting Jenny walk wherever she wants. He's almost out of beer at this point and has to keep getting off to pee. Eventually we give up and just follow Jenny for a while. Soon enough I decide I am tired of this. I have followed these stupid boys around enough. They galloped at night when we couldn't see the ground and I let them even though I shouted after them how unsafe it was, as their horse could step in a hole and break its leg. I followed them as they tried to find a way over a mountain we were unfamiliar with, even at night, and I had even followed around Michael's horse, but now I was done. My cell phone wasn't getting reception and wouldn't tell me what time it was, but I knew it was late and we had to work at six-thirty the next morning.
I got in front of Michael and told him. "Michael stop. We're going home and I'm taking you." Ryan followed me as I got in front of them both and pointed Nell for home. She could see better than I could and started heading for home, avoiding all the fences and ditches and streams and fallen trees that we had run into on our way out. The way back was just as nighmareish for the boys as the way out had been. Ryan lost his saddle twice. The first time we walked around for 10 minutes looking for his saddle blanket with the light from my cell phone until we found it. In between loosing his saddle blanket for the first and second time he fell off twice. Matt apparently wasn't very excited about the late hour. And Ryan was being pretty stupid, like running his horse up and down extreemly steep trails. The second time he fell off, Michael and I were walking our horses down the trail and we hear a plaintive voice coming from around the bend. "Don't step on me! I'm on the ground. Matt threw me, then stopped on my leg." We rounded the bend to see Matt calmly eating grass a few steps away from Ryan. Matt's saddle was hanging around his belly, and his saddle blanket was nowhere to be seen. We couldn't find it that night at all. Ryan ended up being able to hop back on his horse just in time to finish the night off with another stupid idea, to race Matt home on the road. Matt's shoes sending up sparks, Ryan's hat flying off, all this with no saddle blanket. Matt's back must have been pretty sore. I ended up getting off Nell and walking beside her, and so Michael felt like he had to walk Jenny too, even though he wanted to run home and send up sparks too. He couldn't understand why I wasn't on my horse. When I said she was tired and didn't have to carry me the last .3 mile, he couldn't comprehend it. "But, why are you walking?" He was a true cowboy, only getting off his horse to pee, unsaddle, and walk in the house that night.
We walked in the door and noticed that it was just after two-thirty. We had been riding for five and a half hours, after putting in a 13 hour day working that whole previous day. I personally rode 11 and a half hours that day. It is a testament to how hard we worked every day that none of us were saddle sore the next day.
The next day we instructed the guy who took out the first trail ride to look for the missing saddle blanket somewhere on the trail and so hide it where we could go back and find it later. We also spent the next few rides we went on picking up all the beer cans, empty and full that had fallen out of the saddle bags, or been thrown by drunk boys during the ride. Matt, Nell, and Jenny also got the next two days off work and enough treats to make them sick.
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