exhausted rant

I'm punishing this poor 41 year old body by trying to act like a teenager again. We had a sleepover last night - not just my kids, but ME. Q and E's babysitter Paige invited over my family and two others for a barbeque/campout/sleepover. The kids ran wild playing with the chickens and llamas and we all sweltered in the heat and had cold beer and hamburgers and ice cream. The dads ended up out in the tents camping out with the young ones whil we moms sat inside and talked until 3:30 am. Nope, I haven't done *that* in a while, and for good reason, apparently, says this tired body. Then I had to get up at a reasonable hour to run the Harry Potter Quiddich Tournament at UU this morning. And again with the heat... Visions of skiing out at Bryce Mountain keep popping up in my head in a poor attempt to keep myself sane. I'm about to spend the afternoon napping and knitting while I let my kids play gameboys ALL AFTERNOON.

I ended up with lots of things to think about with respect to the kids' school after our late night conversation. I am so naive. It's a little bothersome that I just don't see a lot of the more ugly things that are out there. I have a tendency to explain them away as a defect of my own observation. There are a lot of troubled kids out there, you know, even in our school. Some of the stories Paige can tell (she subs up at the school) are just so sad. Kids learn how to be mean really young. I worry for Q and his fast temper and lack of emotional control because he could so easily be a target for some mean kid, and I worry for E that she'll BECOME one of the mean kids. All I can do is just keep swimming. Middle School....AAAAHHHH!!!! Just keep swimming...

I read an update on the bad man in the woods in the local paper. The disturbing thing is this is not some whacko that ended up around here - he *lives* here. Drunk and waving a gun around - lovely. Thank you NRA. We are all so much safer now knowing that idiots like this guy can buy guns. I've been thinking a lot about how nice it would be to live somewhere like Madison or Berkeley where I'd at least have some connection with most of the residents. As it is now, I have my little enclave of like-minded friends and we comfort each other and wonder why the average person around here is so afraid to think for themselves. Everyone happily spouts the administration's party line and then feels safe because they are "AMERICANS". Gaaa. Forget Madison or Berkeley. Maybe I need to consider a move to France. I can take differences of opinion. What I cannot take is support for an administration that is baseless in fact. How can they not *SEE* what is happening? Just put on those blinders and feel good because you're in the reight. (heh, that was a typo I just couldn't correct).

Well there's my political rant for the week. See what exhaustion does to me?