War is Hell

I swear, in all the years they have been alive, not one of my children has ever, of his/her own will, turned off a light. I'll go upstairs and find it devoid of people, yet with 3 bedroom lights, one hallway light, and one bathroom light, all on. I think it's all part of their NILE initiative - No Illumination Left Extinguished. Just a few people's effort to make their tiny corner of the world a little brighter....

And in this (bright) corner of the world, what makes the front page of major newspapers (print edition) are school redistricting fights. That's right, there's the war in Iraq; but there are the more important wars here at home, such as whose child gets to go to an AP school versus an IB school. Though these differences seem trivial to outsiders, they spark internecine violence, such as fistfights among parents at school bus stops (please, people, the children! Spare the children!). Irate homeowners storm the offices of local realtors, who made unkeepable promises regarding specific school districts. Longtime friends and neighbors stop speaking to each other. It's brother against brother, the north side of town against the south, angry mobs sniping at each other at neighborhood yard sales...

People wonder why I home school. I tell you, it's because I don't like to take sides. Can't we all just get along? And put something more newsworthy on the front pages of our newspapers? Geez, no wonder print is dead....

I sat next to yet another spinning fanatic at Knit Night yesterday evening. She looked normal, but then she started talking about her spinning wheel that she had bought in Vermont; and the woman on the other side of me chimed in about the wheel that she might just pick up in Poland (apparently the Stradivarius of spinning wheels lives there); and I realized I had entered the Twilight Zone. What's wrong with these people? Don't they realize that we live in way too rushed a society for them to sit there and spin wool into yarn, and then knit a sweater from it? I mean, by the time you're done, you've frozen to death, right?

It's now that point in the afternoon when the sound of my children's voices puts my teeth on edge. Anna is out babysitting (apparently, she is much nicer to other people's children than to ours) and Theo has decided he wants to get all this high school nonsense out of the way and is studying non-stop. David is busy trying to make some sort of astronaut diorama out of those little marshmallow Peeps and some tinfoil. (What is it with that kid, anyway?) But that still leaves Brian, Rachel, and Susie (piping shrilly away on her little plastic recorder) to drive me insane. My only hope is that our next-door neighbor's children come over and distract them. You'll just have to take my word for it, it's way easier to watch 6 kids than just 3. One of those paradoxes of parenthood.

Oh, and I'm starving. Not losing weight, though; just starving. We wouldn't want all this suffering to have a purpose or anything...