Little curve balls in life

No sooner had my daughter and I completed our mandatory, pointless class with the Catholic church on relationships and abuse (that turned into a cheesy lecture on not having intimate relations) and I wrote a rant, than my friend, Esme (not her real name, but you knew that) called me up. Her 14 year old daughter was getting really, really close. And she was getting stalked by a boy who she had turned down.

Esme was not hysterical, she had also been at the class at the church in the next town over. The class did not spur the discussion, but rather, her boyfriend getting death threats scared her daughter into sharing. Her daughter is in no way a floozy-- but Esme would be a ding-a-ling to leave her alone with a boy at this point. (I offered to state that my son, Mudd, is to be her paid companion and to join them on dates and she is really considering it. Hey! Mudd is a fun kid!) Esme handled it with humor and has not slept since. Of course she told her husband-- couples don't keep secrets like that from one another. (He, having been sick, took to his bed and to the Wii. For four days. Wii basketball-- the best thing for an ailing person. He decided to make Esme handle it alone and he'd work with what she shared with possibly doing and then he will either agree or not. Esme's daughter swears her father will "want to kill" her, but he didn't when he found out. He was surprised that it was happening 2 years before he had expected it.)

The threats came via her text messaging. I went with her to the police. At first they didn't want to take it, but I have a degree in human services and since I am a mandated reporter, I pointed out that the suicide threats were something that had to be acted on immediately. It sounds like the kids' parents were relieved-- apparently he was already in the system for infractions of which were not elaborated on and they had numbers. His parents were called while we were there, and within the next week, the kid was sent to a residential facility for observation.

The Catholic church was not interested in my views on fixing the problem with the classes being so bad. Basically, they ignored me. I told the moderator of the class why I thought it was cheesy and not enough, and explained that I knew she knew of patterns of abuse and that sharing these with the teens would be another voice when the voices of the parents were being drowned out. Parents who found her class informative probably had their heads in the sand and wouldn't talk to their kids about abuse because they would not think it could happen. No comment from her, or the two people at the church to whom I spoke. I was disappointed, but not surprised. I later had breakfast with a group of moms who feel as I do and I may see about working something through a parent's club at one of the schools. (My party will be cooler!)

As for Esme's daughter, Esme has decided that 16 is the youngest she can be to date. The young man is a sweetheart and I even met him. It's not that he is bad by any means. Does a 16 year old have a better understanding than an almost 15 year old on why it is better to hold off on intimacy? (Does a 25 year old understand it any better?) She asked me about symptoms of pregnancies and I knew that she would be psychologically bringing them on in her worries. I told her of nerve pain shooting up the leg from the right big toe, mental alertness, and a desire to clean her area, be it her room or the entire house. Esme called to report that her daughter indeed is acting as I had spoken. (I am so going to hell for this. LOL) I do not think that she wants to be pregnant, but like many women, the posibility of a pregnancy is the posibility of potential and the sweet girl has names picked out!

I brought Esme some chocolate and tea and we knitted for a bit. She is still confused, but at least she has chocolate and yarn.

I am very, very sick

Someone who is very dear to my heart is a Jew in Jerusalem named who I will call Avi. I have known her through internet work for years and I don't remember when I haven't known her. Her answer to everything is chicken soup! I imagine her in fourth grade not getting her times tables and thinking of chicken soup!

Today I started coming down with something around 1. By 2, I was in the store feeling worse but buying chicken breasts and cans of canned broth and cream of chicken soup. I got home ready to pass out. Fortunately Peaches can drive and picked up her little sister from her horse back riding class. I told Cloud what to do and she threw together a delicious soup. It wasn't made according to Avi's standards, but I was in no shape to make it myself! When Cloud brought it to me in bed, it tasted very, very good.

Pottery and Saturday Chicken Soup Day

Last night I fired some pottery and the sawdust hadn't been burned in the middle. This morning I got out to do a firing before the wind got bad. I realized that firing might be hard as it was deeply cold again so I had the brilliant idea to toss the sawdust with lighter fluid to make certain that all the sawdust burned. One of my steel cans for firing exploded. I felt very stupid. Had one of my children done that, I'd have yelled at them. I proceeded to go in and tell them what I did. Thank goodness I wasn't doing fireworks.

I made chicken soup today as it is cold and everyone is getting the flu again. I roasted a chicken and separately boiled the vegetables (sweet green peppers, onions, celery-- which is salty) for a half hour to extract nutrients and flavor, instead of boiling them all together then straining. That was brilliant of me. When the chicken reasonably cooled, I pulled the meat off and strained the vegetables and put them all into the cauldron. There were no overcooked bits of vegetables or mushy chicken. I blended a bag of carrots in the blender and poured that in, which thickened the soup up. I normally hate carrots, but well blended, they add great texture. I probably cooked that all together for another half hour. The kids loved it and asked me to make it again. I didn't need commercially prepared stock for the first time, and that was nice.

My husband and I were grocery shopping the other night. I saw strawberry marshmallows and felt sick-- I don't like marshmallows except for a couple a few times a year when we camp. We saw giant containers of something that looked like cheese puffs. One of my sons saw it and said, "I want to get in that and just. . . sit and eat!" He then made some funny, "om, om, om" noises. He was cute but he hopefully wouldn't have more than a handful if we indulged him! I asked my husband who'd buy that crap and we just shuddered. I used to work at a retail super store and knew who, and that stuff flew off the shelves and some even ate as they shopped. A little while later we saw who would buy it, chatting up the cashier. There were a couple of stereo-type women, overweight, with rude children. I saw the blood sugar test strips on their conveyor belt which indicates diabetes. My funny son saw the junk food and the women, too and turned to me and asked, "Can we just get some apples for lunches instead of the potato chip variety pack?" He and my husband ran and got some.

The cashier looked at my own choices and asked how I cooked. I told her that it's really just as easy to chop stuff up and make a healthy dinner as it is to do a microwave dinner. She was apparently a sister to one of the women we'd seen with the bad stuff. How bad are we that so many are so far removed from their food sources that the notion of coring an apple or zapping a potato seems like a lot of work? We occasionally eat pizza puffs and have processed food, and I always have a frozen lasagna in the freezer, but if you have a lot of that stuff, it's as bad as eating at McD's every day. These ladies were not the type who were just too busy to cook, like execs or even active soccer moms-- they looked more like Welfare-mom types. What would they do with the time they saved from cooking?