Let’s talk about child abuse, shall we? One of my favorite homeschooling blogs I read regularly featured a story about a woman who was considering reporting a family to social services for the way they homeschool. She believes “this is a form of child abuse.”

If someone disagrees with the way I homeschool my kids and believes it is a form of child abuse, I suggest there are numerous other things that should be examined for child abuse. (I want to be very clear. This list is for the sake of argument only and should not be taken as my definition of child abuse.)

Child Abuse?
- Soda pop.
- Trans fat.
- White flour and sugar.
- Fast food.
- Too much television.
- Living in an unsafe city.
- Two-income families.
- Divorce and single parenting.
- Certain religious beliefs.
- Owning a gun.
- Second hand smoke.
- Daycare.
- Infant formula.
- Fertility treatments.
- The Ferber method.
- Sun exposure.

Ridiculous, isn’t it?

My decision to homeschool my kids was not made for my benefit. It is neither financially beneficial nor convenient for our family. We sacrifice many luxuries for the benefit of our kids. We do what we do because we genuinely believe we are giving them the highest quality education possible. How is that child abuse?

My list, however, is filled with choices parents make that are not made for the sole benefit of their kids. If my right to educate my kids the way I feel is best is being called into question, perhaps some of your parenting choices will be questioned next.

(The original article was from the “Dear Ellie” section of the Chicago Sun-Times.)

I don’t mind automated systems. Really. What drives me crazy is automated systems that don’t work correctly. And doesn’t it seem like a lot of companies have disabled their “dial 0 to talk to a real person” option? Sorry, that selection is invalid.

And then, when I do finally get to talk to a real live person, I have a very difficult time understanding many of them. I’ve always had a difficult time understanding some accents. Put that person on the other end of a phone with a lousy connection, and I’m completely lost. Why are companies outsourcing their customer service call centers? I don’t really need an answer to that. It’s money.

I’ve also noticed more than one of my monthly billing statements being printed from a really crappy printer. My car payment looks like it was printed off an inkjet with a lower quality than a typical home inkjet. My credit card statement looks like a really bad fax.

I understand the need to save money. But I would prefer companies to spend a little less on the salaries of their top executives instead of cutting corners and making their customers feel less important. I think this kind of thinking will eventually come back and bite them all in the butts.

Pet names. The term for it is hypocorism. Most of us have them, and many of us use them. I’ve had pet names for my dogs as long as I can remember. When my children were born, they got pet names too. I’m saving the really embarrassing one for their teenage years as payback for all the times they threw tantrums in public and embarrassed me. But that’s another story.

I don’t have a problem with pet names between family members. Our family doesn’t use unique pet names for each member. Pet names are sort of a free for all around here, except for the names that are mutations of the real name. Generally, family pet names is where I draw the line.

I have friends that use pet names for me once in a while, but they’re usually based on some personal joke we have together. I don’t mind those. It’s those other names. The ones people use without permission that bug me.

Case in point: professionals who call their clients, customers, or patients by a pet name. Why do these women (and it’s always a woman) have no clue how unprofessional and just WRONG it is to call me hon, honey, sweetie, or sweetheart when I am their CUSTOMER? It’s so patronizing. Do they think people enjoy it? It used to be older women who used these terms for younger customers, but I’ve noticed a trend over the past few years of young women using the term with everyone.

Me: “I need to confirm the menu for the bridal shower.”
Her: “Sure thing, honey. Let me get your file.”

Her (in a voicemail message I received yesterday): “I’m sorry I didn’t call back sooner, sweetheart. I’ll fax that stuff over to you as soon as possible.”

I kid you not. She called me sweetheart. I know Valentine’s Day just passed and all, but SWEETHEART? How am I supposed to repond to that? Am I supposed to ignore it? See, I don’t think that’s right. But I don’t know how else to handle it. So I guess that’s why I come running to my blog to complain. Get the word out and let people know (indirectly) how unprofessional it is.

If you’re bothered by the use of pet names in a professional setting as much as I am, join the campaign! Speak out against hypocorism in the workplace. If you have co-workers or employees that do it, tell them to cut it out!

If you use the words “difficult” and “annoying” to describe how you feel about having a conversation with me, please have the courtesy to REMEMBER USING THOSE WORDS.

After a very long night on Wednesday, we finally wrapped up filming. I’m glad it’s over. You may recall that the last two filming sessions were pretty much wasted time for me. For those who don’t remember, over the course of ten hours, I was only able to film one tiny little scene. The reason for the wasted time was that the guy who plays Alex didn’t show up for filming. And nearly all my remaining scenes were with him.

When I got a call from my director about Wednesday night, I asked if Alex would be there. She told me that he would be late, but he would definitely be there. I showed up at 9:00 p.m. as scheduled. I had one scene which took 15 minutes. At 1:30 a.m., Alex showed up. Right, four and a half hours after I got there. Whatever.

My director had decided we were going to stay all night until the film was finished. (Several of us had been suggesting all-nighters during the previous sessions, but for whatever reason, she didn’t want to do it until now.) At 1:30, she filmed Alex’s remaining scenes with the rest of the cast, and he was free to go at 2:30. In fact, everyone besides me was free to go at 2:30. I still had one final chase scene to shoot alone.

Call me unreasonable, but it seems to me that once we filmed the group shots with Alex, we should have finished up my chase scene and let me go home and let Alex film his individual scenes after since I HAD BEEN THERE SINCE 9:00 P.M.

Anyway, it’s done. The final product is going to look very bad for several reasons. (Last minute script rewrites, scenes that won’t make sense. and Alex suddenly wearing a baseball cap to hide the fact that he got a major haircut. Yes, baseball cap. Don’t get me started.)

BUT IT’S DONE.

It just goes on and on, my friends.

For those of you keeping track of this disorganized filming thing, I left off telling you we were hoping to finish filming on April 7th. Well, we did film on the 7th, but less than an hour into filming I had a sneaking suspicion that this film was doomed to be forever unfinished. First off, “Sarah” (aka the girl who is always late and always has to leave early) had to… leave early. No big surprise there, really. We got very little done before everyone wanted to order pizza. This group always wants to order pizza, it seems. It wouldn’t be bad, except that we take nearly 2 hours out of filming for pizza.

Soon after pizza, “Sarah” left us. She stayed just long enough to eat, basically. Shortly after that, my director’s camera had an accident. I still don’t exactly how it happened, but somehow it fell from a cart and hit the very hard floor. At that point, we called it a night since the camera no longer worked. When everyone else had left, my director asked me if I would be angry if she decided to give up on the project altogether. I told her we were all getting frustrated with the whole thing, and that I’d be disappointed, but not angry. I’m an understanding girl.

I was certain that the film had seen its last days. Imagine my surprise when my director called me on Friday to ask if I could film on Sunday. I rearranged my plans for the day to drive 60+ miles to school to film at 6:30. At 7:10 we started. “Sarah” had to leave at 8:00, so my director rewrote her scenes to kill her off early. We filmed “Sarah’s” scenes, the “professor’s” scenes, a chase scene (since our ghost finally decided to join us for this filming) and… that’s it. At 10:30 my director decided to call it a night. I rearranged my schedule, drove 60+ miles (one way), and sat for 4 hours for nothing. The best part? We’re STILL NOT FINISHED. I get to go back on Wednesday and film something else. Do I think we’ll finish on Wednesday? Uh, no.

Did I mention that our final exams start on Wednesday? No? Well, they do. After that, we have a week before spring semester starts and then all of our schedules will be completely different. I’m an understanding girl, but this is getting to be too much.

Filming on Thursday was, in a word, BAD. When I got home that night, I felt like emailing my director to apologize for giving such a bad performance. It wasn’t just me though. Two people kept forgetting their lines. We were all very tense. I only messed up one line, but it was the most embarrassing mistake I could have made. You may remember I mentioned that I got the role the writer of the script (Megan) had wanted for herself. Well, the script called for my character, Madison, to be kissed by the character Alex, who, by no coincidence, is played by Megan’s boyfriend, Eric. Anyway, he’s supposed to kiss me, but I’m supposed to push him away and say, “God Alex, don’t do that!” When we rehearsed it, we didn’t have everyone standing there watching, and even then, it was awkward. But when we filmed it, everyone was standing right there. Eric was tense, and I had been unable to get into character all night. So we get to the part where he kisses me, and I push him away. Then I said, “God Eric, don’t do that!” I didn’t even realize I said the wrong name until everyone was laughing. Megan wasn’t really laughing though.

Things went much better on Friday. I think part of the problem was that we were filming out of sequence. I expected we’d film the scenes out of sequence, but we had been filming each character’s lines out of sequence. What I mean is, the director would point the camera at one of us and tell us to read all our lines for the entire scene. Then, she’d move to the next person and have them do the same thing. I felt like I was reading lines, not becoming a character. I think everyone must have felt the same way, because on Friday we all decided to read our off-camera lines to help each other out.

My director anticipates that we’ll finish up almost everything next Thursday. I’ll probably get to do my first death scene then, but my second death scene will most likely be scheduled for a different day.

Each and every item, from backpacks to lunchboxes to shoes has been labelled. School supplies have been packed in brand new pencil boxes. Lunches have been made, snacks have been wrapped, and water bottles have been packed. Today is the first day of school for my big first graders. Oh, they’ve ridden the bus, and they’ve had a teacher, but this is the real thing. For me, this means I will be able to make more than one stop on the errands list before coming home. Kindergarten was three hours long, but first grade is all day. ALL DAY.

My school district is not very good about letting the parent’s know things one might consider important. For example, the bus schedule appeared in one newspaper. Don’t get the paper? You don’t have the schedule. Another example would be the major construction that’s going on in nearly all the schools in this district. Teachers have been mailing welcome letters from their homes because they can’t get in the buildings. The construction is that massive.

Example number three happened this morning while we were waiting for the bus. A neighbor came out at 7:30 and asked, “Did you know that school has been postponed until Wednesday?” Well, if I knew that, it would be a little silly to be standing outside at 7:30 waiting for the bus, wouldn’t it? Apparently the decision was made last Thursday or Friday. The first day of school has been postponed until Wednesday due to the construction. I must be the world’s worst parent to not have known to check the local pizza place for this announcement. Yes that’s right. The pizza place had an announcement posted. I understand that the local daycares made the announcement too, which of course means nothing to the parents whose children DON’T GO TO DAYCARE.