Aug23

Accidental Activism — Fighting the Arlington Public School Bus System

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Accidental Activism — Fighting the Arlington Public School Bus System

I am  “week before vacation” crazy busy;  and yet, I’ve found myself thrust into the center of a community battle.  I went to a neighborhood “call to action” meeting on Saturday, and darn it, I never can walk away without taking on assignments.

Background
I live in Arlington, VA, and pay a ton in property taxes in large part so I can send my kids to truly fabulous schools.  I also bought a house on a bus route; in a neighborhood separated from the local school by some pretty significant commuter roads.  About a week ago a bomb was dropped on the entire neighborhood that after having busing for decades, we now lived inside the “official walk zone.”  Um, what?!

Following the APS advice to check their “official walk map” on the website, I find my map shows me OUT of the zone.  It took them a week to realize their mistake.  But instead of saying “we screwed up”, they try to argue that those maps were never the official walk zones.  Seriously?  They say “walk zone” right on the darn thing.

Getting Activist
I started the Facebook page called “Arlington Parents for Safe School Transportation”.   From a dozen of us down the street to over 260 people from all over Arlington, this little page is driving media coverage, organizing a public information assault on the school system and giving a lot of people a place to complain in good company.

Our group also started a petition calling for a moratorium on implementation of the new plan, and its getting a lot of traction, with over 400 signatures in 3 days.

Dr. Murphy, are you listening?
Numerous inquiries, letters, appeals have been sent in with no reply.  Dr. Murphy, our Superintendent wants us to follow their cockamamie 3-week appeals process; um, school starts in less than 2 weeks.  I want to know:  Dr. Murphy, why did your staff say nary a word, for more than a year, about a plan that tosses kids off of buses?  Oh, but I have more:

  • How can you NOT know how many people have been kicked off the bus?
  • Why do you insist on justifying this scheme by claiming that loads of kids were jumping the bus against the rules, when you know that was a tiny issue that could have been addressed otherwise?
  • Dr. Murphy, have YOU read the actual report that was commissioned on “modernizing” our bus system?  Did you see that the consultants write that the problem was not a lack of seats, but a poor utilization of the buses already in use?
  • Are you the type of leader that accepts shutting the public out of major policy changes?

But then there the actual bus changes are so wacky that even more questions come to mind:

  • So you say that routes are more efficient, and yet we have kids who are now getting on the bus MUCH earlier than before?
  • You keep claiming that only 5 schools have been impacted, and this is so not the case.  More than 15 schools have been impacted, just check out our Facebook page and you can see who is claiming they’ve been booted.
  • And this expensive software program that you are using to “route” our kids, did you realize that many kids have been routed through major intersections?
  • And more about that software; how come some people who never had busing before because they already lived so close to schools are now getting bus vouchers?

Might I add that when your “test” implementation goes terribly poorly, typically, whatever is tested is not put into service until all the bugs have been fixed.  Ask any technology person and they’ll tell you never deploy a system full of bugs.  And yet, that is exactly what is happening.

Wake Up!
APS is in ignore and defy mode.  But ignoring the public isn’t good.  Dr. Murphy, esteemed members of the school board, in case you haven’t noticed, people are pissed off.  People feel betrayed and lied to.  People all over Arlington think you let us down, and we don’t think you are trying to take any responsibility for the poor manner in which all of this bus stuff has been handled.

So, despite being busy, I happily and without reservation continue to work with my fellow Arlingtonians to stop you from forging ahead on this stupid transportation scheme.  I will see you at the next school board meeting, and you can count on hearing from me after that.  You may have your hands over your ears and eyes, but discontent is GROWING, Dr. Murphy; people are not accepting this change, and people will not stop demanding answers.

I look forward to a day when you realize that it is in your interest, in our district’s interest, in our entire community’s interest to hold public forums to discuss this issue.  I promise I will come, I promise many many parents from one end of this county to the other will be there to discuss.

Read the press
http://www.arlnow.com/2012/08/22/hundreds-of-parents-protest-against-aps-bus-changes/

http://washingtonexaminer.com/arlington-parents-fight-new-bus-rules/article/2505573#.UDQzTmt5mK0

http://arlingtonmercury.org/articles/school-parents-are-fighting-back

Lend your voice
Email the APS School Board:  school.board@apsva.us
Email Dr. Murphy: superintendent@apsva.us

Aug16

Helmets on Swing Sets? The evolution of protective gear and keeping kids safe.

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Helmets on Swing Sets? The evolution of protective gear and keeping kids safe.

The other evening, my 9 1/2 year old, highly active, fun loving daredevil of a child took a fall.  From our swing set that was only installed 48 hours earlier.  It was pretty bad, he was swinging high, and on the front approach he slipped off, flipping forward and taking the blow to the top of his head.  Luckily, he says his knees hit the ground at the same time.  I heard the thud, though my back was turned and I didn’t register what happened until he was screaming.  The fact he jumped up assured me that his spine was ok, but I was worried immediately.

We got lucky.  Aside from a severe headache for 2 days, and some mild nausea, he did not get seriously hurt.  I know because we called the after hours doctor.  Twice.  I slept with him that night to make sure he was ok, and to keep him on advil through the night.

Now I’m nervous.  I haven’t let him back on the swings just yet.  I know his fall was a fluke; but my fear (all parents have at least one major fear), well my major fear is head injury.

Just a week before we were ice skating.  I make my kids wear helmets.  Yes, they look ridiculous, and no, I never wore one as a kid.  But knowing that son #1 is a daredevil speed skater, I take heart in knowing that even professional speed skaters wear helmets.  Kid #2 is just the family klutz.  And kid #3, it was his first time skating and I expected lots of falls.

But how have we as a society evolved to a point where our kids wear helmets when ice skating?  I was not the only parent making the mandate.  Certainly our society has embraced helmets for biking for a long time, and I’m pretty much a stickler on that front, as well as when scootering or skateboarding.

But, isn’t the chance of serious damage GREATER from a fall from high up on a swing compared to other activities where helmets are socially acceptable?  How ridiculous is it to want my kids to wear their helmets on the swing set?  (Very.) Even though I was scared beyond belief with his fall, I can not allow myself to become that overbearing.  And my instinct that this isn’t a good idea is backed up by people who know safety!  The CPSC recently wrote a blog post saying that helmets do not belong on the playground, as they pose risks like choking.

So, how much protection is too much?  I’ve seen parents yell “no running!” while their kid is at the playground (seriously) and there are parents who hold their kids across the monkey bars long after the skill has been mastered.  Finding our own rules, knowing how much to protect our kids, I think that is every mom’s gut check.  I’d like to think that I have not held my kids back from their own exuberance, but have just required protective gear so I can breathe easier while they be the boys they want to be.

But that doesn’t mean that my heart won’t be in my throat while the kids soar high, and it doesn’t mean that I won’t say “be careful” as they head out to swing set from now on.

Aug7

Homegrown Watermelon and Hot Lazy Days Make Best Summer Yet

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Homegrown Watermelon and Hot Lazy Days Make Best Summer Yet

This is the best summer I’ve had in many years.  Its not hard to beat last summer, with my dad very ill and then passing away in July.  But even the previous years, I don’t think I was as immersed in all the glory that summer has to offer.  My job, though part-time, was structured; my kids were in a ton of camps; and I had a little toddler who sapped me of all my energy.

Summer 2012 rocks!  By building my own company, I am also ensuring a lot of free time this summer. I’m busy with work, but have been able to schedule it around our needs as a family and our goals for having fun.

So why is this summer so good?  Perhaps these make good tips for anybody looking to maximize their experience in the hot months!

  1. We go to the pool as much as possible.
  2. We planted a vegetable garden.  This has been so much fun!  Its my first time, and we’ve made a lot of mistakes, but the kids and I love checking it daily, and while I can’t keep them from eating all the grape tomatoes right off the vine, hey, they are eating grape tomatoes (my kids are kinda picky!)  The single watermelon that is growing now increases in size a lot every day, so the habit is to run out and check it first thing every morning.

    Watermelon yesterday

    Watermelon today

  3. The kids are only doing 2 weeks of camp!  This is a huge change from previous years, and had much to do with my work schedule changing.  Also, I was tired in previous years from driving three kids to 2 or 3 different places every day, and we never got to let go of the school-time routine of packed lunches and early wake ups.   And even though camps are fun, the structure didn’t allow enough down time.  I want the kids good a bored at the end of summer, I want them to want to go back to school!
  4. We made a summer “to do” list on the first night of summer break!  I am not certain that we’ll get to everything on the list, but it has made it easy to fill our days with all of the must dos.  I am sure that had ‘roller coaster’ not been on the list, we never would have gone to the amusement park in Ocean City after a camping trip to Assateaque Island!

    Our Summer To Do List

  5. We camped at Assateaque Island; we had wild horses in our campsite both mornings!

    Wild Horses at Assateaque Island

  6. We went to the zoo.
  7. We visited grandma, and the other grandma & dadda (what the kids call their grandfather)!
  8. We are eating homegrown or farmers market tomatoes every day.
  9. The kids donated the revenue from their lemonade stand for the Animal Welfare League, $86!  Just when we worry that the kids were too self-focused and obsessive about their own ‘stuff’, they were so motivated to do this for charity!
  10. The kids play with sprinklers, a baby pool and water guns a lot.  I also “let” them wash my car!

Nothing here is extraordinary or unique, but I find it is the sum total of all of it that makes this summer awesome. (Is there any meaning to the fact that ‘sum’ is part of the word ‘summer’?)   I hope you are also having a wonderful summer, no matter how you are filling your days.

Jun20

Survival Mode: Newborn Business is Not Unlike Newborn Baby

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In the past few weeks I’ve advised more than one client to blog more often; both to keep up the habit and help their SEO!  And yet, I find I have fallen out of the practice myself.  I am exhausted, exhilarated and just plain busy.  My business is going great.  The logo is done, the website is almost ready, and the client work is fun and engaging.  And I am having the most fun I’ve had in ages.  But I am so busy that some things that were normal are becoming hard to get to, like blogging, laundry and socializing with my mommy friends.

I realized today that this is the sort of fall-out I experienced after the birth of each of my kids.  Survival mode (but this time I’m getting adequate sleep at least!)  There is never a moment of being “done” — my business to-do list is equal or longer than my personal list, and the business is getting more attention than the personal.  Like a dirty diaper can’t go unchanged, a client email or prospect inquiry gets my full attention.

I am NOT complaining.  I chose this.  I love this.  I am giddy that, for the moment, things are hopping.  But I do look forward to the point where my pace can normalize, when the routine will emerge from the chaos.  With a newborn, its somewhere between 6-12 weeks (mine were always at least 12 weeks.)  But with a new business, when does the chaos subside?  I know some business owners who claim it never normalizes, and others that proclaim victory with running their own gig and the rest of their life.  I’m aiming to be the latter.  To schedule clients in such a way that my personal life get its fair due.

So if I fail to blog as often (or family, if your meals are boring and your house a tad upside down), please understand that I am in survival mode.  Drop off  made meals welcome, invite the kids for play dates, and somebody, please, offer to help me with my laundry.

May30

Backyard Gardening Without a Green Thumb

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Backyard Gardening Without a Green Thumb

Though I manage to nourish three growing boys, I’ve killed most plants I have ever owned.  However, that history didn’t get in my way this year, because, the thing is, everyone is doing it.  Even the First Lady has one!  I’m talking about having a vegetable garden.  Backyard gardening seems to be the new rage, and since I have tried and failed to produce the kind of homegrown tomatoes that my mom always used to have using just pots, I made the plunge to a larger (albeit small still) garden bed.  This house has ideal land, meaning our yard is in FULL sun, and with a nice sized yard, allocating space to a garden isn’t depriving the kids from ample play space.

To start I pulled out some unidentified plants and a couple of poor performing azaleas (the weeds had overtaken that spot and the azaleas were stunted.)  Well, maybe not.  I know next to nothing about gardening.  But I know that what was in this patch was ugly, wild and seemed to keep the azaleas from thriving.  I bought a few yards of topsoil, and using a garden weasel that I found in the back of the garage (how we acquired that I have no idea) I “tilled” the soil for a while.  Basically, I stopped when I was tired and the topsoil seemed to be mixed in with the existing dirt.

Next I bought a few small plants: three tomato varieties, a thai chili pepper plan, a blueberry bush and a strawberry plant.  Remembering the beautiful blueberry bush I bought from Whole Foods last year, and how the birds loved all those blueberries, I also bought the bird netting to install over the strawberry and blueberry plants.  I also went crazy and bought seed packets for many other things: cucumber, snap peas, cilantro, dill, watermelon, basil and more.  I started some in seed starter pods, and the rest were sowed directly into the fresh garden bed.

Mistake #1: I forgot to mark what got planted where.  So now I don’t know if I should thin some rows to 12″ or just 3″.  And not knowing what is where, I have no idea what is successful and what is flopping.

Mistake #2: The tall tomato plants (which are THRIVING) are throwing shade on much of what is around them.  Its too soon to know how this will impact our yield this summer, but I have a feeling this isn’t great.

Mistake #3: I packed too much into too small of a space.  I was excited, and didn’t want to give up any potential garden delights.  But I know in my heart of hearts that it is too crowded.  Like the shade, I don’t know the impact yet, but I suspect I’m stunting much of the potential growth.

Tall Tomatoes

Mistake #4: The tomato cages are too short.  When I bought them and the choice was 36″ or 48″ I thought for sure the 36″ cage  would be sufficient!  Now I have regrets.  I do hope that the size of these plants foretell a good bounty of tomatoes, as they are after all, the sole motivation for me to try this garden thing!

Mistake #5: For all the organic eating that I adhere to, I didn’t pay attention to my seeds or plants and ended up with almost all conventional.  Not a huge problem, as I’m not raising the garden with chemicals, but it would have been nice to be truly organic.

Those mistakes aside, I’m pretty pleased with how the garden is going.  Aside from a couple of days, I have let mother nature take care of the watering, and I have tended to the weeds as best I can (I don’t totally know which are weeds vs. new plantings emerging from the seeds.)  I have tried to thin some plants, and I see I need to add a trellis to support the snap peas.

It is fun watching the kids watch the garden.  The youngest is most invested in it, helping me till and weed and plant.  The 7yo did the initial shop with me, and he likes tomatoes so he’s excited about those.  The 9 year old just likes how fast things are growing, and hopes for a watermelon.

Of course it is way too early to say that this will be a yearly habit, but a month into this experiment I am happy to have made the plunge into the backyard gardening thing.  Now, if only I can learn the difference between weeds and vegetables, I’ll be on my way.

May11

If I Had A Superpower…

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If I Had A Superpower…

SUPERPOWER: su·per·pow·er  noun \ˈsü-pər-ˌpau(-ə)r\  1: excessive or superior power       2 a: an extremely powerful nation; specifically : one of a very few dominant states in an era when the world is divided politically into these states and their satellites b : an international governing body able to enforce its will upon the most powerful states

The other night as I cuddled with my 7 year old, out of the blue he announced “if I had a superpower, it would be teleportation.”  Yes, my 7 year old said “teleportation.”  He went on to explain how useful that power would be playing a game of tag, and then we discussed how handy it would be getting to a faraway destination.  The more we talked, the more excited he got.  He wasn’t just talking, he was truly imagining what it would be like, what it would feel like to have a superpower!

So I got to thinking, what would my superpower be, if I could choose one? It took mere moments before I knew what I needed — in a purely selfish manner — I need more energy.  I want a superpower of endless energy.  E-N-D-L-E-S-S ENERGY!  Imagine, the ability to get the tedious chores of life done and still have capacity to be cheerful while playing with my active kids and then still have enough left over to work and even more there to be an attentive friend and wife….  Doesn’t it sound dreamy?

And yet, isn’t it kind of sad that my gut instinct wasn’t something wistful like being able to fly, or something fun like teleportation?  Why not something giving like the power to cure illness or prevent tragedy.

Being a mom is so demanding that it requires not normal energy that non-moms require, but superpower energy.  Energy that allows us to be and do everything our little people require, energy to be a productive member of our community, energy to be a good partner and friend, and energy to take care of ourselves.

The problem is, we don’t have superpower energy.  We have normal energy.  Or low energy.  Or, no energy.  And yet somehow, we get through the day, wake up and get through the next, and the next…. so maybe we moms do have superpowers.  Maybe being a mom is a superpower.

I have a superpower.  I am a mom.    I doubt my son will be impressed that while he only wishes for a superpower that I have one, but at least I am impressed.

Happy Mother’s Day to all my fellow superpower people :)

May4

Baked Egg Challenge Success

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Baked Egg Challenge Success

Relief and joy, that is what I feel, the morning after my son passed an in-office food challenge.  Over the course of 90 minutes, my son ate increasing amounts of cupcake made with REAL EGGS.  Not only loving the homemade chocolate cupcakes, my son ate them without any reactions!  He was happy, but didn’t seem to fully understand the significance of the event.  At not quite four years old, that isn’t shocking.  But he did register MY excitement, and had fun telling his brothers and dad and teachers and friends the news “I am not allergic to baked eggs anymore!”

Sent home from John’s Hopkins with instructions to feed him baked egg products no less than four times a week, I am now facing the need to bake and bake and bake.  Good thing I love to bake :)   I also need to find recipes that call for more than 2 eggs, unless I want my son to be eating 4 cupcakes at a clip, we need to pack more egg into our baked goods.

If all goes well, after 2 or 3 months, we’ll progress to cooked egg – like pancakes or french toast or battered chicken.  Then, maybe 9-12 months from now, we can introduce direct egg.

The other amazing news from our appointment yesterday, Dr. Wood said that he will “certainly outgrow his milk allergy.”  That is HUGE.  More HUGE than eggs to me, since milk has been the source of his worst reactions!  In fact, his IGE levels came down on almost every food that he is allergic to.  Unlike last year’s pronouncement that his nut and peanut allergies were certain to be lifelong, Dr. Wood reversed that yesterday saying that although the odds are not in our favor, he won’t rule out the possibility of growing out of those allergies as well.

It is difficult to express the kind of relief that this news brings.  We have been in full swing allergy management mode for 3 years.  Not a meal goes by that prevention isn’t at the forefront of our thoughts and actions.  Though we have hit a stride with managing allergies, there are times when the worry is overwhelming.  Food allergies are limiting, and dealing with them is all consuming, so the thought of moving past them is amazing.

Even moving past ONE allergy is amazing.  One less thing to read for on labels, one less item to overwhelm caregivers, and one less food that limits his being able to eat what others are eating.

Baking with eggs is going to take some getting used to, having only been vegan baking (and loving what I made!)  Now I sign off to begin researching egg heavy recipes, and to get baking.