We got home about 15 minutes ago. Hammy will be home in a few minutes and we'll leave again. Zed and I are volunteering at the main library tonight; doing a "traffic survey" which means just counting the number of people who walk in the door over two hours.
Our day was fine. We got to the meeting with the senator's staff an hour late. The conference room was full but we found seats. Mostly, the usual people were there saying the usual things. The staff was coolly polite-barely patient. Karl asked me if I wanted to speak so I said this:
"I homeschool my two younger children, my older one goes to public school. A couple of weeks ago, my 12 year old was learning about the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial in one of his lessons. At the end of the assignment, he had to answer questions which included one that asked him to describe what he would suggest for a war memorial. He wrote that he would make a statue of a crying mother."
When I told that story, the room was completely quiet. I then told about Declan going to White's Creek High School, which is heavily recruited and next year going to School of the Arts, which is not and how wrong it is, how heartbreaking to me, that our government sees the kids at Whites Creek as expendable to society.
I did not get choked up this time. Whew.
We listened to a couple of other people and then we went to leave. Someone asked if Zed was the person who wrote about the statue and I said yes. The room all applauded him and Karl yelled out that Zed should be the next senator from Tennessee! Z got embarrassed but he was cool with it.
We then caught the bus back downtown and walked to the Arcade and ate at the "House of Pizza" because that's what the boys wanted (actually, they wanted Subway but I nixed eating at any chain restaurant).
When we finished eating, we walked to the library and checked out some books on report writing and I got the book on Judas by Elaine Pagels and Karen King which I am looking forward to reading.
We walked to the transit mall just in time to watch the 3:40 Bordeaux bus pull away (I actually ran a half a block and we still missed it!). We only had to wait 15 minutes for the next bus, although it was the bus with the route that makes us walk longer, but that's fine. Carmac actually fell asleep on the bus and slept until I woke him just before our stop. I carried him a little bit today but he walked over 2 miles!
Today wasn't bad, just tiring.
I got home to find out that Declan is going to be the fill-in drummer for a gig tonight at the Gibson Showcase. He's so stoked I'm almost shocked he hasn't combusted. It is a pretty big deal for a kid of 15 to play. I'm excited for him.
Tomorrow the kids and I have dental cleaning appointments. There's an 80% chance of rain. I'm not sure if we're going to brave the weather or if I'll drive Hammy to work and take his car. We'll see.
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