Yard Wars!

I was reading the most fascinating forum today: a site to vent your frustrations about neighbors! (What an interesting way to blow steam instead of throwing eggs..!)
After scrolling through endless rants against wind chimes (who knew they were so controversial??) I discovered a new thing about Americans--we aren't divided politically, but more importantly-- we are divided by our lawns.

For every crunchy American "food not lawns!" wildflower enthusiast, there is a tru-green manicured turf Nazi waiting with a soaker hose. More than once, I read of posters that secretly hosed their neighbors lawn with weed killer, when the neighbors weren't home--simply because they were so irritated by the neighbors dandelions! (Holy Shit!)

And back and forth it went--letting the lawn go brown in times of drought (it's good! no, it's evil!) One poor lady wrote how her neighbor came over (while she was at work) and mowed over her clover and wildflowers-- because "she couldn't stand looking at it"..!

So I am thinking we could save tons of money in this political season, by stopping all the  ads and shenanigans. Let's just ask the candidates one important question: which side of the great American lawn debate are you on?? 

Allergic to the Suburbs

It's official. I have been diagnosed with a severe allergy to my immediate environment:  the suburbs.
The obvious culprit: endless lawn mowing, nosy neighbors, barking dogs and boredom.

Ok. Maybe not. But a long, long time ago, (back in the congested state of New Jersey) I struggled with eczema. Of course the medical community wanted to blame all sorts of benign factors for this skin condition: my pets, hand washing, blah, blah. But as I grew older--I noticed that when I would spend a few days up in the mountains, utilizing well or stream water my "condition" magically improved.
13 years in chilly Alaska--same result--miraculous improvement, practically no eczema whatsoever, even though I still enjoyed tons of hand washing, especially while tending to poultry in subarctic temperatures!
Now we have returned to what some people call (ahem) "civilization"--the lower 48. 
My arctic son is overjoyed by our new fangled "city plumbing" and the joys of using copious amounts of toilet paper without backing up a septic system... I, on the other hand, discovered my old enemy --eczema-- has slowly creeped its way back into my life! ugh.
 I had it checked out--and the verdict is in: it is an allergic form of eczema, and I am reacting to the who-knows-what-the-hell is in the water system. Although our "first world" water is amazing compared to the sludge running through some other countries pipes--most people don't even think about the fact that city water systems just can't flush every toxin out. So even the beautiful, clean H2O pouring out of the faucet has small amounts of pesticides, medical waste, fertilizer run off, and chlorine byproducts--all in there!

But it's ok. I have always know that suburban living made me itchy, and my water allergy at least serves as a good platform (i.e. excuse) to catapult back into the country ;-0

Privacy Shmivacy

I am assuming I have become boring. Conventional and noncontroversial. Why else would it be that I really don't care if the government has access to my emails or is allowed to snoop in an IPhone?? But then there is Apple, making sure the good ole government can not access 'private' data.
Makes sense to stall the snooping in crazy countries with hostile governments. But in the US, aren't we still kind of trusting the system??
If you can't poke around the private data, how in the heck are you ever going to keep track of militia capers, forged papers, grandma rapers??
I don't really understand this relentless need for privacy at the mercy of our security...
Which begs the question--am I missing something? Is everyone around me actually into unknown fetishes, cooking crack and chicken sexting? What are all the privacy freaks hiding?? And do I even want to know??

What Fresh Hell is This?

Middle age phone calls suck. Not phone calls from the Middle Ages, that would be odd and kind of fun. But the types of calls I tend to receive. I assume some people enjoy them. Probably most--certainly all the psycho friendly extroverts do, those that converse with anybody, anything all the freakin time. But that's not me.

In my case, I shudder when the phone rings. Usually I try to avoid it by hiding the contraption in some sort of drawer or pile where I will never find it in time. And it's not because I am being harassed by bill collectors or drug fiends. Quite the opposite. It is the little trivial phone calls that drive me bonkers. Everybody wants something.

"Can you watch my kids.... come exercise with me.... complete this survey about your plumber... can you volunteer at the school or just listen to my narrative about the ladies auxiliary??" All the while as I (the one who has been contacted) is expected to remain cheerful, positive, giving and uplifting!! Ugh. I don't want to be cheerful. I want to be snarky and curt.

I assume the day will come when I will miss these silly phone calls, and become a little old lady excited about political surveys. The again, maybe not-- I can always talk to the dog. 

The Middle School Poultry Pack

Here is a huge personal pet peeve of mine: the way people love to ignore obvious truths, if these truths minimize our belief of superiority on earth.  In other words-- humans hate answers to their 'oh-so-special dilemmas', if they in any way, shape, or form point back to them being nothing more than overgrown apes...

I could give myself tendonitis writing about the misguided beliefs of recent human history. How we have fooled ourselves silly, believing all sorts of hogwash--"oh we are too good to need constant sunshine, breastmilk, dirt microbes, or lots of exercise...."
We like to believe we have gone beyond the most simplistic animal cravings for fatty foods, sex or territorial war...
Dancing around and singing the myth: we are the superior, superior species! Making up rationalized justifications as we trot along engaging in all sorts of animalistic behaviors.
And don't forget, we also have "super bodies!"--No processed sugar in nature--no problem!!  Surely our "amazing people body" will learn to process vast quantities of it--right? Maybe we'll just learn to breathe polluted air too! (I hear they are trying in China...)
We're apes. Silly hairless apes. Wired to live in tribes (or groups, large families, what have you). But not genetically ready to live in large cities, overwhelmed by freaky viruses and vast quantities of people.

But of course, the human misguided apes, think we are really ready for tons of people. And thus we like to "socialize our children". Because just a century ago, kids went to high schools and middle schools with hundreds or thousands of peers--right!? (wrong!) Isn't it all soo natural??  Of course it isn't. Large scale schools only started after the industrial revolution--at the same time we were "learning" (cough, cough) to breathe that pesky polluted air...
The thing about human children is, they enter something we like to call "puberty" --that phase riddled with reproductive hormones. The role of our hormones is to set off the inclination to seek a mate. We are wired to perform an age old mating dance. And of course there is also a darker side to this game (and I don't mean porn). It's called--keeping the 'weak or different' from spreading their genes.

Now we can readily accept that chickens have a pecking order, or that moose go into "rut" or any other animal species displays aggression at mating time-- nature shows happily explain that it is 'all for the best'--ensuring that the strongest of the species are the only ones reproducing.
Now think of a typical middle school or high school as a bizarre 'nature show'--But instead of humans, let's replace the kiddos with 700 adolescent monkeys!!!
What do you think would happen???

And yet, humans sit around on our (usually) hairless asses, designing "bullying task forces", or think tanks, brainstorming-- Oh, oh-- how can it be that the weaker/smarter/nicer/disabled/different kids are being picked on??"

I have a message for you people: you are not going to stop huge amounts of hormonal kids from picking on each other, any more than you are going to turn off their sex drive or cravings for cheeseburgers. Yes, we can be humane--(a learned behavior to be nicer to one another). And some kids will learn to be tougher and grow a thicker skin. But how is this even possible, in an environment where kids are bombarded with nothing but 24/7 hormonal peer influences?? (these days, social media makes sure the craziness follows them home from school).

And the naysayers will be like, "but they are learning valuable social skills".
No they are not, unless you think that the adult world involves spending every day milling about with 1000 hormone crazed adults, exactly the same emotional age as you. (But of course you might be training your kids to join a militia).

Some kids do just fine in our weird industrialized middle and high schools, but I am saying- some will not. The only real thing we can do about it, is recognize this issue for what it really is--and make sure kids have other options for schooling. There is no need to endure bullying, teen suicides or school shootings. If some kids just don't want to play the "middle school ape game", we should at least make sure the cage door remains open.