One of Those Days

It's the end of a grading period and the school day was frazzling. Accepting late work, juggling the numbers to make the eeekers pass. Thank God for that fabulous electronic gradebook. If you had to do all this with a pencil and arithmetic...well you wouldn't do all this if you had to do the math.
Of course, the highlight of this marking period is that grades "freeze", so the senior class, who incidentally didn't give a big rat's ass about learning anything to begin with, really won't do shit now! The other biggie is that, as usual, the administration has changed the protocol for doing grades once more. Nothing ever gets finalized and repeated where I work. The principal never comes out of her office and supervises the proceedings...she just hides out re-inventing all the wheels that we have turning.
On the homefront, Mother Dearest had an appointment with the gastroenterologist today, ten weeks after she had her colonoscopy and eight weeks after she should have seen him again. His office staff insisted that he wanted to see her ten weeks out, and she hasn't even called the office in all that time to see if she could get any relief from her symptoms. She "didn't want to bother them." They bothered her for an invasive procedure and Medicare for probably three thousand bucks, but she can't call and say "WTF, I'm not getting any better and maybe you could write a prescription."
Then there is the matter of my brother's back. After doing well for a couple of years, he is now flat out again. Thank God he can get some relief if he's lying down. Otherwise, he's miserable. Of course he has no insurance, no doctor who will treat him and Social Security has denied him disability.
I hate all this. I hate bureaucracy and bullshit equally. I hate the idea that in this country, people who need medical care are at the mercy of doctors who speak English as a second language that I can't understand. I hate their office staffs and their peevish attitudes. I hate how much it all costs and how unavailable everything you need seems. The phone book isn't even user friendly when you're looking for a doctor. It's all about specialists. It feels as if you can't get treated because the process of diagnosing never ends.
How did this get so screwed up? What happened? And when the hell is it going to get fixed?
The schools are a mess, medicine is a mess, there are lunatics in Virginia parading around with their automatic weapons to demonstrate that they will not stand for Obama to take away their guns. Hey idiots, Obama doesn't want your f-ing guns. The gun control lefties don't even approve of his position on guns. This country is drowning in ignorance and apathy and redtape.
This isn't the way things are supposed to be and the voices who are heard the loudest are doing nothing put pouring gasoline on the fire. One of these days we're going to have one too many of "those days."

Spring Cleaning

I had a comp day today, which gives me a four day weekend. The kids are coming for Easter and Godchild's baptism, but they won't be here until Saturday, so I had time today to open a can of whoopass on the kitchen. I had to start somewhere.
We have combined households of stuff, and no matter how much I've edited the contents it still looks like we're getting ready for an appearance on Hoarders.
I hauled in the ladder from the garage, the Dyson from the broom closet and Grunc even went to the liquor store and got me some boxes to pack up stuff for the Goodwill. I was set.
I worked from the top down and cleaned inside cabinets as I went. I filled up the back of the Highlander with stuff to haul away tomorrow, and I could probably get rid of more, but Mother was keeping a pretty sharp eye on what I was ditching, and I had to make sure it was all my stuff that was going out the door.
The final product makes me feel so much better because of the organization. We've got enough pill bottles and over the counter drug store crap around here to get a listing as a Walgreen's location. Finally we did put all of it in one cabinet. We put all the sets of seldom used dishes in the bottom cabinets and put things we actually use up top. Makes sense to me...
The drawers in the china cabinet are now holding the silver flatware instead of the odds and ends of boxes of notecards that Mother had been stashing in there for 20 years. Finally things that are alike are together and things are where we use them and are accessible.
The bonus for this little job...I got a workout climbing that freaking ladder and I'm going to sleep like a baby.