Zach and Swimming

Z is now a Sea Lion in his swim class. It's amazing to see how quickly a kid can go from not wanting to get his face wet to really being able to swim!

So here's his pic:

EVO Swim School is pleased to announce that Zachery Raehl, age 4, has graduated from the Seal class level. He is now considered a proficient back yard swimmer with the ability to swim three widths of our pool (30 yards total) with a strong kick and great breath control. Zachery can also jump from the side, get a breath on his back, and return to the side of the pool as a habit of safety. He will be moving to the Sea Lion class to receive an introduction to the freestyle stroke with an emphasis placed on “big arms”. On behalf of Zachery’s instructor, Jennifer, and the entire EVO Swim School staff, we say…CONGRATULATIONS Zachery!

Furloughed

So I’ve been furloughed. In an attempt to expand your recession vocabulary, I’ll just tell you that means I have forced time off without pay. For the next twenty weeks, I will take one day off every two weeks. That’s equivalent to a 10% cut in pay.

It’s kind of interesting to me how ok I am with it. I mean, really deep down, I’m panicking and if I get to thinking about the possibilities of what might happen next, I can get myself pretty worked up. But altogether, I think I’m a lot better with dealing with things in my professional life than in my personal life. I think it’s because I never had any expectations about having a career so nothing that happens is really, well, hurting my expectations. What happens, happens. I know it’s not personal, it’s business. It’s scary because it still affects me personally but I know it’s not because I like to have blue hair or eat string cheese for snacks. It’s just the most efficient way to run things right now. And it helps that every other employee that works for ASU is facing the same thing.

Anyway. All that aside, I’m nervous to admit it but I’m kinda looking forward to my furlough days. I have long thought about trying to find ways to cut my hours to get more time in with my sweet baby boy and now I am. It’s still going to be a challenge to fit 10 days worth of work into 9 and I may start working extra at home and stuff… but I’m looking forward to my every other Monday when we’ll be going to the zoo or hanging out with friends/family, checking out the Life Sciences Bldg at ASU that has the snakes in cages all over the first floor… and anything else that we can find to do (that’s free/nearly free of course!!)

I get to experience a little bit extra of being a stay at home mom. I’m really excited! We’ve had to make cuts in our budget and we’re not eating out as much or splurging on other things. But I really think this is going to be fun!! So yea for furloughs.

(as a side note – we still gotta vote those peeps out of state government that have no understanding of economics. Cuts = shrinking economy. Seriously.)

Oh and as soon as I stop being lazy, I'll post these great pics of Z in his Cardinals t-shirt. He's so fun! Too bad the Cards lost. Oh well it was an awesome game!!!!

Stress Relief

So for me, it's always some stress relief to build/make stuff. So here's part of what I did this Saturday:

A new tie for Z:


Optimus Prime... probably not really reverent but i know he'll love it! Except he'll be asking for a spiderman one now too.

The other thing I made was a new end table. I used to play trombone from 5th to 9th grade. I had it at home when the house burned and so it's basically in bad shape now and would require extensive repairs to it in order to ever be played again. Which I may do sometime in the future. But in the meantime, I made it into an end table:

It makes for a tall end table but it's got personality so it works!

Call to Action (yea, yea, sue me… it’s deep and political and economical – but still very important so PLEASE, PLEASE READ!!)

For the most part, I try to avoid talking politics or economics on here but I’m going to make an exception here and talk about both at once.

I found out on Friday that the Arizona State government has proposed massive budget cuts to deal with the current state deficit. I find this to be very interesting because when Janet Napolitano left office last week, she had said that everything was in good shape. But as soon as she got sworn in as Secretary of State in DC, those left behind here totally scrapped whatever it was that she had in place, instigated panic among all state employees and threatened to, as ASU President Michael Crow has said, put the state of Arizona education and economies back to Third World conditions.

The thing is this isn’t just something that will affect the universities. It will also affect K-12 schools. They would face a cut of $900 MILLION!!!!!! Currently, Arizona is ranked 49th in how much we spend on our K-12 education. So what – we’re going for absolutely last place here?

We’re talking about 30% of the budget for the universities. Imagine for every $100 you brought in, you had to give up $30. How would a cut of that magnitude affect you? So you’re probably thinking – no big deal because they’ll just raise tuition again and no one will even feels it. But the thing you need to know about tuition is that the universities collect it and then turn it right over to the state. The state then budgets a portion of that back to the universities. Tuition doesn’t run the university. Tuition runs the state.

This brings up one of my biggest points. These decisions have been made in a STATIC environment. There was obviously no consideration given to actual market actions and reactions. In real life, one decision will lead to another. The market will react to external forces.

One example: So the state is telling us that less of that money is going to be returned back to the university to be able to actually serve its mission. So what are the options? The university could try maintaining the same levels of students and make up for the difference by increasing tuition and therefore bringing in additional revenue. But while that looks good on paper, if tuition increases, not as many people will come. It will be more affordable to go somewhere else or to not go at all. That means that the tuition will have to continue to increase which will continue to scare off more students. So what’s another option – cut programs to cut costs – which means fewer students, less tuition revenue, and another cycle of loss?

Lets look at it from another angle – let’s just increase the size of the classes, cut 2000 positions and now we’ll be good, right? Well, let’s look at the implications of this one. Ok let’s say I get fired. I immediately pull out everything I’ve put into my state retirement fund – pulling from the state coffers. Then, let’s assume that because the economy is bad, I can’t find another job. So I get in line and start getting unemployment payments – from the state coffers. And since I don’t have a job, the state isn’t collecting state taxes from my paycheck anymore. I lose my house, adding to the housing crisis and further decreasing how much is collected in property taxes. So how did the state get any better off? How did that balance the budget? 2000 people just lost their jobs and had to turn to the state for assistance.

On paper, the cut seems to work. But reality is not static. And I gotta be honest with you. I don’t think that the people that drafted that budget took any reality into consideration.

One suggestion that is out there, proposed by a member of the same political party as the legislator that actually made this budget proposal. She suggested that instead of just cutting education, we look at other voter approved initiatives. See there’s this law says that initiatives put in by vote of ‘we the people’ can’t have their budgets adjusted by legislators. Well, this rep has suggested that we have an emergency vote in March to put those on the chopping block. This would allow us to cut the budget to fund the no-smoking ban or other things. These things are obviously important because ‘we the people’ voted for them but they might just not be as important to ‘we the people’ as education. This sounds like at the very least, a great place to start!

So I know that the universities are willing take their FAIR share of the cuts. But come on… let’s try to play fair here.

So now comes the important part. This is my call to action. I’m asking everyone I know that lives in AZ to write your legislators. You can go to this website to look up who your legislators are: http://www.azleg.gov/alisStaticPages/HowToContactMember.asp. You can go this website to get info about what’s going on: http://www.speakupnowaz.org/.

Look – I know it’s a lot to ask but I’m asking you to contact your legislators. This is important. This does require our action. So please. Don’t leave it to someone else. YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE. But you can only do it if you do SOMETHING!!!

My Fav of Z's Christmas Gifts

This post is going to be uncharacteristically lacking in long-winded ranting… which is probably a good change for anyone who does happen to check it. For Christmas this year for Z, I had him lie down on some particle board, added some accessories to his silhouette, cut them out, painted them and hung them on his newly painted wall. Check ‘em out!!

For those of you who don't have little boys, this is jungle fury's red power ranger:

This is my oh so suave rendering of one Mr. Clark Kent sans secret identity:

Spiderman himself. Eventually he will have a rope in his raised hand but all in good time!

And my personal favorite super hero... Batman!! Nothing like a hot rich guy with cool gadgets who saves the damsel in distress to perk my interest!

And this is the super four all together, casually hanging out on the unproportionately sized city buildings. (Except Superman... he had to float... his building was too tall cause the atmosphere up there wasn't good for his hair do.)

Even after all that... Z still insists that there are monsters in his room. Sheesh. But I love it! And if he had a queen sized bed, would even consider taking it over. Maybe I should do some life size ones of me!! :D

Terminal Hope

I’ve had a lot to think about lately and I’m totally word vomiting here on the screen but it helps me work things out. (A quick shout out to my auntie R who talks things out with me over and over like beating a dead horse which, although probably annoying, helps me see things differently and with better perspective... eventually!)

In talking to her today, I was thinking about how my situation with my ex has really seemed to prove hopeless for me. There are little milestones that I keep putting up with the hope that by the time I get to the next one, things will be better, easier, less stressful. I put a lot of hope into those and then when things don’t really change or don’t change for the better, I abandon all hope and end up frustrated and upset. I was complaining that 14 years is too long of a goal post and that it wouldn’t be enough to sustain me.

But in the midst of admitting that feeling, a non-definitive thought began lurking and so now I’m trying to delve into that. It’s the idea of a terminal kind of hope. If today you were diagnosed with a terminal cancer or disease that would not kill you today or tomorrow or even this year but you know would make your life harder while you lived and maybe even shorten your lifespan, how would you feel? I would like to think that I would fight to find a cure, do my research, look at all up and become the expert and hope like crazy that before my predicted demise, the outlook on my condition had changed. I think people who experience that kind of thing may develop a long-term hope. Or maybe a long term cope.

Even with hope, the day to day would have to be hard. A friend of a friend of mine has crohn’s disease which may shorten her life but in the meantime, can make it unpleasant at times, limiting her ability to walk for long distances, requiring her to take frequent advantage of her sick time, etc. Her situation is hard. So I wonder what exactly keeps her going?

Well it’s kind of interesting because if you just saw her today, you wouldn’t know anything was wrong. She lives a normal life even though it’s not what is normal for me. So I don’t think that the answer is to paste on a happy grin and make like everything is swell. I don’t think it’s pretending to family and friends that you have it all together.

I think hope has to come in the little things. Hope that tomorrow night I will have fun with my son and friends and Chuckie Cheese. Hope that the girls night out that I’m going to miss won’t be too much fun without me and that I’ll be able to catch the next one (or the next one or the next one...). Hope that Saturday will be full of new adventures. Hope that we will laugh and smile and run and giggle and that the time that we have that really is so precious will not be wasted on things that don’t matter. Hope that family and friends and those that love will not get too tired of the word vomit and talking out the same endless circle. Hope, not that the world will change tomorrow from blue to pink… but hope that instead when I look out at the blue world, I will find in it the beautiful shades of azure.

When I have good things happen or I have a rejuvenating weekend or get a glimpse into a new perspective, sometimes I take that as a sign or proof that things are going to improve. I feel happy... things must be getting better! Then when the day to day doesn't really change, I let my hopes dash again. But maybe true hope isn't the expectation that because I had a great weekend that the next week is going to be wonderful and I've started on this long road that leads straight up with no pitfalls or potholes. Hope is knowing that you have a Hummer that can make the hilly drive and hit the potholes without crashing and nose diving into a ravine. Hope is knowing that even though the journey is tenuous, it's a good ride and worth the price of gas.

I think I am getting close to ending my belief in happy endings. And that’s ok. As long as I don’t give up my hope of happy livings. The end doesn’t matter. As it has been said so many times before… it’s the getting there that counts.

Randomness

Ok so I haven't pulled pictures off my camera in a while and don't feel like hooking it up right now so I decided to just post some random ones from my external hard drive to share.


This is one of my favorites of my dad (Mexico, Tzrararcua, 1999):





Me and my momma when I was big and preggos and she was skinny and stuff:



This is Nola - the horse I bought from my sister and kept for like a year but never once rode. I was scooping her poop and cleaning her stall the day before I had Z.




My nephew B in Z's carseat along with his two big sisters:





A digital enhanced photo of my cute niece T:





I digitally put those clouds in there on one of my sister's wedding pictures:




My dad back in his pilot days... what a stud muffin!


My little sister A's first baby - how cute!:





Two more nieces - J and M:



My two youngest brothers busting some moves:


And last but not least (at least for today!) is one of Z's first Christmas. What a cute chubby elf!!:


Happy randomness!