My Opinion: Solving the Child Support Problem

It's nearly midnight at the House of Genius, and I can't sleep, so this is as good a time as any to prognosticate on one of the most complex problems facing families in America today, right?

As of 2003, according to the Census bureau, there were about 12 million single-parent families, including about 18 million children in the US. I'm quite sure that number has multiplied astronomically in the 9 years since, but this was the most current data I was able to nail down while operating on a single cup of cocoa. Either way, that's a LOT of kids who probably OUGHT to be getting child support from somebody. Statistics say that about 40% of them aren't.

I've been the mom in that situation. I've heard all of the excuses and the lies. I've wrestled with state enforcement programs, stood in courtrooms and pleaded with judges until I'm blue in the face, and now that the children concerned are grown, (and I'm still owed thousands in back child support, by an ex who is a federal employee, earning $15,000 a MONTH, and paying $34.50 biweekly toward his arrears, in spite of a current court order requiring a significantly higher payment), I have a solution to the problem.

The answer lies in Social Security. Men like my ex do not really care about the kids involved. All they care about is avoiding making child support payments. So I say... let them avoid it. In fact, quit trying to force them to pay child support at all. Instead, take their payments from their future Social Security.

If the parent doesn't want to meet the needs of the children now, while the children are small, then why should the government meet the needs of the person, when they are old? If he owes $40,000 in back child support, then suck it right out of his Social Security fund today, and send it to his kids. Maybe then he'll think - I need to work a second job, so I'll have a retirement one day. Or maybe he'll decide that he just needs to pay his child support now. Either way, the kids are taken care of. And isn't that the whole point?

Motherhood - Part 2

Okay, the pressure is officially on. I've told the world about kid #1, and now everyone must know - did kid #2 turn out to be just as... special?

Well, you be the judge. My darling baby girl, Katie, is as special to me as any child could be to her mother.

From the time she was born, her gorgeous gigantic blue eyes drove her older sister crazy, and a good solid smack in the head from Zabby to Katie when she was about 2 months old set the tone that would drive their relationship for the next 17 years. Now, before you put those horns and pitchfork on your mental image of Zabby, keep in mind that despite her angelic looks, Katie was always just about one drop more naughty than nice. :) But we had to love her anyway.

When she was very, very young, she let us know just how stubborn she would be. She started walking much too early, just like her older sister. But one day, at her Nana and Papa's house, she took a face-plant style tumble into the sunken living room, and then and there decided that she would NOT be walking upright again. In fact, it took an enormous amount of coaxing, begging and pleading to get her to get up on her feet again, and she didn't do it until she was almost 16 months old! Of course, the crawling bit didn't slow her down any. In fact, she "crawled" on her tiptoes and hands, no knees involved, and scurried through the house like a chunky little monkey!

About that same time, my mom enrolled her in the local church's daycare program. A few days later, I went to pick her up, and discovered that my little "Sarah Katherine" had changed her name. When I told them I was Sarah's mom, they had no idea who I was talking about. It wasn't until SHE saw me, and marched over and said, "The name's K-T!" that we figured it out!

When she got a little older, she was a bit of a challenge. She had a learning disability which complicated her efforts to learn to read, and she had one of the worst cases of test-anxiety you can imagine. In fact, the year she was in 3rd grade, the state decided that all 4th graders who didn't pass the FCAT would be retained. Fortunately, she wasn't in 4th grade, because she threw up all over the test. When she moved up to 4th grade, they changed the rule again, and said all 3rd graders who didn't pass would be retained. Somehow she dodged the bullet again. But in typical determined Katie fashion, she informed me that the summer after 4th grade she WOULD conquer her reading problem. So she and I read just about 8 hours a day that summer, and by the end of the summer, she was reading on an 11th grade level. Over the next 4 years, she won the reading award every year at her school.

Last January, after deciding that the pace of normal high school was a little too slow for her (not to mention full of too many distractions!), Katie decided to give military school a try, and in June she graduated a year early, from the Florida Youth Challenge Academy. I am really proud of her. I'm even more proud about her decision to volunteer in the Summer School program for struggling 3rd graders at my elementary school. And I'm really looking forward to seeing what new mountains she's going to climb.

So, yes, Katie is unique and special, and smart and funny, and darn cute to boot! And her mama is mighty, mighty proud!

Cars: A Reality Check That I Can Never Cash

Have you seen that new Toyota commercial yet? The one where the girl who managed to, apparently pretty flippin' successfully, start up her own cake decorating business, and was saving up for a car, was GIVEN a brand new Toyota Corolla by the folks at Toyota? The one where she sits in her brand new car with tears of joy and gratefulness in her eyes?

Harrumph.

(This is the part where I remind myself that it is against the ten commandments to covet my neighbor's Toyota. But wait a minute. That chick does NOT live next door to me! I'm sure of this, because the commercial features her riding the public transit system all over the place, carrying her expensive cake boxes, and there is NO public transit system in this rinky-dink little rural town where I live!!) And did you notice all the kids she's NOT supporting? I guess the folks at Toyota were just overwhelmed with the critical public service she's providing.

I want her car.

Actually, I'm not that particular. But I DO want a car. Yes, yes, I know. I have a car. I have my darling Matilda, a 2000 Chevy Venture minivan, which I bought, with 30,000 miles on it, 7 years ago. It now has about 160,000 miles on it, the carpet has rotted out of the back from the thousands of times my kids spilled their drinks and neglected to tell me. The automatic door locks do not work. The little keyless door-unlocking device committed suicide in a hard rain storm. The fuel gauge is completely worthless. The windshield washer makes an interesting noise, but nothing comes out. The back wiper is a joke, since it only wipes the bottom of the trunk lid, and gets nowhere near the blooming window. The air conditioning is getting suspiciously less effective by the day. The cassette deck (yes, Matilda pre-dates CD players) eats anything you even think about inserting into it. The brakes require 10 minutes of softly voiced encouragement to be effectively applied when going anywhere near 50 miles per hour. The low coolant light flashes constantly (although the folks at the Chevy place assure me that we've got plenty of coolant, and this is just a computer quirk). And did I mention I just threw $500 bucks at repairs because the power steering fluid was leaking out like news about a gay politician? Oh, there is also the matter of the fact that it looks like poo, and it smells like it once contained about 13,000 nasty diapers. (It did - just not all at the same time. I call it the "Cumulative Funk Effect" or CFE for short.)

I would like to sell the stupid car (if I could find anyone crazy enough to overlook the CFE), but it's Blue Book value is currently negative $450. And until I have a better option, I am NOT paying someone to take Matilda off my hands. I WOULD have traded it in during that delightful "Cash For Clunkers" program that our brilliant federal government came up with a few months back, but they decided that it's originally advertised 21 miles per gallon was much too fuel efficient to be considered a clunker. (Of course, the fact that today, on a good day, it gets about 17 miles per gallon was not considered at all!)

I NEED a new car. No, I'm not being vain. I don't just want a new car so that I can still smell just as fresh after a 20 minute drive as I did before I got in the car. I don't want one just so that I can avoid the pointing and laughter from all of the teenagers when I pass the high school and my car moans loudly as it turns. I don't want one just so I can avoid taking out a mortgage to pay for the gas it takes to get me back and forth to work (though that one is pretty tempting). There is also the small matter of the 17 year old in my house. Katie has graduated from high school, and needs transportation to get to her classes which start next month, and her job (which she doesn't have yet, but God willing, she will have VERY soon.) She is currently volunteering at my school during the 3rd grade summer school program, and although she only goes there three days a week, it's a hassle to get her there and back, while Steven and I both have other places to be.

So, I'm officially in the market. What am I looking for? Well, here are my requirements:

1. Must get at least 30 miles per gallon.
2. Must not smell like poo.
3. Must have cool air conditioning.
4. Must be able to stop on a dime... or at least on a street corner.
5. Must have something vaguely resembling a warranty still attached.
6. Must be able to seat 4 people at a time while still holding vast quantities of mac and cheese and peanut butter (in grocery bags, for Pete's sake!).
7. Must be cheap enough for me to still afford the mac and cheese and peanut butter!

If you happen to be aware of a vehicle that meets my high standards, please let me know! My 17 year old is eager to get her hands on Matilda!!

Motherhood - Part I

This October, I will have been a mother for 20 long years. My eldest child has graduated from high school, gone off to college, dropped out, gotten a job, and her own apartment. She is just a few paychecks away from true independence.

So in honor of her, I have decided to dedicate today's blog post to my Zabby, child of my youth, through whom I have lived vicariously for many years.

***At the request of Zabby, this post is being edited so that it won't embarrass her as much. Thus, I must delete my first, favorite memory of her which demonstrates what a precocious child she was, and her future as an artist as well. Instead, I'll replace it with an equally delightful, if rather more ... clean ... example of her early-developing artistic talent.

When Zabby was just a baby, we lived in Omaha, where we bought our first house, right outside the back gate of the Air Force base where her dad was stationed. It was an older house, but we'd put a lot into fixing it up, including installing some beautiful champagne-colored carpet in the living room, right before we moved in. At the time, her sister was not quite 1 year old, and she kept me completely exhausted, and little Zabby, at 3 years old, was a real dynamo. She was absolutely obsessed with Jello, so I tried to provide plenty of it for her, as bribery material. Also, unlike her fully-developed nocturnal personality, she loved to get up entirely too early. So one morning, imagine my delight as I crept from my bed before the sun came up, to strange sounds, resembling an elephant with bronchitis, coming from our living room / kitchen area. Baseball bat in hand, I prepared to eliminate the intruder, until I found, lit only by the light coming from the open refrigerator door, my darling child, with about 6 packs of Jello cups, open on my living room carpet, where she repeatedly shoved her tiny hands into the cups, making a horrendous, flatulating noise, before "painting" the Jello all over our brand new carpet. I dropped my bat to the floor, and cried. I scrubbed until my hands were raw. I rented a steam cleaner. I even called in the professionals, but nothing would remove my child's artwork from the floor. On the up-side, she was the first baby in her play group to figure out that blue plus red equals purple.

Her artwork has always been special. After that little incident, I tried to make sure she always had plenty of legitimate materials to work with - crayons, paint, sand, mashed potatoes, whatever. She used to make great pictures in her mashed potatoes with her finger, and sometimes a pea or two. But they were never little kid pictures - no happy little houses, and smiley faces and stick people. She had a whole different way of thinking from day one. She made pictures of cats with three tails (so they could braid them), or houses with bubble windows with goldfish in them, and gardens full of Barbie dolls on green stems. What a unique and joyful child she was!

When she was about 4 years old, I started letting her play with my computer. One day, she got on MS Paint, and drew a Winnie the Pooh, off the top of her head, in color, that was so amazingly realistic you would have thought an adult did it. (In fact, I tried to copy it later, and found that I couldn't do anything like it.)


In kindergarten, she wrote a story about an elephant which could blow rainbows out of its' trunk. The pictures were incredible. I kept thinking if I could ever find a way to publish it, I would, but of course there was never enough money, or time, or whatever.

When she was in second grade, we moved to South Carolina where I got my first teaching job. There, she drew a series of 4 pictures, of the same landscape over 4 seasons, and wrote a poem to go with them. Her teacher entered her work into the Young Author's contest, and she won the award for our school, district and eventually the state, and her work was hung in the Governor's mansion for a year. As you can imagine, I was, and am, very proud of her.

I could tell a hundred more stories of the creative things she has written or drawn (or animated on her computer) or of her beautiful singing voice, or moving theatrical performances, but I won't continue to embarrass her. She's a gifted girl, who has a lot to offer to the world, once she finds her niche. I have enjoyed being a witness to her growth these last 20 years, and I'm looking forward to seeing how she turns out once she has fully spread her wings and shown just what she can do.

And with that in mind, I will end this post with one of my favorite Zabby quotes: "Mom, can I borrow your screwdriver? I want to grind holes in the trees to make doors for the bugs, so the birds won't have to work so hard to get them out." (Zabby, age 5)

Things That Stink

In my not-online life, I've been making an effort lately to be less of a whiner. I try to complain less in general, have a better attitude about stuff, try to say positive things to people all the time, and it actually seems to be paying off in more positive stuff going on with me and around me. But that doesn't mean things don't stink, or that I don't have whiney thoughts. So, I thought I'd take a moment to vent, and just share some of my virtual whine (and there's bound to be some free cheese to go with that - not as good as gubment cheese, but free either way).



1. The first thing on my mind today that stinks is metabolism. It is SO unfair that some people can eat like a horse, and never gain an ounce. Or that those same, scrawny people are usually the ones who have those lives that miraculously balance out to allow time and money and energy to spend on frivolous exercise. (I call it frivolous because they're blowing time, money and energy on exercise that they're NOT obligated to do.) My time gets eaten by doing things like earning a living, cooking dinner, grading homework, taking classes, going to church, etc. My money gets eaten by things like bill paying, car repairs, and medication. My energy gets sucked up by the vacuum that is a 6 year old son, and chasing hyperactive fifth-graders around all day. So how am I supposed to have any leftovers to get me to the gym, to melt off some of the evidence of my flabulous nature? The fact that certain people can eat their body weight every six hours and never gain an ounce stinks. The fact that they can also spend the time, money and energy making themselves even more firm, fit and flat-bellied really blows chunks.



2. Second stinky thing - my daughters, or perhaps more accurately, the lack of them. I guess I had this one coming. When I was 17, and graduated from high school, I beat a path out my parents' front door, and enrolled at the furthest college I could find where I could get a scholarship. And I only went home between semesters because I had to. I suspect in truth my parents were really relieved. But I'm not. I miss my eldest, and not just because I'm not longer in control of every tiny little aspect of her life. (See, I can admit that I'm a control-freak, sometimes.) I miss having her quirky personality around, her weird insight on things, and all of the creative and interesting things she does. And she is just like I was at that age - blissfully oblivious. And my darling middle-child is off at military school, at least for about 3 more weeks, and that too is driving me nuts.

And here's something else that drives me nuts. I started this post on 5/21/2010, and something went really wrong, and half of it disappeared, and the rest landed in the DRAFTS box. So... there's what's left. Shut up. I'm an under-achiever.

2009 - Report Card

Well, folks, 2009 is over, and it's time to take a look back at the year and see how I did overall. I think I'll start with my "Farts, Fats, Faux Pas and Finances" resolution list, which I posted here on January 2, 2009.

1. I resolved not to marry anyone with more gas than a BP station in 2009.
STATUS: Achieved!! Although I was a little worried on New Year's Eve, when Steven developed a terrible tummy-ache that puffed him up like the Good Year Blimp.... he proved to be the responsible kind of fella who dutifully takes his Gas-X, and reports his retorts to the proper restroom facility. I was not forced to endure any methane exposure at all. (Well, that is, unless you count what happened after his darn toxic kisses passed the tummy-ache to me!!)

2. I resolved to stop doubly insulting people through mispronunciations...
STATUS: Achieved, sort of. Mostly I just focused on not insulting people at all...

3. I resolved to stop consuming vast quantities of corrosive beverages (i.e. Cokes).
STATUS: Ummm... in progress. I was doing pretty well with this one for a while, but during the holidays, I really blew it. It's funny how you can know that something isn't good for you, but then if it's convenient, you'll do it anyway. Like, if there was a package of Oreos sitting next to me on the table right now, that would be awfully convenient, and I'd probably eat every last one of them. Ahem. Or not.

4. I resolved to tame the beast within me...
STATUS: Achieved! If you've seen any of my newer pictures, you'll see that I have shorn the mane, and gone for a much shorter, more professional look. (Yeah, most people say "quirkier" but I like "more professional." It sounds more like this was the look I INTENDED to get.)

5. I resolved not to eat any Aussie hair products...
STATUS: Achieved, though I'll admit it continues to be a challenge. Why do they make them smell so yummy??? Exactly like grape bubble gum...

6. I resolved to contain my inner harpy...
STATUS: Improved. She escaped briefly a couple of times, like 2 weeks before the graduation deadline when my darling daughter was still 25% short of completion on one of her virtual school classes. And when I was getting ready to go to a job interview, and discovered that my other daughter had "borrowed" my panty-hose, and apparently used them as some sort of slingshot for launching dirt clods into the next county, as they were stretched out big enough to cover a rhinocerous, had more holes than my ex's excuse for coming in at 3 a.m., and were as full of dirt as a year's subscription to the National Enquirer. That really put me over the edge.

7. I resolved to slim down from aircraft carrier to frigate...
STATUS: Failed. Didn't happen, darn it. I can't imagine why. I joined a gym (only found time to appear there about 8 times... ), bought workout videos (and I'm sure I would have opened them eventually), got healthy diet lunches (which were so delicious that sometimes I ate two of them!), and I even started walking (okay, it only happened once, but it's the thought that counts, right???).

8. I resolved to build a real financial reserve...
STATUS: Improved. Sort of. I didn't manage to build a financial reserve. However, I did manage to detach myself from the umbilical cord that has been hooked to the local cash advance place, which has been sucking me dry with it's obscenely high interest rates. As for savings, though, I've currently got about $23. It's good to save some goals for next year, though, right?

9. I resolved to keep the end goal in mind, and get a handle on my urge to take more college courses, limiting myself to the 3rd graduate degree.
STATUS: Achieved!! It's ironic how I can twist dropping out of school into an achievement, right? But hey, I did it!

10. I resolved to have a better list of resolutions than the "Farts, Fats, Faux Pas and Finances" list.
STATUS: Well... I'm still working on that...

Overall grade: 50% achieved, 30% improved... that's at least 65% overall, so I'm not a complete failure.

Ugh. I guess it's time to come up with some new resolutions. Yay, 2010. Happy New Year.

My Life Is Brilliant... My Love Is Pure...

... don't you love that song? Me too. It's so silly, and utterly nonsensical, but it delights us to think that there are men who think like that. Fortunately, there aren't, since we'd want to kill them the first time they fell madly in love with the lady on the back of the garbage truck while dragging the cans to the street.

No... no... no wimpy man for me, that's for sure. I've got myself a very romantic redneck honey who curls my toes and slaps a smile on my face. And in just 6 Saturdays, we're going to take the plunge, and get married. I CAN'T WAIT!!!

Have you ever been around someone that just made your heart ache with love for them? It's so funny. I've known Steven since we were little kids, and back then, when I used to follow him around with my puppy-dog eyes (okay, I didn't start doing that until about 8th grade), everybody said, "It's just puppy love. You'll get over it. No big deal." So I graduated, moved on... tried to forget about him... and proceeded to compare him to every fella I met for the next 20 years. And they all fell short, for one major reason - they didn't make me FEEL the way I felt when I was around him. But that was just puppy love, right?

So why is it that 20 years later, when he finds me on facebook, and we get together, I STILL feel it?? Surely it's just the novelty of the thing, right?? So why is it that 8 months after we started dating, I still get that feeling every time I see him???

Two words, people: TRUE LOVE.

Dang I adore him. So you don't like my sappy trip? Get over it. You're just jealous.

I have to say, 2009 has been the BEST year for me in a long time. My sweetheart and I got together, my eldest daughter, against all odds, graduated from high school, I got a new job that I L-O-V-E, my sweetheart proposed... and now, right before Christmas, we're going to get married and make 2010 a pretty darn rockin' year as well.

Life is good, people. The scriptures say that man is that he might have joy. Want to see what that looks like? December 19 - 7 p.m. - LDS Church. It's going to be a beautiful thing!