Rant

Good morning! I am going to have a little temper tantrum so if you don’t want to read it, you can skip down a paragraph or two. Or five.

What the heck is wrong with this state/country/world? I know, some of you will say, “signs of the times,” and while I agree, I also say, “I don’t give a huge whoop-te-doo!” I don’t care. I am annoyed. Why? I’ll tell you why. Seth and Cedric love soccer. They both would like to play Quabbin soccer this spring. Well, that’s not a problem for Seth. It is a problem for Cedric. Why? Because although he is able to play with his classmates for Hubbardston Soccer, for Quabbin Soccer he is required to register according to birth date. Why is this a problem? Well, because the U14 teams play all of their games on Sunday. Also, registration has been low for the coming season and so they are probably going to have to combine the U14, U16 and U18 teams. So my soon to be 13-year-old would have to play with some players who are five years older than he. Why can’t they just put the U14 with the U12? They just don’t do that.

This being the case, Cedric asked about SCOR soccer. I looked into this and found out that it’s almost $800 to register for the year. Granted, this covers everything but the uniform (and I’m kind of wondering what else there is. . . .?) including playing all year long. Hmmmmmm. Okay. Aside from the registration fee, guess when all the games are? Yep, on Sunday.

So, what is wrong with this picture? It is my understanding that it wasn’t all that many years ago that businesses were not allowed to be open on Sunday in Massachusetts. Too bad we can’t go back to that. I mean, I can understand why it won’t happen. I know there is more to it than the fact that people would actually have to THINK, get this, AHEAD in order to have something to eat on Sunday but if people could do it 50 years ago, I’m pretty sure they could again. It isn’t necessary to go to the store every bloody day. Yes, I know this is something of a shock to many of the people who live here. But, get this, there are people in the world, even country, maybe even state, that do NOT have to go shopping every single day. Shocking, I know.

The other big problem is that we have allowed ourselves to become how we are. We have allowed the few to rule the many. A few people are offended by our school children reciting the pledge or saying prayer so it is now the norm not to. A few people don’t like to hear “Merry Christmas” so now we can’t say it. I have no idea who complained about having Christmas parties at school but it appears that Quabbin is avoiding everything Christmas. I am seriously tempted to say, as my boys would say, “swears.”

Personally, I guess it doesn’t matter what the rest of the world does or says, we need to behave in accordance to what we know and believe. To me, this includes no soccer on Sunday (yes, you can ask me why I am not in favor of soccer on Sunday but am sort of okay with scout activities on Sunday), no shopping on Sunday, saying “Merry Christmas” (and being happy if someone says to me Happy Kwanza or Happy Hanukkah or something else), reciting the pledge every morning as part of beginning our school day as well as reading a scripture, and anything else I can think of.

Sigh.

In other news, Paul and I went to Worcester yesterday afternoon. It was not exciting. In fact, I think we could have safely not gone. However, it was interesting that it was the same courtroom and judge as when I was down for jury duty last. Anyway, everything should be all hunky dory as far as Laura being the trustee for the trust funds for Amena, Cedric, Seth and Joseph. I don’t know how fast it will all happen, but within the next few weeks it should all be done and each of them will have a trust fund that they can have full access to when they turn 25. Why 25 is beyond me but that’s the way it was written. Why Laura as the trustee? Well, that’s a no brainer. I wasn’t an option as the case was actually against me and it seems that Paul wasn’t an option either and although I’m not entirely sure why I can envision a few scenarios where it would not be a good thing (not with Paul but with the general situation). Under other circumstances and in other cases, it would have been Dan but that really wouldn’t have been a good idea and I would have argued against it (just as he would have against it being me although his reasoning is kind of skewed in my opinion).

Cedric had a Court of Honor yesterday evening. Paul, Cedric and I went and it was the poorest attended Court of Honor I’ve been to in Hubbardston. There was a Yankee gift exchange and it was pretty funny. Cedric ended up with a good-sized bag of candy out of it which he took to school today for his class un-Christmas party. One boy wound up with a $10 Amazon gift card and he was not pleased.

Seth and Joseph got done with all their school work other than reading before lunch including an extra lesson for today which was wonderful. Zak came to get them around noon because they did not need to go to court. They did get to go to Friendly’s for lunch and Joanna was their server. Seth said they gave her a $100 tip.

And although there is other news I could attempt to catch you up on, I’m not going to. It is already 7:52 and I don’t want to be here all day. In fact, I don’t want to be here long enough to post this but I will.

Have a fantastic day!