So Martha’s guilty.  Why does this tick me off?  Because she’s up for a maximum 20 year sentence and the guy who started it all, Sam Waksel, is in for 7.  He found out he wasn’t going to get a patent, sold all his stock, sold his kids’ stock, told all his friends to sell theirs, and he gets a third of Martha’s penalty.  The Enron folks, who bankrupted thousands of honest, hardworking people, are still living the high life while waiting for their trials to get underway, and Martha’s went through like greased lightning.  I’ve told my kids a number of times that no matter what they’ve done, they’ll be in more trouble with me for lying about it than for whatever they’ve done, but this is ridiculous.

It’s all about spin.  The people who are supposed to be protecting the people and enforcing the law sit on their thumbs until something easy and high-profile comes along, and think it makes them look like they’re doing their jobs.  It reminds me of the LA cops and Robert Downey, Jr.  When they haven’t caught a single drug dealer or interrupted a drug deal or done anything to make a real difference, they go after the guy.  Invariably, he’s backslid, so they get their names in the paper for once again arresting this threat to the safety of society.

I’ve never had a lot of love for Martha, even though I have her paint colors all over my house, but in this case, I think she got a raw deal, and I hope she wins on appeal.

Oh, I think we might finally be out of snow.  This makes me so glad!  The garden catalogues are arriving, the kids are playing outside, the tax returns have been filed!  Am I taking advantage of any of this?  Heck, no.  It’s a Sunday afternoon, I’m hyped up on caffeine, and I’d rather play around with my site while I can take advantage of hubby being home so I don’t totally screw up.  Yes, I could be painting the upstairs bathroom, catching up on laundry, unloading the dishwasher and cleaning the kitchen, or even ironing and mending, but these would serve a purpose, and I prefer to save purposeful activities for the weekdays.

As I was thinking about what I’d do to the site, I thought of some of the things I’d been asked to do in email that I wouldn’t do.  I’m always asked to add games.  I wonder why, since there are plenty of game sites out there.  I suppose if I were actually interested in games, there might be a reason for me to add them, but since I’m not, adding games would make as much sense as adding a section on car repair.  I’ve often suggested to these writers that as soon as they add sewing stuff to their personal sites, I’ll add games to mine.  So far, no takers.  I also get threats from people way younger than I am because I had the audacity to take their or their friends’ name.  This implies that I am capable of time travel.  Let me tell you, if I could do that, I’d do something much more audacious than convincing my parents to name me Alison.  Sometimes I’ll get a truly frightening message, one that tells me that the writer has visited my site and thinks it really sucks.  I’m not sure whether it bothers me more that the person didn’t like the site and, rather than moving on, as I would, took the time to write to me, or that the writer thinks I would read an insulting message filled with misspellings and bad grammar from a complete stranger and actually care.

One of the wisest things I was ever told was “Why should I care what he thinks?  He never bought me a drink.”  It holds a deep truth – the opinions of people should matter to you only if the people themselves matter to you.  If you’re not my friend, relative, neighbor, or employer, I’ll give your opinion as much respect as I think it deserves.  No more, no less.  OK, well maybe less.

Good and bad stuff this week.  I’m doing a lot of stuff with the elementary school – it’s both the obligation and the reward of being a stay-at-home-mom.  I’m working with the school newspaper, class mom for the fifth grade, and helping out with my kids’ former 1st grade teacher.  I don’t spend quite so much time with the kids as I do, say, vacuuming and washing the floors, or even doing the dozen or so loads of laundry a week, but it’s way more rewarding.  Just the fact that the kids get all excited and hug me and celebrate when they find out I’m coming in to school makes whatever I do so much more important than it might seem superficially.  Seeing those faces when I read the last two chapters of “Old Yeller” or talking about how to turn an interview into an article, or seeing the face of a child who’s read a book well for the first time getting an excited reaction from an adult – these are the things that let me know that my children are not the only ones who benefit from my not working a regular job.

On the other hand, after seeing all the great progress and happiness of the children, I find out that a sibling’s long-term spouse has made a selfish decision about his/her gender assignment that benefits no-one except this person, and maybe not even that.  My sibling has been put through a heck of a lot, much of it at the hands of this spouse, and the only good thing is that this selfish action will finally propel things towards a positive end – without the persistently errant spouse.  It just drives me nuts how people can make self-centered decisions and then criticize the people they hurt for not being “supportive.”  Screw that.  Life is about more than just you.