Whoa. It's December.

Since I've been with Forest, time has flown by at an alarming rate. I can't believe that it's already December! In many ways, December is a good thing. I always love Christmas, and look forward to the holidays immensely. On the other hand, I'm not wild about the snow, and there are financial challenges that seem to crop up every December, no matter what I do. This year I'm trying to go to school in January, and as of yet have had no word on financial aid. There's a chance that I made too much money last year to qualify for a student loan, in which case I might not be able to return to school at all, because I won't be able to swing the tuition.

I have a few gifts I want to buy for people, and I am also worried about paying for the wedding and (hopefully) honeymoon.

As the year draws to its close, all I can think of is that I hope I did the deductions correctly for my taxes, so that I get a return, and don't owe the government money, too.

I've got to shake myself out of this. The holidays are no time to be worrying about money. Everything will come out just fine. *sigh*

I went to the script selection committee meeting for the Civic Players last night, and was a little bummed out about the selection of things being offered. I can't be specific, because I think I'm supposed to keep the proposals hush-hush until we recommend the season in January. I can say, however, that I read for Bath for a couple of years, and we always had an exciting, varied, interesting group of plays to choose from. There was a lot of depth and creativity there.

On first glimpse, I see several plays on my reading list which have been done to death, and I think should probably be removed from the community theatre repertoire before the audience stages a riot in protest.

Then I see a list of about half a dozen plays submitted by a single director, who seems to have a specific theme he wants to promote. I don't mind that so much in his own company; but I feel a little strange about the Civic Players' being used as a platform for a political and social agenda. Still, at least he's submitted a few plays that everyone in town won't have seen yet, and one or two of them are really well-written and interesting. That's a plus.

In my first script selection committee meeting, there was already discussion of the petty ramifications of our choices. "Well, doing 'X' show with 'Y' director would make 'Z' long-term Member angry."

Who cares? I just don't see the point in upholding these silly squabbly preadolescent grudges within the theatre community. So a long-standing LCP member doesn't want to play well with others; I say that's HIS loss, and he should learn to shut the fuck up and double his audience by not alienating half of the Lansing area theatre community.

That's my two cents' worth, anyway. I'm sick of hearing all of this bickering. Years of experience have shown that the Lansing area supports plenty of theatres. There's no reason why we need to have a competitive division, and no reason that talented people should have to limit their participation to a specific theatre out of some sense of loyalty. Likewise, I see no reason that one theatre with hundreds of members should bend to the childish pouting of one or two of its more vocal members.

I suppose that's enough ranting for today. The script selection process is already irritating me. I'll leave it at that.

This is going to be a busy, bustly weekend, but Forest and I are very much looking forward to it. We both have Saturday and Sunday off from work! I know, it's a bleedin' miracle; we're just as excited about it as you are. Anyhow, we have, of course, already booked an activity for both days, but it still feels like heaven to us that we get so much time together!

Tonight Forest works until 10 PM, and then I think we're going to go out. We might have a late dinner out, or go to a movie; I don't know. We decided to hold of on any further decisions until the last minute, so we'd be free to do whatever felt like fun at the time.

Saturday morning I think we're going to go register for wedding gifts. We were supposed to do this a few weekends ago, but keep putting it off, because we both feel a little awkward about it. Still, we don't really want two dozen toasters, and there are relatives coming to our wedding who probably wouldn't know what to get us if we didn't register; so we're going to try really hard to get out and do it tomorrow.

After that, we're going to the Interclub randori at MSU. Randori is what it's called when Judoka (Judo players) go one on one and compete. It's not really a tournament; just a time for LCC and MSU to get together and get a little variety in their practice. It should be a lot of fun. Forest is going to play, but I don't know much Judo, so I'm going to take the camera and have a blast. After the randori is over, we're planning to go out for a nice oriental dinner with the gang from Judo class. That's always fun, too.

Part of what's developing in martial arts in this area is a sense of community about things. Judo is developing a tradition of a nice dinner out every now and then. MSU's club has begun traditions for after black belt tests and tournaments, which apparently involve singing, eating, and drinking a bit, too. It's nice, and as I stick around for a while, I see a sort of extended 'family' of Master Kim's students beginning to evolve out of the mix.

Sunday we are trying to preserve our sanity and just stay home for the morning and afternoon. We haven't had a day at home together in a long time.Sunday night, though, I have to go play in a bell choir concert, and I guess Forest's going to come and watch. It should be an interesting evening. We still don't have a full choir, so we are scrambling to cover this and that while a rather overtaxed substitute is pitching in on one of the parts.

This has been a pretty bad week as far as Kirstin is concerned. I really don't know what to do with her. It started this weekend, when she explained to us that she couldn't do her reading assignment on Sunday because she'd left the book at her grandma's house. Then on Monday morning it turned out that the book had been in her bag all along. We weren't sure if she was lying to us for the sake of getting out of her homework or not, but it didn't bode well.

Then on Monday night she had to make up that extra reading, and ended up staying up late to do so.

Tuesday night after choir she had to go to spend time with Kristin (Sean's girlfriend) and promised that she would do her homework before doing anything else there. As it turns out, she did *some* of her homework, but not all of it.

Wednesday morning she got up and complained of a terrible headache for the second day in a row. She was coughing and had big dark circles under her eyes, so I believed she might be coming down with something. I agreed that she could stay home, which meant spending the whole day up in her room in bed. She agreed. Forest and I worked out that he would stay home with her while I went to work.

Two hours later she insisted she was fine and wanted to go to school. Looking back on it, Forest and I suspect that she just didn't want to go to school in the morning because she didn't have her math homework done, but we can't prove that.

At 3:30 PM on Wednesday Forest started Kirstin working on the math paper she hadn't finished on Tuesday. She was still working on it when I got home at 5:30, and still wasn't finished with it at 9:30 when we finally sent her to bed. Forest and I were really frustrated with her. He had worked with her time and time again to try to explain how the work should be done, and over and over again she would make silly mistakes, and not check her work.

We got her up at 6:30 in the morning on Thursday so she could continue the assignment, but she still only got about half of it done.

Looking back, I suspect that she somehow slid into her old habit of not paying attention in class, and therefore didn't understand the concepts behind what she was supposed to be doing. Hindsight is 20/20.

Thursday night she came home with still more homework after her violin lesson. She started working on her social studies paper at 6:30 PM, and took over two hours to complete the first 6 questions, which were basic vocabulary. At 10:30 PM she was still writing her 'compare and contrast' paragraph. It was completely ridiculous that the assignment should take so long, and I sat right there with her the whole time in case she needed to ask me questions. A few times I looked at her paper and discovered that she obviously hadn't read or understood the directions.

At 10:30 when I told her it was time to throw in the towel for the night, she revealed that she still had two more assignments to do.

I lost it. How is it that a single math paper and a single social studies paper had taken us ALL of our free time since Tuesday to do???? This makes no sense whatsoever. She must not have been paying attention in class. Forest and I informed her that she needs to be more diligent, because we had fun things we wanted to do with her this week, and didn't get to do any of them because she let herself slack off on her homework. We wanted to take her to see the Grinch, and to buy Christmas gifts for other family members.

She rolled her eyes and said, "I don't care."

Then she was in deep trouble, and got severely rounded out for possibly the second time in her entire life. I informed her that part of being a member of the family when you're a kid is that you have PARENTS and you should treat them with respect and honesty. I further proclaimed that it was a kid's job to be responsible for her own homework, but that frustration with homework should not be used as a dramatic point to get extra attention. I also insisted that when she says she "Doesn't care" about things that are important to us it is not only disrespectful, but hurts our feelings.

Forest and I both told her that if she goes through life insisting she doesn't care what we think or whether she does well in school that she will end up NOT doing well in school, and always resenting us for being her parents, and not just her playpals.

She cried. We fumed. It was an altogether frustrating occasion.

First thing this morning she finished her shower and started right out working diligently on her homework. As far as I could tell there was an improvement in her desire to get the work done; but I find myself questioning whether it will last. It's worrisome. We had come such a long way this year! Kirstin was coming home from school every day and getting her assigments done, period. There was none of the complaining of last year, and none of the constant "I don't get it"s and blank expressions.

If I only met her in the past week, though, I would assume she was a terrible, lazy student with a bad attitude and an IQ of 50.

I have no idea what to do about all of this. We had a great month with her right up until this week. Maybe Bill and Kathy will be able to put the smack down in December and prevent any further backsliding.