I know everyone always talks about how it's all over once you have kids, that there isn't any time for yourself anymore, that you won't clean the house, take care of yourself, sleep, breathe, anything.

I thought they were exagerating.

They're not.

That being said, I've recently been furloughed.  I'm especially bitter because, nationally, the whole fiasco is being portrayed as somethign the teachers have done- that we believe we can squeeze five instructional days into four, that we agreed to take fridays off for the rest of the year, that it was somehow our idea.

Bullshit.

THe governor, who now is acting as if she's heartbroken over the state of education and she wishes the teachers hadn't agreed to our new contract (wtf!?!), originally wanted to cut the school year by 24days.  We whittled it down to 17days, an 8% paycut not counting the increase in medical costs.  Our other options- to go on strike or to lose 8% of our workforce, thereby increasing class size and losing elective course teachers and having to rearrange school structures.

The governor is an evil bitch.  For real.  See, the teachers union refused to support her in the last election (exactly because she's an evil bitch who does nothing for education) and in an attempt to stick it to us, she tied our raises (which, by the way, did not even meet the increase in cost of living) to random drug testing- an expensive procedure that we'd be the only state to unleash on teachers.  After giving herself, her cabinet, administrators, and all her other friends massive raises, she decides the dept of education is going to have to help pick up the deficit, along with firefighters, police, and county and state workers.

So to summarize- wealthy people got raises, poor people saw pay cuts.  She lost millions of dollars on a superferry because she adamantly refused to follow the laws for environmental testing and proceeded with a plan that harme hundreds of migrating humpback whales.  She has over a billion dollars slated for a rail transit on Oahu that gets partially paid for with our outerisland taxes.  She refuses to raise taxes on tourism or businesses.  Right now, while things are heating up, she just got an all-expense trip to Japan and China paid for out of taxpayer money.

  She just released 75million dollars to go to Construction contractors to do school building repairs, but couldn't spend half that to actually pay teachers and keep kids in school.  Seriously, how does this not make the national headlines?

How does the fact that she's now acting contrite because she didn't even apply for federal assistance for education (she's very anti-Obama) not come to the surface?  What about the US secretary of education claiming that she has misappropriated funds she has received (ie, priorities going to facility repairs (money to her contractor friends), administrators (her poitical allies), and beign funneled off to other pet projects instead of going to actual education)?

Let me add this food for thought: there was a program, hailed by Georgetown as a successful example of how to assist low-income youth, in which all uninsured and underinsured children were provided medical coverage.  The legislature passed it to go into effect for an additioanl two years and for funds to be appropriated to keep the program running.  Governor Lingle refused to release the funds.  She had already vetoed the legislation, and thankfully the veto was overruled.  But she still holds the state checkbook and so she just didn't allow the money to go out.

How is al lthis possible?  She's become a dictator on our island chain and nobody seems to do anything about it?

HELP!  Somebody, save us!

In other news, I am not just bitter about this but other cuts to my educational programs that I run; my child is consistently sickly; I am not writing, exercising, and have been subsisting on a diet of caffeine, sugar, spam, cheese, and cocoa; my grandfather passed away; sleep never takes over; and am altogether not in a good place right now, hanging on to my sanity by a thread.  Btt it's gonna be okay.  I'm pretty sure that it'll all turn around soon.