Here's my Opinion (You're Not Gonna Like It...)

Okay, so most of you by now have seen the 10-minute-long video of 64-year-old Karen Klein being "bullied" (for lack of a better word) by some middle school boys on the school bus.  I know that bullying is the hot button issue this year, but I have some strong opinions about that, and in the wake of all of this fuss and bother, I thought I should air them.

First off, this is nothing new.  Seeing this video reminds me of the "crazy witch lady" in town... people have always preyed upon the weak and marginalized as a way to reaffirm their place in mainstream society.  Yes, these kids are little shits, and yes, as parents and school systems there need to be punishments in place, but stop wailing about it like it's the end of the world - this is nothing new, the only difference is that thanks to the internet and the profoundly stupid act of recording it, we can see it.

Next, put yourself in this scenario.  You are a paid childcare provider whose sole job is to make sure kids don't act up on the bus.  Kids start acting up on the bus.  What do you do?  Do you sit there and let them call you a fatass and cry, or do you stand up at the next stop and kick them off the bus?  Take their names, report to the school and the parents.  Make the kids sit in separate seats.  There's also a bus driver, so enlist his/her help if the kids won't move.  This can't be the first time this has happened, and there have to be disciplinary structures in place for kids who are acting out.  You are the adult, and it is your job to model good behavior and command respect.  If you can't do that, you have no place in education of any sort.  Kids have called me this and worse, but you can't let it get out of control or you end up with the sort of feeding frenzy that happened here.

Anyone who has worked with children knows a Karen.  There are two types - one is the easygoing, laugh-it-off type who lets kids get away with murder by the way they talk to you.  They don't demand respect because they are afraid of enforcing rules, and they don't believe that they are able to.  Or they don't want to deal with the fallout of having done something that kids don't like.  You'll notice in this particular video that the kids have a conversational, mature tone to thier mocking - "Do you have herpes, Karen?"  This implies to me that it was not the first time that the conversation between her and these kids got too personal/familiar.

The other type is the huffy-puffy type - they yell and lecture, but take very little action.  They overreact to small things done by the weaker kids, but don't stand up to the strong ones.  Thier punishments are overblown or not serious enough.  They yell a lot to hide the fact that they are actually very ineffective, whether due to laziness or simply not knowing how to handle things.  My guess is that Karen tried to discipline the kids before this hideous tirade, and that's what led to the "bullying."  I'm sure that they unwittingly hit a nerve when talking about suicide, and that's why she was crying, but if she was at the point where she could no longer effectively discipline these kids, she needed to get help from the bus driver.

Also, these kids need effective discipline dealt out fairly, not the great internet lynch mob sending them hate mail or other kids beating them up.  The bus is not a right, so first off they need to be suspended from riding it for the rest of the year.  I was talking to Husband about this, and when I was growing up people got kicked off the bus all the time.  It's a safety issue, and if kids can't respect the rules then their parents are going to have to figure out how to get them to school.  One would hope that the parents of these boys would figure out a way for them to make restitution, and have a long discussion about respect.  Also, the phones would be gone - especially for the kid who filmed it.

I am guessing by the less-than-immediate response from the school that this is not the first time that Karen has run up against similar situations.  She is either too kindhearted or too unpredictable to be working with children, and the school knows it.  My point here is that yes, this is a terrible incident, but it happened not as a result of bullying, but as a result of ineffective discipline by a paid employee.  "Giving Karen a vacation" with $500,000 seems a little ridiculous when you think of all of the teachers and bus drivers who control situations so that they don't get to this point every day.


We can talk more about real bullying another day, because I have some opinions about that too.

Tidying Thursday...

My goal with this day is to share something that makes my house/body/life a bit neater.  I think today I will spotlight one of my favorite shows, "How Clean is Your House?"  There is actually an American version that is still entertaining, but today I'd like to talk about the British Version. 

Anyone who knows me knows I am a sucker for shows where bossy people barge in and tell you how to live your life.  Super Nanny, Dog Whisperer, Clean House... I am obsessed with the intoxicating combo of voyeurism, helpful hints, and motivation.  Kim Woodburn and Aggie Mackenzie are the perfect hosts of this British cleaning show, and not only do the nightmare houses that they invade make you want to take a shower (after cleaning it of course), they show plenty of affordable cleaning tips.  

Now if you remember I am a big fan of Method cleaning products... I love the mild fragrances and how gentle they are on surfaces, hands, and pets.  They are the only supplies I purchase - the rest of my cleaning is done with common household items.  Here are a few can't-miss household tips that I have gleaned from watching this show.

1. Baking Soda is invaluable.  I use it for lots of things, but one of my favorites is a simple drain cleaner... Prime your drains with boiling water, pour baking soda down the drain and add plenty of white vinegar.  The famous "volcano" reaction of elementary school busts up mild clogs and helps keep things running smoothly.
2. Toothpaste is a very mild abrasive.  I use it to clean my bathtub, sink, stovetop, and other places that get really gunky - and it smells great!  Always use plain non-gel kind.
3. Lemons are a good degreaser... I literally rubbed a cut lemon on a very greasy part of my stove and it took it right off.  Just be sure to wipe it off with a damp cloth after you're done, since the acid might not be good for certain surfaces.
4. Fruit flies are a pest that we always have to deal with come summer.  The best trap that I have found to get rid of them is a mason jar with plastic wrap covering the top.  Poke a few small holes in the top and fill about 1/4 of the way with apple cider vinegar or similar fruit juice (vinegar works best right away.)  Put a few drops of dish detergent on the top of the water to destroy the surface tension, and the flies go in and drown.
5. Put a thin layer of shaving cream on mirrors to avoid fogging after showers.  Be sure to avoid any kind with moisturizer or fancy scents - generally the cheaper the better!

Sleep can be a Beast...

It's incredibly difficult to get into a schedule when you for some reason sleep until 1:00 in the afternoon.  Hopefully this won't become a habit, I hate losing half of the day.  Here's what I've been up to, though!

Playing on Slides...

Chasing babies...

Hanging with the Nephews...

Watching cars go fast...

Saying Goodbye...

Settling Catan...

Also watching a lot of old movies.  Like, a lot.  Because it has been REALLY humid and gross.

And going for two hour walks at midnight.

AND planning costumes for 31 Jellicle cats.  

Peanut does NOT like it when you sing the "Jellicle Cats" song loudly in her face when she's sleeping.  Odd, because she doesn't seem to mind meowing loudly in mine when I am sleeping...

Make Something Monday: Home Management Binder Edition!

The results of my first "Make Something Mondays" have gone well, with my home management binder arranged and in use:

Organized!

I love this, and hope that it will be useful.  I followed the instructions found at A Bowl Full of Lemons, and she has a really amazing etsy friend who will sell you printables at a very  reasonable price.  Since I am both a cheapo and pretty lazy, I didn't want to run the risk of buying a bunch of printables and not using them, so I hunted around to find free ones.  I use Week at a Glance, Menu Planner and Shopping List, Monthly Budget, Gas Log, and several other printables which I am not as happy with.  This is definitely a great project to do, and required a bit of start up time, some patience to develop new habits, and of course printer ink.  Definitely worth a go!

Salzburg - The End of Our Adventure!

We got in to Salzburg on the tail of our second rain of the trip (the first being a little storm outside of Prague - so fortunate!)  Our hotel was very nice, but the boys were a little cramped in thier room.  The area was also a little sketchy, being outside of a train station.  But the bathroom - oh that bathroom!  It was heavenly!  That night we just played some cards in the hotel and got Burger King for dinner (Austrian Burger King serves CURLY FRIES!)

Janos told us the next morning that many things in Salzburg might be closed, because that weekend was a holiday in Austria.  We were so lucky!  Most of the touristy things were open, but the crowds were small because everyone was in church!

We took a tram up the mountain (fun!) and got in to the beautiful Hohensalzburg Castle grounds.  What an amazing view!

 I think this was the most surreal part of the trip.  We don't have ANY mountains back home, and even driving through the Rockies was nothing like that!  We took a tour of the castle, which was informative but a bit dry.  Here's a torture wheel in a tower dungeon, though...

Husband mans the cannon...

For some reason a Marionette Museum...

Marionettes were creepy/cool.

 We got back down to the town square just in time to beat the other tourist crowds.

Pretzel time!

Giant Chess Set (Made me think of the Kids from Eureka!)

Creepiest.  Statue.  Ever.  Hiding around a corner giving people heart attacks.

Gorgeous church with an Archbishop or other Mucky-Muck speaking.

Fountain!

Lots of people wearing things like this...

Mozart was born here!

More chillin with Mozart!

 People in this area freakin LOVE Mozart.  I mean, you saw how Mozart-heavy Vienna was?  Well, he actually LIVED in Salzburg, so he is EVERYWHERE here.

Overall our time in Salzburg was pretty much perfect.  We grabbed lunch at a little pastry shop, and then it was another long bus ride back to Munich for our farewell dinner.  Many of these sights were the same ones we had already seen (and I didn't take any in Munich proper - whoops!), but we were all pretty tired and ready to go home the next morning.  This was really the trip of a lifetime!

Melk and Monsee!

 After seeing so many amazing things, it was hard to believe that there was more to come - but our drive through the Austrian countryside was a long one, and we took a few pit stops along the way...

Vineyards and Villages

City of Melk

 Melk is a Monastery with a beautiful view.  We stopped for lunch, which was extremely satisfying (I had a salad with Pumpkin Oil, which is apparently very popular as a dressing over there.  It was pretty fantastic.)

Oh, and of course Apple Strudel.  We called this trip the Father's Tour De Strudel.

Brother and the Monastery.

 After our stop we drove for quite a while more, finally getting into the scenery we were all really excited about - the Alps!

So Surreal.

 We also stopped in Monsee, which is not only a gorgeous lake with an unbeatable view, but the place where they filmed several scenes from "The Sound of Music," including the wedding.

And now we were only a little ways away from the last leg of our journey - Salzburg!

Budapest: This Looks like a Good Place for a Statue!

 I had zero expectations for Hungary.  I knew very little about the country, and Budapest was probably the city I was least excited to see.  It shouldn't surprise you, then, that Budapest was my favorite city we visited, and the only one that could potentially feel like home.  Hungary feeds a lot of central Europe, and many of thier fields are now converting to soy, so the countryside started off very similar to home... and gradually turned into lovely little mountains with tiny villages nestled at thier feet.

And then there's Budapest.

 We stopped at our hotel, which was old but ideally located on the Buda side just a quick walk away from the historic castle district.  This was the view from our hotel window!  Husband and I were feeling energetic, so while the others took naps and used the internet, we went on a walk.

 This area of Budapest included lovely gardens and lots of families taking walks and enjoying the perfect weather.

Climbing up stairs... so many stairs!

 Little did we know that walking to the castle district would end up being a magical adventure similar to walking in to Disneyland, in large part because of beautiful Matthias Church.  Built in the 1300s, it was extensively renovated in the 1800's and cleaned and spruced up just last year!

This crow is not real, as I first thought.

 The church is located right at Fisherman's bastion, which has an amazing view of Pest (the other half of the city... Buda and Pest.  Yep.)

 After taking in a few of the sights, we were in a hurry to get back to the hotel and dressed for our Hungarian Gypsy Night.

 The restaurant was located in a less populated, woodsy part of the city.  The location was ideal, and we walked in to be greeted with an apertif in a strange little man cup.  I believe this drink is called Palinka, and it is CRAZY strong.

Brother downs his Palinka.

Hungarian Goulash and fresh wet paprika - SO GOOD!

Dancing in Hungary is VERY athletic, almost jock-ish.

 Needless to say, this was a night to remember with great food, talented entertainment, and drink.  Kind of a lot of drink.  We were pretty silly on the bus ride home, actually, and at one point the driver kept going around a turnabout (that used to have a big communist star in it, but now just has flowers), which we found EXTREMELY entertaining.

The next morning we were up bright and early for our bus tour of Budapest.  Our tour guide (Paul?) was an older man who was very passionate about Hungarian history, and very entertaining in his methods of speech. I was so engrossed with his stories that I didn't take many pictures here, I am afraid.

Hero's Square... Hungarians LOVE statues.

Synagogue

 I missed getting a picture of the "Shoes on the Danube" monument, which commemorates the place where dozens of Jewish citizens were lined up at the river, told to take off thier shoes, and shot into the water during WWII.  Paul said "It commemorates a time when shoes were more valuable then people."  Hungary has a very sad history of always being occupied by one group or the other - many of the monuments were of fallen heroes and martyrs, not successful revolutionaries.  When the Nazis came in WWII, Hitler promised that he would free Hungary from the Habsburgs, so they joined him.  When Hitler's anti-semitic agenda reached them partway through the war, Hungary tried to back out (they were historically very tolerant of Jews, and their large Jewish Quarter is beautiful, as you can see from the Synagogue.)  When they attempted to stop Hitler from establishing concentration camps, he started bombing Hungary.  At one point, they were being attacked by the Axis and the Allies.

We headed back to Buda to visit the castle district...

 The central part of this district is beautifully renovated and kept up, but under the Communist regime many of the old buildings were left untouched and in ruins.  This is an interesting dichotomy as you wander the streets.  For example:

 These are bullet holes left in the side of this building from the siege of Budapest by the Communists/Nazis in 1945.

The Parents took off and had thier own Hungarian adventure involving a mad search for a waterfall, climbing up and down a mountain, and some apparently amazing Apple Streudel.  Meanwhile, we went back to Pest and wandered around the newer part of the city.

 We stopped at a streetside restaurant for some delicious modern Hungarian food.

The best dessert wine.

Yum!

We wandered down Andrassy Street and took in the sights of this amazing city.

At the Opera House

Terror Museum

This building was the location for the Nazi SS, and later the Communist KGB in Budapest.  Paul's mother and many other people of her time refuse to walk past this building, and remember the days when women would rummage through the garbage outside for news of loved ones who went in and never came out.  It was made into a museum in their honor.

 The area behind Hero's Square is full of exciting things to do, and there was also an open air market up where Husband and I got a marvelous homemade Raspberry Strudel from an old woman.  After I ate it I wondered if it was maybe poisoned like in Snow White, but since I survived it looks like it was just fine!

Vajdahunyad Castle was built in the 1800s as a tourist attraction.

After going to the zoo, we looked at the walk back and it was WAY too long.  We decided to brave the subway system, even though Hungarian (all of the signs and labels) looks unrecognizable to anyone who knows English, Germanic, or Romance languages.  We figured it out, though, and enjoyed a ride on a very clean subway back to the Chain Bridge.

Built with English materials in the English Style.

 We made it back to our hotel, but I was doubtful for a bit there.  That was a crazy amount of walking.  Next time, we would definitely rent a bike.  After resting in the hotel for a bit, we got ready for our evening excursion - a nighttime cruise along the Danube!

The Parents enjoying dinner with their new Indian friends.

Communist monument in the background of the Liberty Bridge.

Buda Castle at night!

Ultimately, I loved everything about Budapest.  Even though it was probably the most "Foreign," it still felt a little like home.  There was plenty to do, and the history of the country is so beautiful and sad.  If I were to return to this area of Europe, I would definitely want to do it here!