BABY WE WERE BORN TO RUN

 tomorrow morning I'm leaving for a whirlwind solo trip to St. Louis for my Mom's 80th birthday.  14 hours of driving on Friday and then 14 back on Sunday.  Woo-Hoo!  I can't fucking wait.  3 days of not really thinking about anything sounds 1000% fabulous.  

The 3 things I'm looking forward to not thinking about the most:

schooling

CCC

Minecraft

Sammers has become basically obsessed with Minecraft, despite the fact that he's played it about 4 times in his life.  It's all he talks about from the moment he wakes up at 6:30am until he goes to bed at 8pm.  And it's making me want to stick pens and screwdrivers in my eyes and ears.  

Schooling is meh.  We've been talking about making a change, which would be a big fucking leap into the unknown.  But I'm to the point where my fear of leaping into the unknown is outweighed by my fear of becoming a stodgy, conservative, scared, boring, bored, stick in the mud.  

Jeannie took a picture of me and Anna the other day that I think looks cute.  I think it looks cute because Anna looks cute and because it's one of maybe 3 pictures where I look as cool as I secretly hope that I look in real life (but never do).  

 Secret confession:  sometimes the stock market affects my mood.  

Today I gave my kids (mostly Samuel) a stellar lesson about Capitalism and Communism using an example of a job we did at our house rolling pennies.  I told Samuel that he and Anna could roll the pennies and keep whatever they rolled, but that we would be totaling the amount and then splitting it evenly between them.  He argued that he should get more because he rolled more.  I told him that he was describing a Capitalist system, and that the system I was describing was basically a Communist system.  I told him that people who prefer Capitalist systems do so because they generally feel that not receiving more reward if you do more work feels unfair, but I asked him to consider how he would feel if it were he and I rolling pennies instead of he and Anna, and I would roll more than him, and he would end up getting less.  And I said that the nice thing about a Communist system is that (theoretically) everyone is taken care of or at least feels equal.  Anyway, I tried not to pitch one system over the other but pointed out arguments for and against each system.  

What a boring story.