Slice of Life Tuesday: Amid a Blizzard

I came across a draft titled “Social Media is a Cesspool”, but as I looked out the window to see the snow blowing by, I thought I’d write about our current conditions.

I’ve had a monster viral illness, starting a week ago today. My fever has passed, but the cough, oh my goodness the cough. I was put on a steroid for 5 days to open up my airways, which worked, but today was the last day of those meds, so we’ll see how it goes from there. The reason I say all this, I was up this morning at about 3:00 AM coughing, so I got a cough drop and looked outside to see no much snow had fallen. We’ve had this problem before, everyone gets excited about the “big storm” and then nothing. We’ve already canceled school, so no worries there, but I hate snow days that aren’t actually snow days.

I went back to bed and when I got up SO much had changed. The forecasts of up to an inch per hour were true because there was SO much snow on the ground. It’s relatively cold right now, so the snow is much more fluffy than the snow that kept up home Tuesday and Wednesday.

Now, the wind is starting to pick up, and a Blizzard Warning has been issued for our county. If you look at the National Weather Service map, most of Iowa is in the midst of this storm. Tons of fluffy new snow and a 40 mph wind are a recipe for disaster. Roads are closed, in most of Northeast Iowa “travel is not advised”, and 3/4 of the state has a tow ban of some sort issued for their county.

NOTE: I started to write this a couple of weeks ago. We’ve had four snow days and two late starts since January 8th. This week will be our first full week of school since the last week of school before Christmas! Winter is moving back in Iowa and I don’t like it! Back to the blog!

#nicesegway

I look at this weather and it’s how I feel the state of public education is in Iowa. Our governor wants to take beginning teacher salaries and bump them up. She also wants to bump up teachers in year 12. The rest of us, a big middle finger. Where does this money come from? We have Area Education Associations, organized by the state, who help with special ed services and many other this our Iowa schools use on a daily basis. These organizations have been recognized as some of the best in the nation. So our governor wants to hollow them out, take that money, and use it for salaries (she’s not said that, it’s my own conspiracy theory, but a pretty good one).

#eek

That’s about right. The funny part, her minions are out there patting her on the back for fighting back against the “woke” educators who work for these AEAs. When pressed about what they do that is “woke”, I get called a political stooge, or groomer, or told that I should be put on a watch list. I mean, I tell bad jokes and am a horrible writer, but I don’t think I should be called names for asking someone what they think “woke” is for our state.

We’ve gone batshit crazy here in Iowa. I’m not even sure what shade of red our state is right now. We had a foreign exchange student here in the fall of 2016, and she couldn’t understand why people were so fascinated with Trump. It’s 2024, and it’s that much worse. I keep waiting for our state to go from red to purple, the way it used to be, and really don’t think it will happen in our lifetime.

It’s late, I’m trying to get this submitted before midnight, so I’ll wrap this up by saying next week, the forecast is warmer than normal with no snow.

I wish I could believe that our state would also thaw out from the blowing confusion that we’ve been forced to deal with for many years now. People are talking more about how fed up they are with the current culture war being driven by our governor and legislature? But the big question always is will they remember in November?

Past elections tell us no, they won’t.

I’m just hoping that we warm up to new ideas about what our state can be and thaw ourselves out to change, just a little bit.

#enoughwiththeweatheranalogies