School's almost out.....

In nine more days my kids will be out of school. I am out of school for the moment, but I'll be taking summer classes. I'm afraid if I stop for the summer I'll forget the math I learned last semester, so I'm going to just blow through. I/m taking 2 other classes though...another sociology class and a music class. After I pass math this summer I have one more class to go and then I never have to take another math class again.
Sometimes I think it's funny to be 39 and finishing what amounts to my freshman year of college, but then I think about my grandfather. He was a doctor, but he didn't start med school until he was 42. I don't plan on med school, and even if I had my degree long ago I would have taken all the time off for the kids so it's just as well I waited until now. You can have it all, I just don't think it's practical to have it all at once. It's tough now working full time while I have kids and they are teenagers, except for Shortie who's nine. Their dad is home with them most afternoons, but I still miss then and wish I had less antisocial hours. On the plus side, when I finish school I can get a job with better hours, and more pay so it'll be easier to pay for 4 college educations that are coming up with four kids.....one will start in 2012, on in 2013, the next in 2015, and the last around 2018.
The older three know what they want to do with their lives, and good for them. It took me until I was 38 to get over what my mother kept telling me to do and do what I was interested in. Of course it helps that I'm the one paying my way know, she had more say when she was paying the bill, more say than I should have given her, but what can you do when you are 18 and really don't have a clue? You listen to Mom, even if she's wrong because you think she has your best interests at heart. Maybe she does, but when you have interests as diverse as ours were it doesn't go well. One thing I learned is to let my kids choose, not to tell them that no one will take them seriously if they choose one class over another. During my first try at a degree, Mom talked me into Psych 101 instead of Sociology 101 because Soc was the "lighter" class. Well, Sociology is my major, and I might have stayed in school if I could have taken things I was actually interested in. In the end it was all for the good, since I stayed home with kids I started having at 23, but sometimes I wonder what she'd say now. I can't find out, she's dead. But I still wonder. And I love what I'm taking, even if Dad does tease me and call me a closet communist.

The Immigration Debate

I'm sure everyone has heard all about Arizona's bill about illegal immigration, since cities and state all over are boycotting or threatening to boycott AZ over this. Los Angeles' boycott is kind of a joke to me, since it's got so many illegals they appear to be pandered to. I lived in the LA area for 20 years, and one thing that always got me was that I had to have insurance in case I got into an accident involving an illegal because they did not have papers of any kind (i.e. a drivers license, registration, etc) and therefore did not have the legally required insurance. So, even though I had to carry X-amount of liability in order to register my car, and pay for damage if I hit somebody, if somebody hit me I couldn't count on them being financially responsible because they didn't have to be. This is just the tip of the immigration iceberg. The plain truth is that without papers illegals get benefits that are actually denied to citizens and legal residents. This is not about being prejudiced, this is about the harsh reality that we can't take care of the whole world just because they manage to sneak in.
I have sympathy for illegals, I do. I get that many are fleeing from what they feel is an intolerable situation, and they feel there is no where else to go. But the plain truth is that we do not have the resources to take of this, and they in many cases do not contribute to the very resources they access.
I don't claim to know what the answer to this issue is, but I don't see how my state deciding to enforce existing Federal law is evil. This is a law that already exists. I have friends who are here legally and they have to carry resident alien ID at all times. Why is it asking to much that we follow laws of this land, and punish those that are in actuality breaking them by their very presence?