It is pouring.

We’ve had a drought here in northeastern Georgia, so much so that folks have quit griping when it rains. But rain has often been associated with the more depressing times in life. When Karen Carpenter sang about “Rainy Days and Mondays” we just knew that wasn’t gonna be a happy tune. When the poet Longfellow penned the words, “Into each life some rain must fall” he was acknowledging that things just don’t go well all of the time. And we all know the one I used as the title, “When it rains, it pours.”

This week has been a difficult one. Despite some comments from relatives, I don’t write many entries about my personal life, my friends, or my family, and if I do, I don’t usually insert names. By and large that is to protect the guilty. Innocence is rare these days. Again, no names, but I will describe the situations.

First, an assistant principal at my son’s school called to tell me that my son is suspended. A classmate, a nefarious dude from what I have heard, “intentionally antagonized him [my son]” so my son turned around and poked at him with a pencil. Thus began his three day vacation from the classroom. As is common in the world of educational fairness, the perpetrator got the same punishment. If our criminal justice system worked the same way, those who steal and those who are stolen from would serve the same jail time.

Second, I am writing this week, but not a novel. I have until Tuesday to get together my “testimony” for an academic appeal hearing. A student who cited wikipedia as a scholarly source and thinks “theirselves” is proper grammar for a research paper has appealed her grade in my class. Her term paper is just one exhibit which I am planning to use as evidence. I’m not worried about the hearing; I’ve watched hubby prepare legal briefs for many years, so I know how to make a case. It is just one more thing to do when I’d rather be doing something else.

As for rain, Dolly Parton once said, “The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.”

I could use a rainbow.

What I Can’t Write About

I generally have no trouble thinking of topics, but I do struggle with what I can blog about and get away with it. I’ve had several ideas occur to me, but I’ve nixed them due to politics. Being politically correct at our house is ridiculously important, due to hubby being in public office, so I can’t write about anything beyond writing and publishing.

Here’s what I didn’t write about this week:

• Only in Georgia (a tale hubby told me about buying a church raffle ticket— for a shotgun!)

• National Board Certified Teachers (my daughter’s high school hired a counselor with this august designation last year, and this year the middle school counselor and assistant principal spent the first week of school rebuilding all the schedules, while my daughter spent time in her history class coloring. About 90% of the schedules were hopeless, so the teachers are saying that classes start over again next week.)

• Why motorists don’t need a cell phone! (a recollection of the day six police cars lined the road on either side in front of our house— prompted by my twelve year old playing “army” in the yard and a motorist who called it in as “a dark haired male with a firearm.” I guess he was going too fast to see the big orange gizmo on the muzzle of his toy gun.)

• ROI (explaining why I have decided that I can’t do any more promotions when my royalty check from WCP was $4.96 for three months’ worth of sales. While I’ve enjoyed visiting cons and bookstores, those figures do not cover gas, much less hotel bills.)