No Place for Camouflage in Schools

 I don’t get it. Maybe I’m slow but I don’t understand why wearing camouflage is a problem at certain schools. Almost all the schools in St Lucie County allow students to wear camo, all but a few which includes my daughter’s middle school. I don’t understand.

I purchased a nice sturdy L.L. Bean blue camo back pack with the matching lunch box last school year for Erin. She used that back pack all of last year and no one said a word to her about it. This year I did buy her a new bag but it a satchel type and it ended up being too cumbersome for her when she rides her bike. She went back to using her camo back pack. One of the teachers pull her aside last week and told her that no camo of any kind or color is allowed in school.

What?

Why?

I don’t get it.

Now don’t get me wrong, I have stood up for the school board on many decisions that have not always made a parent’s job any easier but I was under the impression that St Lucie County was going to one dress code to be followed by all schools and they did. However they gave all the principals the privilege of ‘fine tuning’ the dress code as they saw fit. I perused several school web sites some referred back to the school board dress code and the magnet schools all but make the kids wear a uniform. The middle school my daughter is going to was one of only 2 or 3 schools in the whole county that strictly forbid camouflage or colors that were to bright was another one I read. Of course final judgment of what is too bright was left up to the school as are all the rules and they make you sign a form every year stating you agree to these rules.

Can you say Gotcha…………..

I’m not sure how I should approach this problem anyone with any good ideas on how I should handle this please share ……..

Ernesto

 

What an incredibly long day. It was raining when I got up this morning but stopped by the time I left for work. We had a few feeder bands blow through the area today and we are expecting more rain this evening but the rain amounts are nothing like the forecasters predicted.  Phone calls into the 911 center were few and far between. We spent much of our day gossiping and telling tales about each other, if the walls could talk we'd all be in trouble. The domestics actually did not start until this afternoon and we only had one minor traffic accident on I-95. We had several loud noise complaints and I don't know how people manage to leave so close together.  I had one guy call in because the neighbors kids were in the back yard playing and listening to the radio.  Nice neighbor.........

Tommorrow the kids go back to school and life goes back to normal more or less. Eric's wake is Friday evening and the funeral is Saturday at 9am. My weekend is pretty much planned for me.
The department is giving him a funeral with full honors which is wonderful but very long and very sad. I hate bagpipes and the last 1007 radio transmission it always makes me cry. 

Getting ready for the Big Blow

Here comes Tropical Storm Ernesto. We have been watching this storm since last Friday but we still managed to have a decent weekend in Orlando even though it rained everyday like clockwork. I honestly expected a lot more from this storm than what we are actually going to get. I anticipated a nice Cat 2 when it finally entered the gulf maybe another Charlie or worse. I am very thankful that Ernesto has become nothing more than a bad storm. I am not topping off my gas tank but I do need to run to the store for milk. We are out.

All the local governments are taking precautionary measures just in case the storm picks up momentum over the Florida straits but even by the most generous predictions it will not become a hurricane until after it leaves the Florida coastline and heads back out into the Atlantic.

Will we take any precautions at all? Probably, I won’t be at home I get to work the storm. I am schedule for 3am to 9pm, 18 hours of weather related calls and much flooding. The storm is not exactly moving fast and it will dump badly needed rain in our area. Canals, rivers, and lakes will most likely overflow their banks and roads will flood. Some homes will get flooded, roofs will leak, screens will get blown out of patios the usual slow moving storm related damage. We will pick up the yard and move anything that might blow around and cause any damage but other than that we are good to go.

That’s okay Fred just got the call from the PD to show up 6am in the morning and they gave him the option to stay home and keep his vacation day or come in. I don’t have to tell you what he chose.

Vacation was okay, I could have stayed in Orlando much longer even with the rain every day. Losing Eric this weekend did put a strain on both Fred and I but otherwise it was nice to relax. We shopped and went to Oldtown. Fred and Elizabeth went to see Queensrych at the house of Blues and had a really good time. I could have used a little more time in the Jacuzzi and I want someone to make my breakfast every morning. The continental breakfast buffet was good as basic breakfast goes but 10 xs better than having to do it myself. I want to go back again real soon.

As of noon today St Lucie Co EOC is standing down. There will be no evacuations and I have been told to report to work as usual.  There will be no curfews unless there is widespread power outage and the option to board up you home is only if you want to. I hate it when my husband is right but today I think I will let him slide.

 

A & W in Oldtown, Orlando

 

I will miss you Eric.........

We suffered a great loss on Friday morning with the passing of a good man Eric Pierre-Jerome. I did not see him often but when I did he always had a smile on his face and was never too busy to stop and say hello. I had the pleasure of working with him on the other side of the radio. Eric was one of my favorite officers. When I heard his voice on our off channel, I always used the opportunity to give him a hard time. It would not be to many minutes afterwards that he would give me a phone call and return the favor. He often talked about his girls and having 2 of my own about the same age we always had stories to swap about our families. I will miss our conversations I wish I had talked to him more often.

Eric was a good man, and a good police officer. He always talked about his wife and children- he was a good father. I can not imagine a world without him. My sympathy goes out to his family. I can not imagine that kind of grief. I can not imagine my own girls growing up with out their father and I can not even begin to try to understand their loss. I pray that God gives them the strength to help them get through this loss. Eric will be sorely missed by every one who know him.

Staybridge Suites......Nice

We are staying at the Staybridges Suites in Orlando this weekend. After having such a busy summer we really needed to get away even if it for just a long weekend. We were lucky and were able reserve a 2 bedroom 2 bath suite with kitchen and small great room for a very reasonable price. It's not as nice as North Carolina but it is very comfortable and I can wear flip flops without having to worry about frost bite.
We will be up early in the morning for continental breakfast then off to take pictures. We are trying hard to keep our expenses to a minimum no theme parks no unnecessary dining out. Fred and Beth went to the store and purchased groceries for several days. Tonight Beth made Chicken with Peppers and Mushrooms. She is becoming such a good cook. I can't wait to see what she makes tomorrow night.

My boy Page.......

We went to a wedding 2 weekends ago and this is a co-worker Page who has had too much to drink having a discussion with Erin as to wether she really knows the definition of "wasted". Page for some reason likes to call Beth - Meg and if you watch closely Beth/Meg keeps flicking the table decorations into Pages face as he argues with Erin but never misses a beat.......


Get this video and more at MySpace.com

Dukes of Hazard Police Chase

I thought this was so cool.



Look at what I learned how to do!!!!!!!!

Just how picky is Goodwill?

Apparently Goodwill Industries has very high standards when it comes to used furniture. I thought my furniture was very used but not necessarily as junk. The livingroom furniture is ugly and faded but it is not torn nor stained. The dining room table has seen better days worn and chipped but nothing broken and still very sturdy. Coffee table and end table in good shape but the glass tops are missing and I no longer replaced the glass because several members of my family cant keep their fannies off the furniture. I was told that they would not be able to resale my furniture because it was too used. I am almost embarrassed however I was warned in advance that they probably would not take anything that was to old or too used and they were right so much for trying to be charitable.

I am thinking about calling the Salvation Army or maybe PAL or Mustard seed. Maybe my furniture is not too used for them. I guess I'll call Monday and if I don't get any takers I guess all my old stuff will go out to the curb on Tuesday.

O Well............

Puppy dials 911

911 recieved two calls from a residence in Port St Lucie today both times the operators answer the phone only to be disconndected. However both operators swear that they hear what sounds like a dog wimpering in the background. Officers respond and confirm there is a dog in the house but can not get anyine to come to the door. Just as the officers decide the home is secure and start to leave the home owner arrives on the scene. Officers check the house and found the families new puppy was using the cordless phone as a teething ring as he chewed on the phone he some how managed to hit 911 several times.

Nothing surprises me anymore............

We also celebrated a birthday today. We had a nice dinner at the Out of Bounds restraunt. I love our waitress.....she picked up on the hint that there was a birthday at our table and just before we left she brought a slice of cake with a single candle (because it was not big enough to hold 38) and sang a very embarrassing Happy Birthday to the Birthday Boy. Tommorrow Erin and I have to get a restraining order but tonight was well worth it.

Savage Drama

Im not allowed to have an oppinion so I'll just keep everybody updated.


First day back.....long and a tad stressful.

Back to Work

I am up and dressed and ready to go. I am eating a bowl of frosted flakes trying not to make too much of a mess. I am excited and also dreading going to work this morning. My shift is not the way I left it and I am not sure I can fix the problems that have occurred while I was gone. I guess I will do my best.....wish me luck!!!!!!

Pic of Me!!!!!!!

  

Disappointing Yard Sale

Since I have had so much time off I planned on having a garage sale the last weekend of my sick leave. My garage is packed with stuff we no longer need or want and it is time to get rid of it all. I have furniture, clothing and tons of books easy stuff to sale you would think. I am not asking for a lot at least I did not think so and I like to bargain as much as any body. So far the most fun I had was haggling over sheets with a Haitian woman. She drove a hard bargain but she was happy when she left and I made room for something else to sell.

Friday was so sad; I made all of $19. Saturday after sweating my ass off all day I made $50. I had hoped to have at least made several hundred by the end of the weekend and cleaned out my garage. I still have a complete living room set neatly laid out in my driveway. My 3 pieces wicker set I thought would sell immediately still sits outside with stuffed dolls lounging on it. Example: She spilled coffee on her tan pants yesterday this is tan coffee on tan pants.

“Mom?” (in a panic) “Will this stain my pants?”

“No Erin it will rinse out in the washing machine.” Fred and I both say at the same time.

She is the neatest one of my three and her clothes reflect that. Beth my goth her clothes are ripped and torn and Warren - he wont let me in his room to look for anything.

We’ll I just sold my wicker set for $60 and a lady and her girls just stopped by and are very interested in my living room set. It is a shabby sheik floral – gold, green and red. She doesn’t think it will fit in her living room but she said she will be back. I love having wireless and a laptop. I love the Sunday morning church crowd maybe I will get rid of all this stuff after all.........

I love Ben Stein (click)

He is an incredibly intelligent man......My mother sent this to me I think it makes some interesting reading.

**************I have included snopes site for a more accurate version of what Ben Stein really said......Thanks Jen!!!!************


................................................................

If they know of him at all, many folks think Ben Stein is just a quirky actor/comedian who talks in a monotone. He's also a very intelligent attorney who knows how to put ideas and words together in such a way as to sway juries and make people think clearly.

The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary, Sunday, 12/18/05 .

Herewith at this happy time of year, a few confessions from my beating heart:
I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important?

I don't know who Lindsay Lohan is either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise's wife.

Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are.

If this is what it means to be no longer young. It's not so bad.

Next confession:

I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejewelled trees Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are: Christmas trees.

It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, "Merry Christmas" to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a crèche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution, and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him?

I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too.

But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to.

The end of the quote....
*******************************************************************************
The rest is written by unknown author........I have altered a few things myself.


In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.

Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her "How could God let something like this Happen?" (regarding Katrina).

Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, "I say God is also angry when he sees something like this. I would say also for several years now Americans in a sense have shaken their fist at God and said, God, we want you out of our schools, our government, our business, we want you out of our marketplace. And God, who is a gentleman, has just quietly backed out of our national and political life, our public life. Removing his hand of blessing and protection. We need to turn to God first of all and say, God, we're sorry we have treated you this way and we invite you now to come into our national life. We put our trust in you. We have our trust in God on our coins, we need to practice it."

In light of recent events, terroriststs attack, school shootings, etc. this may have started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found recently) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK.

Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave because their little personality ies would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem. We said an expert should know what he's talking about. And we said OK.

Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with "WE REAP WHAT WE SOW."

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell.

Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says.

Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing?

Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you're not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it.

Pass it on if you think it has merit. If not then just discard it ... no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought process, don't sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in.

You Reap What you Sow?

911 OPERATORS ASK TOO MANY QUESTIONS?

I just turned off channel 12 news in disgust. There was a terrible crime that occurred in Palm Beach this morning. A grandmother was found stabbed to death in her home also attack her 6 year old grandson. He survived the attack.

All the neighbors are upset and that is understandable, this is a terrible crime. What pissed me off was an irresponsible reporter. The reporter found a neighbor that stated he called 911 around 3am when the incident occurred to report 2 men they saw loitering near the residence the stabbing occurred. The neighbor watch the subjects jump the fence and then jump back across the fence a little while later. Officers where dispatched to the area but I am unsure what occurred after that all the guy could complain about was how the 911 operator asked too many questions. If the operator had been more concerned with just getting the officer there instead of wasting all that time asking questions the out come may have been different.

The reporter let the story end at that. Dispatchers ask too many questions…….

That is completely untrue.

One of the most important skills a dispatcher has to have is multitasking. If you can not multitask then you can not be a Dispatcher/911 Operator. If you are answering the phones you have to be able to type quickly and ask questions. As soon as I pick up a phone I try to quickly discern what the problem is and what is the address. Then I start a screen. I ask for name and phone number and then I start with the important questions; who, what, where, when, and how. I also want descriptions. If the incident is in progress I want to keep the caller on the phone until the officer gets there that can be the difference between catching a criminal or the criminal getting away.

Now while I am typing, once I get enough pertinent information I transmit the call to the dispatcher who in turn dispatches and officer to the scene. I am fast so this might take approximately a minute give or take. The time to create the call has much to do with how difficult it is to get the answers to my questions.

Perfect example: A hang up call…… someone calls hangs up. I have to call back if its busy I have to call back again. If someone picks up the phone and hangs up I still have to call back. I then build a screen and send it to dispatch. When the dispatcher gets the call they will call back the phone number maybe once some times twice. You can imagine how long this process is. We get hang ups all the time and though we try to treat them as emergency calls it is hard because so many are false calls………. Without information it is very difficult to determine what the priority of the emergency is and this alone can determine the response of a call.

Now after I have sent the call I am able to update the screens with the information I obtain. So even though I still have the caller on the phone and am asking questions I have already notified the dispatcher so she can do her job and in turn the officer can do their job. I don't keep people on the phone and ask questions because I feel like I do it because it is my job. My job is to obtain as much information as possible and to relay it to the officers on the street. I do my job well and it pisses me off when people like this reporter makes my job that much harder.

Pate's Creek Elementary School (click)

I was surfing today and made my quartly Pate surname search just to see if there was anything new I might have missed and came across this site. There is a creek and even a park with the same name just down the road a ways. I know some of our Pate's settled in Henry County in the early 1800's so who knows what the relationship might be.

Birthday in the Middle.

  

Today is a special day. August first is the day that sits right in the middle of my daughters’ birthdays. I have one born July 31 and the other Aug 2. It is the day we usually celebrated both their birthdays. However Sunday we had a plain Marble Cake for Beth and tomorrow we will have Ice Cream Cake for Erin. They both decided not to have a birthday party this year. They took the cash instead. My girls love to shop and shop they did. One Saturday they spent at Treasure coast Mall in Jensen Beach and last week I took them to the Vero Mall. They purchased almost all of their school attire and much more. They are happy and that is all that matters.

Happy Birthday Beth – 14

Happy Birthday Erin -11


And………

Check out TS Chris – it’s headed this way and I had my last post surgery check up and I have been cleared to return to work on the 14th. Dr Lomax says I look good my vitals are good and my suture has healed nicely. She said I have good skin……….