Things to worry about:

Worry about courage
Worry about Cleanliness
Worry about efficiency
Worry about horsemanship
Worry about…

Things not to worry about:

Don’t worry about popular opinion
Don’t worry about dolls
Don’t worry about the past
Don’t worry about the future
Don’t worry about growing up
Don’t worry about anybody getting ahead of you
Don’t worry about triumph
Don’t worry about failure unless it comes through your own fault
Don’t worry about mosquitoes
Don’t worry about flies
Don’t worry about insects in general
Don’t worry about parents
Don’t worry about boys
Don’t worry about disappointments
Don’t worry about pleasures
Don’t worry about satisfactions

Things to think about:

What am I really aiming at?
How good am I really in comparison to my contemporaries in regard to:

(a) Scholarship
(b) Do I really understand about people and am I able to get along with them?
(c) Am I trying to make my body a useful instrument or am I neglecting it?

A fifteen year old girl who thinks and acts like a forty-five year old businessman has a 98% chance of finishing high school with her virginity intact.

FIVE IMAGES OF STAGE CLOWN KATHIE HOREJSI

Kathie Horejsi as recurring janitor character, Aquarium, New York Downtown Clown Revue, Dixon Place, NYC

Kathie Horejsi clown, Lorraine Gilman puppeteer, Nailing Jello to a Tree, New York Clown Theater Festival

Kathie Horejsi, Not-Just-For-Shock-Value, Six Figures Theater, NYC

Cricket the Christmas Clown, Bellevue Square Mall, Washington

I am suddenly climbing up out of my seasonal slough of despond to ramp up my participation in my daughter’s education.  I’m sure that’s the last thing she wants since the way it played out today is my purchase of the Barron’s test prep books for the New York State Grade 7 English Language Arts Test and Grade 7 Math Test.

As a member of the “creative class” I have never set much store in standardized tests.  In fact I would go so far as to say they are B*% S#@#. However, my daughter attends public school and thrilled as we were by the idea of our child attending the same school grade 6 through grade 12.  We have decided that we would like her to go somewhere else for high school.  Personally I’m still very happy with her choice of an all-girls middle school.  But, now that she is firmly entrenched in her technology career choice, I want her to expand her horizons beyond Brooklyn, as the lyrics in the theme song for the Patty Duke Show say:

“But Patty’s only seen the sights a girl can see from Brooklyn Heights…”

I spent two hours today talking to another mom in a coffee shop in Brooklyn Heights.

Our girls are at the same school.  We have the same doubts about our school and the same hopes for our girls.  Her kid is a year ahead of mine, in the 8th grade.  So they are done with the process, the schools have been visited, the tests have been taken, the forms have been filled out, the first choice/dream schools have been chosen and fingers are crossed–and have been for months.  Her kid is 13-years-old!

I am listening to this woman talk and thinking to myself, “Oh S#*+ I need to get a tutor because I can’t risk my kid blowing off the stupid standardized random core knowledge test because next fall she may see and want to apply to a high school that weighs heavily the difference between a 3 and a 4 on the stupid standardized test.

This is like Dance Moms only about public school.  If I don’t do whatever–my daughter will not be a the top of the pyramid of some school administrator whose existence I am as yet unaware of.

Can I just say how much I hate this system!

Well, I’ve gotten the e-mail from NYRR and now I am waiting for noon when I can officially register for the New York City Marathon November 2013.

This year was supposed to be my one and only foray into the world of marathon running, go big or go home, if you only run one race this is the one… and all that.

And then it didn’t happen.

It took a long time for the New York Road Runners to decide if they were going to allow “charity runners” automatic entry into next years race.  That’s the kind I am.

The announcement has been made and now I am waiting to see how the registration goes.

I’m going to go on line and take care of this today at lunch time.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

My kid was impressed by my race number when I got home from the Jungle Bell Run today.

It was my first run with a computer chip on my shoe and an official race number pinned to my clothes.  The New York Marathon was to have been my first.  I was going to start at the top.  Instead I began with a 4-mile fun run in Prospect Park.  But I had red jingle bells on my shoes!!!