The joy of social media, in a nutshell: “but have I mentioned this here? on this particular website?”

One of the things that I realized that I hadn’t done was take down some pictures that my mom had hung in my room while she was still alive, and it eventually got to the point that I wanted to remove them and make some more room on my walls for things that I would like to get around to hanging, so I began to do that. Truth be told, it wasn’t too difficult to remove most of them, although… being as short as I am, it did involve standing on a chair to remove the last few of them, but I managed. At some point, I would like to hang the certificate of membership that I got from The Satanic Temple up on my wall, and I wouldn’t have had the room on my wall if I didn’t begin taking things down. I also want to hang the certificate of ministry that I have from the Universal Life Church, because I got that in the event that any friends of mine want(ed) me to preside over weddings for them, especially if they were LBGT and encountered difficulties finding someone who was willing to preside for them in the earlier years of same-sex marriage legalization when this was more of a thing and same-sex marriage had just become legalized in all fifty states in the United States.

I would also hang my associate’s degree up on my wall, but I got that in 2012, but I’m not very attached to it.

I think my associate’s degree is best off remaining in my closet, as I don’t consider “getting an education” something worth hanging on my wall. I don’t know… maybe that’s just me. It’s what you do with what you have that matters more, I think, not just “getting it”. So many people are gatekept out of getting higher education in America due to the prohibitive price of it, especially once you factor student loans into the situation anyway. I’m lucky in that I was even able to get a student loan with Pell Grants as it was anyway.

As per an order from a judge, schools in this district could not actually open for in-person (“face-to-face”) instruction until on or after Labor Day. This district decided to come up with the “plan” of allowing parents and guardians to choose between allowing their students to attend in-person or virtually in the face of the pandemic, but that was taken away from them in the form of this order prohibiting face-to-face instruction until at least that date. The district could have chosen to delay the start of the school year until on or after Labor Day, which meant that students would attend school until the start of June instead of the end of May, or all students could attend virtually until on or after that date. Apparently this district is going to attempt to have all students attend virtually, which… surprisingly is not that bad of an option. I suppose we as collective citizens of this county will see if this blows up in the district’s face for lack of planning in the coming weeks.

But this literally makes the third or fourth time that this district has not, in some capacity, been allowed to fling the doors open during this pandemic for access, or increased access, to federal funding, and it really shows where their priorities are. At this point, nothing that the district could do would surprise me any more.