{"id":1082,"date":"2012-12-17T07:07:20","date_gmt":"2012-12-17T14:07:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog2.queenoframbles.com\/?p=1082"},"modified":"2012-12-17T07:07:20","modified_gmt":"2012-12-17T14:07:20","slug":"hardest-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog2.queenoframbles.com\/?p=1082","title":{"rendered":"Hardest thing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I just did what felt like one of the hardest things I&#8217;ve ever done.  I took Erik to the bus stop, let him get on the bus and ride off to school.  I seriously considered keeping him home this week, but what good would that do?  I can&#8217;t put armour plating around my house and never leave home again.  I can&#8217;t protect my children from random evil in the world.  I can only hope that the random evil never touches us.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s an awfully big hope.<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t really write much more about it.  It&#8217;s too big, too painful.  I know every parent in this country, if not every single person in the entire world is reeling from the pain of the events.  I don&#8217;t have much to add, except that this country has a serious, serious problem with treating mental illness.  The mentally ill have to commit a crime before anyone will do anything, even when parents, teachers, friends and neighbors are BEGGING for help.  I don&#8217;t know if that was the case with this young man, I just know it&#8217;s the case with my sister (my God, you people will not believe what she&#8217;s done.  She will most likely be going to jail for a long, long time if she is not murdered by the criminal element first [the last I heard her own children are safe with their father.  He is filing for custody and talking to children&#8217;s services about keeping them in a safe house until my sister is arrested.])   <\/p>\n<p>So . . . what to say?  Terrible, terrible weekend.  I haven&#8217;t been able to sleep.  Erik is a first grader.  That could have been his room, his teacher.  I couldn&#8217;t stop crying when I heard the news, and then I cried even more when I heard about the heroics of Victoria Soto, the quick thinking teacher who saved her class of students but died  in the process.  She was so young.  That&#8217;s the name I want to remember from all this.  Not the name of the man who snapped.  <\/p>\n<p>I want to keep Erik home on Friday, 12\/21, the day of the end of the world.  I don&#8217;t think the world is going to end, but it seems like a day that people might go crazy.  He should be home with me.  Except they have a special science day planned and he is completely excited.  They are going to have all kinds of big magnets and other special equipment and they are bringing in a special science education program to put on a show.  Do I give in to fear and keep him home and hope I&#8217;m wrong, or do I refuse to be paranoid and send him off to the unknown?<\/p>\n<p>There were only 8 kids at the bus stop today.  There are usually 16.  I wonder how many were ill and how many parents decided to just call this week a wash and enjoy the heck out of their kids.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just did what felt like one of the hardest things I&#8217;ve ever done. I took Erik to the bus stop, let him get on the bus and ride off to school. I seriously considered keeping him home this week, but what good would that do? I can&#8217;t put armour plating around my house and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog2.queenoframbles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog2.queenoframbles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog2.queenoframbles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog2.queenoframbles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog2.queenoframbles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1082"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog2.queenoframbles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1083,"href":"http:\/\/blog2.queenoframbles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082\/revisions\/1083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog2.queenoframbles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog2.queenoframbles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog2.queenoframbles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}