Labor Day

Today is probably the first Labor Day in my life that I actually have thought about Laborers. Laborors. Labourers. However it is spelled. In fact I am actually a little bit ashamed to admit that I did not know what Labor Day was about until the end of college or so. I honestly thought that Memorial Day was about remembering dead soldiers and Labor Day was about honoring people still serving. Why? No idea. But I'm going to blame it on the upper middle class funded, highly above average public education I received in the late 90's, when public education experienced its golden era. Thanks a lot, teachers who cared and a community that valued providing its young people with every opportunity imaginable.

Anyway! This Labor Day I could not help but think of the legislation happening all over the US and especially in my state of Ohio to limit the rights of public employees and collective bargaining agreements. I'm not going to get too political here, but I am going to mention something I heard someone say once at a symposium that I went to in grad school. She was talking about unions and how they were created to protect uneducated workers. She pointed out that educated people have tools with which to bargain- they have their degree, they have their experience, they have something to bring to the table that others don't, or at least something to compete with that sets them apart. But when you're a laborer, when you're essentially a cog in a machine, you have nothing to protect you but your work. If your boss wants to fire you because you had an emergency and showed up 5 minutes late, he will, because in the boss's eyes, there's 50 more "yous" lined up outside that can be trained in a couple of days. The only thing that they had to bargain with, the lecturer said, was their bodies and the potential to shut the whole operation down. So unions were formed. Food for thought. The end.

And now for a bunch of cute pictures of my kid. We spent the weekend with friends and other kids and buying a gigantic train table off Craigslist on a whim. It all started when I realized how much Elliott LOVES train tables when we go to a store that has one. Then I set up a little plastic train set he got for his birthday on a coffee table. He loved it, but there was only one train and it didn't run around it very well. So Friday we went to Ikea and I got him another train set, and set it up while he was taking his nap. When he woke up and saw it, he was so happy

It entertained him for that whole day, but the track didn't stay on that table well so I thought, we should get him one of those train tables. I'd thought about getting him one for Christmas, but I realized they are pretty cheap on Craigslist, yada yada, a quickly returned text message later and we are driving slowly through Cincinnati on back roads with this monstrosity hanging out the back of Matt's truck.

Now, because I am in a never ending quest to make my house that is completely overrun with toys not look like it is completely overrun toys, I did not of course leave it in the middle of the living room. It is tucked away in my entry way, where it is at least not noticeable when you're sitting in the living room.

 which looks like this, in case you're wondering

Today we went to a little community pot luck get together at the park right by our house. I was invited by this couple that I went to college with and lived by in an apartment after college, and there were some other people from college there who I hadn't seen in a long time, so that was fun. But the BEST part about today was the weather. It was sweater weather and it was glorious. Elliott had a blast, especially when he saw some guys throwing around a football. He ran out to the field and held his arms out for the ball, and they were sweet enough to oblige for a few minutes.