The Daily Vent

School starts in Lindsay a week from today. Today I registered Dylan for preschool. Yes, I'm that on top of things. At first I was told that Washington Preschool (the one attached to Keilana's elementary school) was full. I was not about to do drop-offs and pick-ups at two different locations every day, so I pleaded for sympathy, pointing out that I already had a child in school there, and the nice woman who was getting him registered found one afternoon class she could squeeze him into. God bless her. I had wanted him to go in the morning, and knew what teacher I wanted, and got neither, but that's the prices of procrastination.

I have a procrastinating problem. But in this case, it isn't just a laziness or time management problem. You see, I've had his physical and TB test done since March. March--I could've registered him at any point since then. Though it wasn't really conscious, I realized I'd been avoiding getting it done.

I am a pretty conservative person, in many, many respects, by nearly any definition of the word. But all other social, personal and religious habits aside, I would probably still be conservative just because nearly every facet of my personality revolts against nearly every aspect of bureaucracy. I hate paperwork, I hate impersonal, I hate inefficient, all of that. Bureaucracy is so antithetical to my nature that its difficult for me to deal with when I have to. Every time I have to deal with large school systems, the DMV, the brief period of time where my kids were on Medicaid, or anything else of the paperwork-and-statistics government monolith, I very briefly become an anarchist. It only lasts a minute or two before I come back to my senses, but I never stop feeling and thinking that I'd like to move to Wyoming or Alaska--some of the last places on earth where people understand that there's a good way to live that's somewhere between lawless anarchy and tyrannical, life-wasting bureaucracy.

Though I don't know I'll ever truly be a Californian in my heart (Montana isn't easily displaced for those of us in whose hearts she reigns), I do understand why California lured so many people, why it seemed like a western Eden. Its rather sad to be watching a place so blessed with human and natural resources collapse in on itself.