I’m going to be very careful with my words.  I know someone who works for the TSA.  I need to make the disclaimer that I am in no way trying to offend or hassle this person.

With that said.  The TSA does absolutely nothing that makes me feel safer.  They make me feel violated and less than an American citizen.  When we check our bags in Cleveland on the way home from speaking at an Unschooling conference, they had us leave our bags and verified that we left them unlocked.  Dude!  That’s my stuff!  Airport screeners are allowed to go through your dirty laundry.  Literally!

Then off to airport security you go.  Leave your shoes, your jacket, all your liquids, and all metal in a bucket to they can x-ray it.  Baby has a bottle of milk?  Too bad, they need to screen it.  Little kids?  Too bad.  Make ‘em lose the sweatshirt and there Nintendo Ds’s.  Baby is sleeping in a sling with metal rings?  Too bad take him out and walk through the metal detector again or risk having an agent search you and your baby.  Actually, that wasn’t even presented to me as an option. They said, “we’ll get a female agent” and I said, “Can’t I just take it off and walk through again?” Fuck that man.  I HATE flying.  I don’t feel ANY safer than I did before 9/11.  In fact, I feel more violated, more untrusted, and less safe than EVER.

Someone please tell me, while I was waking the baby, or tending to my confused kids, or watching them take away the baby bottle…  how my husband was able to walk through the metal detector with this:

Make no mistake.  This is the sharpest friggin’ knife we own.  And we own a few.  This one will cut flesh and bone if needs to.  A quick google search for “TSA missed my knife” pulled up an awful lot of results like the three below.  How do you feel now?

TSA misses Swiss Army Knife but confiscates dangerous pudding.

TSA checks keyboard but misses large Swiss Army Knife

The TSA is a complete joke and not a funny one.

(BTW – I did not make up the titles)

In the end we were thankful they did not find it. First of all, it was a mistake. TJ always has the knife in his pocket along with some change and guitar picks. He’s had it since before we got together. He’d be awfully upset if it was taken from him. Not to mention the hassle that may have been brought about if further suspicions were put on him.

I’ve decided to migrate this winter.  Not only from Vermont to Washington, but from Blogspot to Wordpress.  I’ve been meaning to do this for quite some time but the very thought of it caused meltdowns of epic proportions a little stress.  I didn’t have the time or the brain capacity to handle all the work involved and I was really afraid I’d lose content.  Now that we are all settled into our new home I decided to just go for it.  With the help of my sexy, knife wielding, super hero of a husband, the blog migration was fairly painless.  If you were a follower at blogspot, I *think* you will have to resign-up for upates on the right, and please bear with me as we make improvements.  If you are a new reader then please use one of the options on the right to follow me.

So yeah, follow me.  Or else…