Home on the range

We spent Sunday night and most of yesterday in Florence with my parents. What was first my normal life and then a source of constant amazement for me has become a virtual amusement park for my children. I remember being in high school and thinking, I bet nobody else’s dad has rattlesnakes in the freezer. The two big rattlesnakes are gone now, but there’s a newly caught corn snake in an aquarium in the shop, very calm and easily handled, even by a three-year old while his mother hovers over him trying to contain him to the tail end—all the while his Papa is saying, “Want him to lick you with his tongue?” while his Grandma and I are saying, “NO!” The Gator four wheeler, the Kubota tractor, the fourty-seven bream my father caught that morning, the bird boxes filled with flying squirrel nests and titmouse eggs and newly hatched bluebirds—all like the homemade version of some imagined Disney Southern Nature Park to the kids. My parents don’t even have a farm, but it certainly felt that way when I was in school (which was of course mightily embarrassing), and anytime it doesn’t feel quite farmlike enough, well, we can always walk over across the road and look at the neighbor’s cows and buffalos.

It’s easy to tell when we’ve been to Florence, because afterwards we can count our mosquito bites. Will has about four, Laura has two, and, because I have not only more body mass but also am slower, I have eleven (Chris apparently is not tasty to mosquitoes because he never gets bit anymore). My father only recently gave up pointing out the problematic attire we wear allowing these bites—shorts! sandals! why don’t we wear jeans and socks like him, who never is bitten?—and we don’t use bug spray often at all because I’m always afraid of spraying some toxic chemical on my kids, particularly Mr. Finger Sucking William. So we just stay outside and suffer for it later—I do have an array of post-visit remedies, Benadryl and an Aveeno spray, not to mention the blue stuff, which the kids like, but which unfortunately gets all over clothes and sheets and the couch. I suppose in some way the nature park makes it worth the bites, even though they last a lot longer than the feel of the snakeskin. But maybe not as long as the memory of it.

Embracing the ocean

It is 8:55 a.m. and Laura and Will are still asleep. I slept until after 8:30 and then actually had at least ten minutes in the bathroom alone (oh God, I hear one of them moving—don’t let it be over—I know it can’t last).

We’re spending the weekend at Georgetown with my brother and his wife. (I see the shadow of the blinds from the kids’ room moving in the hall—it must be Laura who’s awake, because Will would’ve already been in here. Maybe she’ll read a while). Yesterday the coast was perfect, breezy and a little overcast, the waves that will put just enough pressure on you that you feel you’re being tossed by the ocean, but will mostly not knock you over, not even too big a crowd for Memorial Day weekend.

Before Shari and I took the kids to the beach, we made our obligatory Wal-Mart run, during which we always worry about how we look trashy because we’re on the way to the beach, but are reassured because plenty of people there look way more trashy than we ever would, during which we stock up on bottled water and Lunchables, during which we always have a list but still forget at least one thing. (Now Shari’s up, and neither of us can believe that Laura and Will still aren’t up. Matt and Chris both got up early, probably to indulge in some manly kayaking or fishing venture, God only knows.)

We spent our perfect beach day next to a tide pool at Huntington Beach, which is our favorite spot because not only is the beach not too crowded, but you can see huge alligators in the marsh side, and there are bathrooms where you can change clothes, and outdoor showers for after the ocean (all features not to be underestimated when you have small children). Not to mention Huntington’s castle Atalaya.

William generally doesn’t embrace the ocean. The beach he can handle, especially if there’s a tidal pool—sand is really not that interesting without water, after all, and it gets pretty hot if you don’t dip a toe in every once in a while. He’s been terrified of waves since his first visit to the beach, and when he was very little would yell even when you carried him if you even stepped in the water. (I hear him turning over in his room next door now!) No amount of playing hide and seek with the gentlest little wave that laps the shore makes that an attractive feature of the ocean for him. He’s always happy to sit in the little pools until they recede, but forget the ocean.

Laura was afraid of the waves herself when she was little, and I think she was around six or seven before she flung herself in the waves, never to return for another round of sand-castle building. Frankly, I am all for having small children who are afraid of the ocean, because the ocean doesn’t mess around. Now that Laura’s playing in the waves with her boogie board, I spend my time trying to watch Will and his sunscreen levels (I forgot the little still partially bald spot on the top of his head yesterday until it was starting to turn a little pink), to play my appointed role in the foot burying game, and watching Laura every second to make sure she hasn’t yet been pulled out into the ocean. Her rule this summer is no deeper than her hips, which is really not very deep, but the waves get so high that I don’t care. Any deeper and my anxiety levels top the charts. And she can still get clobbered by the occasional big wave at that depth, so she thinks it’s a reasonable compromise.

Will had his first real venture into the waves this trip, when he announced he wanted "to go see the big water." Shari and I held his hands and took him down, swinging him over a couple of the (relatively) bigger waves, which he thought was a hoot. Before too long, we were just standing there holding his hands, lifting him over only the really strong waves, while he just laughed and laughed, occasionally adding in a quick "Hold me!" He did great until he got a big mouthful of spray on one wave when we just weren’t quick enough, after which I really did have to hold him. When I got the water brushed off his face and he made sure he was still alive, he laid his head down on my shoulder and said "Mommy, carry me to our chairs so I can lay down and rest, because I’m having a hard time." So back to the chairs and wrapped up in a towel he went.

A while later we pried Laura away from her new beach friend Chelsea—she makes one every trip and thank God she’s not a teenager yet and they’re usually girls—and did our preliminary sand rinsing rituals to get us up to the showers. The showers are pretty difficult too, because that water is cold. All that warm sand and sun and then bam! Freezing water on naked babies. Laura obviously is way too old to take her suit off while she rinses off, but she’s also old enough to shower if you pull the cord for her, she finally gets get top layer off herself pretty well. But the babies we always just strip down right there on the wooden platform, scoop them up and stick them right under the spigot. It’s just a quick once over to get most of the sand off, but the wailing and moaning reaches great levels.

Shari is making cinnamon rolls. I heard Will again. I cannot believe he hasn’t gotten up. Laura must be doing something to him. I guess I’ll go see. The suspense is killing me.

(posted 7:42 p.m. no internet access at our place in Georgetown)

Anxiety dreams of a traitor brain

I have been having a lot of anxiety dreams lately. I generally have numbers of those in the summer, disguised one way or the other, because it really freaks me out to work at a job where you don’t get paid in the summer. Nothing like three months of no paychecks. Of course I work around this: save money during school, teach summer school, work on grant projects, etc. But still, since money’s a long-time button pusher of mine, summer’s tough, and I spend May and August especially having bad dreams and not wanting to balance my checkbook (as if I ever wanted to do that).

The odd thing is that this dream hit my other big anxiety buttons: family and work. Chris and I are driving in his car with William in the back in his car seat; it’s dark, and we’re clearly coming home from somewhere. My cell phone rings, and it’s the Provost. Yep, the big guy himself. He says something to the effect of “we found your daughter,” which I know in the dream is his nice diplomatic way of saying “why haven’t you come to pick her up yet?” because suddenly it dawns on me that she’s on campus in some kind of day camp and we were supposed to pick her up hours ago. I start babbling—“thank god you finally found her, where was she?”—knowing perfectly well that she was where she was supposed to be the whole time and that we are just the world’s worst parents for forgetting our daughter.

Fortunately I can wake myself up from dreams like this (and yes, I know how fortunate I am too that these are my bad dreams, and that my life and dreams could be way worse, and that Chris and I are not the very worst parents in the world). So I wake up, and promptly begin inventing excuses for the Provost about where we were. William was in the hospital! I went to pick Chris up at the airport and there was a terrible wreck! It was quite a while before I could convince myself that since this never happened, I really didn’t need to figure out how to justify it—even just to myself. I never really got back to sleep either. Wonder why these things are so upsetting? Wonder how to stop them? My friend Lisa would probably recommend therapy.

A note from the teacher

My little William got in trouble at school today, which is pretty much a first. He’s had a cranky day or two at school, of course, and then there were the biting days, which unfortunately (fortunately?) he was generally on the receiving end of. But he never had a note sent home before.

Well, I take that back. He gets a note everyday, but it’s the general all purpose “what time was nap, what was for lunch, and circle the mood I was in today” note. Today he was “Busy as a Bee” and “Sad.” Then for lunch: “refused to come to table.” Then the long note down the side: “He had a hard time listening today. He didn’t want to eat, potty, fix cot, brush teeth. Told his teachers no.” He was probably OK until he committed the cardinal sin: nobody says no to the teachers. I think we all have a hard time listening sometimes, and he probably could’ve still raked in a little pity for his snit until the Big No.

I’ll have to talk to the lead teacher in the morning; Miss Amber’s nice enough, but not all that communicative. Miss Amanda will straighten us all out, though. Discipline sometimes seems awfully random with a three-year old. I came in this afternoon and got the report and then gave Will his little lecture: were you sad this morning? did you know you made Miss Amanda and Miss Amber sad too? we have to do what our teachers tell us, don’t we? can you say “yes ma’am?” And so on.

Who knows how effective that is? Our kids both seem very well behaved on the whole, but probably Chris and I are those liberal wussy parents and Laura and Will will turn to crime later because they didn’t get spanked for saying no. Oh well, at least we’ll have interesting family notoriety. Not that we would really want that.

Chris had a bad day at school too. Is it bedtime yet?

What is your world view?

I haven't taken a quiz before where you get a deciding question after you finish your first results--I was tied. How these two things go together, I'm not sure.

You scored as Postmodernist. Postmodernism is the belief in complete open interpretation. You see the universe as a collection of information with varying ways of putting it together. There is no absolute truth for you; even the most hardened facts are open to interpretation. Meaning relies on context and even the language you use to describe things should be subject to analysis.

Cultural Creative		88%
Postmodernist		88%
Idealist		63%
Romanticist		63%
Existentialist		56%
Modernist		44%
Materialist		19%
Fundamentalist		19%

You scored as Cultural Creative. Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational.

Cultural Creative		88%
Postmodernist		88%
Idealist		63%
Romanticist		63%
Existentialist		56%
Modernist		44%
Materialist		19%
Fundamentalist		19%

What is Your World View? (updated)
created with QuizFarm.com

The fear of GOD

Chris gave his big Teacher of the Year speech at the baccalaureate for the seniors at First Baptist Sunday. It was very hard to describe—hilarious and bizarre, typical Chris. He kinda got the giggles at the beginning, which is what happens when he gets nervous, he told everybody. Laughing like that is contagious, so he had everybody laughing even before he got started speaking. But I thought it seemed very composed and deliberate nervous laughter (whether it was or not).

His basic premise seemed to be to reflecting on teaching high school—so he talked about teaching seniors in the spring (when their brains become mush) and the daily life of school (what happens when the air conditioning breaks in A Building). His observations, always interesting, verged at times on . . . well, perhaps a little too interesting. The principal certainly seemed a little nervous at times about what his “loose cannon” might say. Throughout the speech, Laura would periodically lean over to me and say, “Mama, Daddy is crazy!” Here’s one of my favorite crazy parts, a maintenance request for

…a mounted camera / laser system. This system would be mounted in all the hallways and be able to automatically detect instances of obscenity in the hallways, pinpointing the offender(s), and shooting a small beam of electric energy that stings but not permanently damages the offender. Also known as a Guided Obscenity Dectector, or GOD for short, these devices could significantly reduce common hallway problems that are difficult to enforce. Once kids had the fear of GOD in them, then things would certainly change.

He carried it off, and even the assistant principal who was sitting behind us was laughing. I personally am a big chicken, but clearly my husband is not. No question that Chris definitely upstaged the other speakers, and a big group of the seniors gave him a standing ovation, so on the whole I think it was a success. I know I’m proud of him—but I’m also glad he’s not making any more big speeches anytime soon!

Caterpillars, butterflies, cicadas

I actually found myself this morning driving to work after I dropped William off wanting to listen to his new singalong cd, but stopping myself because I’m grown up and it’s a kid cd. At this point, of course I chose to start it up again in the middle of “The Wheels on the Bus,” rather than do the mature thing and turn on NPR or possibly listen to another chapter in The Da Vinci Code. There can be such pleasure in knowing all the words to the songs, or in the lovely repetitiveness of a really soothing rendition of “The Alphabet Song.” I’m one of those yuppy moms who learned long ago to buy the outrageous $15.00 Pottery Barn Kids cd instead of the $2.99 Wal-Mart version—because I know you have to listen to it approximately 5 billion times a week, so you may as well get a version you can tolerate.

shoo fly, don’t bother me

When I got over my snit yesterday about the school secretary at O. Elementary, I spent the rest of the afternoon working and worrying about William, so we could have some equal opportunity parenting time. Chris and I just got our annual letter from the child development center director telling us what classroom he’ll be in next year, and I’m sort of panicking. When Laura was at the daycare, she was three and a half almost exactly, and she started in the Ladybug Room, which is where I thought Will was going. But he’s going to the Caterpillar Room instead. Now you can probably tell from the names that the Caterpillar Room is for the younger kids; not all the classrooms make sense (what on earth is a glow worm, anyhow?), but the sequence in those two makes perfect sense, and besides, it seemed that it must be his karmic fate to end up there because last week his class made little craft projects with butterflies glued to popsicle sticks that are curled up inside empty toilet paper rolls, which represent the cocoon. You push up on the popsicle stick, and voila, the butterfly emerges (or would if it weren’t still all curled up).

for I belong to somebody

I’m actually not too worried about where he goes next year, as long as his final year at the Center is in the Cicada Room. When Laura first started in the Cicada Room years and years ago, I remember thinking that it was way too structured—the teacher goes by her last name (Mrs. S.), instead of all the other teachers, who are Mrs. Lynn and Miss Amanda and whatnot (apparently there are no Mss. in this school). The kids fixed their own plates at lunch, and had a really strict schedule during the day, etc. It just wasn’t as touchy feely, and it took a while for us all to adjust to the new structure. Then when Laura went to kindergarten, I spent the year unhappy because her teacher wasn’t teaching her anything new—she’d already been to kindergarten in the Cicada Room. It took me until Laura’s second grade to realize how important that reinforcement was for giving her a good grounding for school. I wish I’d gotten over quicker the idea that my daughter wasn’t “being challenged,” that she was being held back with the other kids who hadn’t been in wonderful programs before they started school. I probably should go back and tell both teachers what I know now. For the moment, though, I’ll content myself with enjoying William’s last baby days, which might last a little longer as a caterpillar.

I feel like a morning star

Summer voice mail and sick kids

Hello, you’ve reached the voice mail of Dr. Lisa R. at University X. I’m not keeping regularly scheduled office hours this summer, but will be on campus periodically and will also be checking my voice mail several times a week. If you need to reach me quickly, however, please email me at famousdoctorr@universityx.edu.

Now that sounds clear enough, doesn’t it? If you were a school secretary, wouldn’t you think this might indicate to you that you should email the famed and busy Dr. R, after which you might expect a quick response? Instead, after hearing this message, the secretary at Laura’s school called my house (where surprise, surprise, even thought it’s summer, I was not at home), called my cell phone (which I leave off during the day until driving time), and then called my husband (getting him out of class so that he could call me at school). I was at work, down the hall at the photocopier, out of my office for ten minutes. And because the secretary didn’t leave a message or email me, it was almost an hour before the message got to me that my daughter was sick and lying around in the nurse’s office—and then I still had a half hour drive to get to her.

This whole taking care of sick kids thing really needs to be better handled. Frankly, I think this particular woman at Laura’s school is punishing me for being not only a working mom, but also a working mom with an unconventional schedule. Sometimes she’ll call and I’m in class—so I don’t get the phone message until two or three hours later. Sometimes it’s a day I don’t have classes. Sometimes I’m at a meeting out of town. She just never knows how to reach me!

This despite the fact that I have a serious medical disorder known as obsessive compulsive emailitis (I’m only lacking the formal diagnosis). This despite the fact that Laura told them this morning to email me (the school nurse does email me, and we get Laura settled quickly those days—when this secretary’s not in charge). This despite the fact that it actually says on Laura’s contact card at school across the top: “Email Mom at work to reach her quickly.” I check email between every class, and sometimes during it. I borrow my friends’ and colleagues’ computers when I’m away at off campus meetings. Even when I’m traveling to conferences, even the time I was at a convention in Mexico, I still found ways to check my email. (And believe it or not, it was easier to do that in Mexico, which has internet cafes, than in many US cities, which have loads of wireless Starbucks, but no communal computers.)

I am so just angry and frustrated right now—Laura was in the nurse’s room for almost two hours this morning waiting on somebody to pick her up. She’s all sick and pitiful, and the worst part is, she understood when I apologized that she’d been waiting so long—she understood, and she told them to email me, she said. Of course all this is aside from the question of how Chris and I negotiate who picks up and takes care of the sick kid, which is part personal problem and part larger societal expectations (and by the way, before you wonder what kind of bad mom I am, blogging while my daughter is sick, she’s asleep on the couch—I wish I’d been at work long enough to back up my hard drive so I could be working now!).

Like I need any more excuses to be angry and frustrated anyhow. I swear, I thought this college professor gig seemed compatible with having a family—summers sounded like summers off. Teaching meant you had some hours you weren’t teaching and might be able to leave early to pick up a child or go on a field trip. I had no idea that if you intended to be a professor, you’d really be better off being a man (or at least having a wife), and that school secretaries and some other mothers would look down on you for making choices that meant your own work was as important as soccer practice (God forbid it should be more important).

Let’s see. Ramp up the expectations for after school extracurricular activities for students (want scholarships? your kid better be in Little League). Retain a rigid structure of academic culture that conflicts with women’s fundamental biology (think about the tenure clock versus your biological clock). Figure out how to get in a whole day’s work, pick up children, and get dinner cooked for two kids, one of whom might eat part of it (and thank God while you’re at it that you have a husband who washes dishes). Sprinkle in one school secretary with an attitude—and maybe that’s the straw that breaks the woman professor’s back. So many of these questions are intangibles. One person’s crappy attitude. But when you’re hanging onto your work and your family by a thread, it doesn’t take much to make that thread seem really fragile.

Don’t get me wrong. I understand that I’m writing from a position of privilege, from my home computer with my cable modem, my still mostly manageable student loan debt from graduate school, my two-parent household. But my daughter is sick on the couch and was miserable at her school all morning, I’m another day behind at work here at the beginning of summer, and I swear, if I could wring that damn secretary’s neck today, I would.

The lava was overkill

Chris and I just got home from watching Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith. We really hadn’t planned on seeing it this early—I was really wanting the sold-out-theater full of Anakin wanna-bes to be finished before we went. But Chris’s mom decided at the last minute to come for a visit, and we figured we’d better take advantage of the free babysitting. It was a sold out theater for sure. No costumed folks, though—the theater staff (about half of whom are Chris’s students or former students) told us the Darth Vader clones were all there Friday morning at 12:01 when the film was released. (I should mention how disappointed I am in my local newspaper, by the way, that we had no coverage of the crowd that night—instead a really bad article about how some fans have related tattoos and others named their kids after Luke and Obi-wan—Ben, at least, not Obi-wan.)

Anyhow, some quick impressions and then I’m off to join my already-snoring sweetie.

1. George Lucas needs a woman consultant who could’ve let him know that pregnant women aren’t supposed to lie on their backs and that there’s no way a woman that skinny had two seven- or eight-pound babies.
2. George Lucas has a huge God complex.
3. George Lucas must be the worst writer of dialogue of all time, including romance writers.
4. George Lucas can blow some shit up.

I remember watching Star Wars (the REAL Star Wars) for the first time as an adult when I was pregnant with Laura—that was the first Christmas we spent away from home, because I was too far along to travel, and some channel was running all the Star Wars movies all day Christmas. I remember thinking (and this was a revelation to me) what a whiny teenaged twit Luke was—but he still had some indefinable charm. Nothing on Han Solo, mind, but still something. That’s what’s missing in these new Star Wars movies—people you care about on their own, not just because they’re connected to the old characters. I’ve been thinking about what made those old movies so wonderful (because when you watch them as an adult, they are sort of awful too—so one-dimensional and full of Ewoks and muppets just for the sake of it). And reading about Star Wars on the web. And even reading Darth Vader’s blog, The Darth Side (which can be really hilarious, I must say). But these new movies just boil down to a bunch of people I can’t quite keep straight and am not too worried about if they die.

But damn, George Lucas can blow up some shit.

Perhaps later, my meditations on why Anakin might’ve been saved from the Dark Side if he’d only been tenured and promoted, instead of being kept off all the really important committees.

Goddesses and girls

I had this bizarro dream last night. I’m in Columbia at a meeting, and we’re discussing tenure and promotion, not surprising since we just had a t&p workshop last week. The unusual part comes in when our system dean comes over to me and hands me a magazine, something like Discover, with an article about how Egyptian priestesses buried themselves alive with their goddesses whenever there was an administration change, when their goddesses became obsolete in the new order. He thought, he said, I might find this interesting for a poem (which is true, but not a perception I would expect either him or me to have in a dream). He didn’t seem to recognize the possible relevance of the article, although I couldn’t believe it would be a coincidence. Our candidates are burying themselves with their old goddess rather than recognize the new one? Seems the most obvious interpretation (at least obvious to those who know our political situation). Or perhaps it’s more personal, as I am evidently on some quest myself. (Most recently I’ve just finished reading The Goddess in the Gospels, which no doubt provided the primary source material to my unconscious . . . ) Nevertheless, all very odd. It looked like a fascinating article and illustration. I wonder if there is any truth to the self immolation of the priestesses? I’ll have to do some research.

In other news, we were watching The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh just before bedtime and Chris for some reason had turned on the captions, so that when Piglet’s house was being flooded, Laura apparently for the first time ever properly heard the words to the rain rain rain song. “I thought Piglet was a girl,” she announces in surprise. Nope, Piglet had been a boy all those years (although what with the pink outfit and the interesting relationship between Pooh and Piglet, this is perhaps an understandable assumption). “Aren’t there any girls in this movie?” she asks in this exasperated way. Only Kanga, the perfect single mother (Barbara Luddy also voiced Lady, I realized for the first time last night, another perfect mother figure). We had a lively discussion about how girls apparently didn’t exist as primary characters in books and film until sometime late twentieth century. (All the while Will is happily—and obliviously?— sucking his fingers.) And I had been grumpy because I didn’t want to watch Pooh in the first place!

Viva Las Vegas

Las Vegas countdown. (hi Hayes! thanks for the title!)

Not counting this week, four weeks plus a few days left to write a fabulous paper that will make UKLG still love me. (I am sure I have already told you about sending her my MA thesis, right? Maybe not. If not, story for another night.) I always start the preliminary conference paper stressing at least six weeks before. Much easier than actually writing the paper. In fact, I’m debating tonight whether to start reading the books again, but think I will wait until the weekend because I am still pulling thorns out of my hand from the garden and also I have dirt in my eye. Nature can be really overrated. Or maybe it’s just attempting to control it that is.

Resizing fonts & getting old

Laura had a science essay to finish on the digestive system (I’ll spare you the actual essay itself—not that it was a bad essay, but essentially the process isn’t one I want to write about myself…). She came in about 8:00 last night with about a third of a page and said, “Mama, come show me how to make the computer show me the page the way it’ll look when I print it out so I can see how big to make the words.” Oops. How she already learned this classic avoiding a full page student trick I have no idea. I was in a slug-like state from grading SAT essays a large chunk of the day, so Chris rescued us all and helped Laura actually explain things a little more fully so that she met her page requirement (and I got to watch the leadup to the series finale of Everybody Loves Raymond with Will, who could not understand why we were departing from our normal Star Trek bedtime routine). Chris is a martyr.

All I could do to repay that noble sacrifice this morning was to take out a tiny splinter from his thumb, one that apparently we are now both getting too old to see. Maybe if I just keep pretending that not being able to see is because I haven’t gotten my new glasses prescription filled, it’ll somehow come true. Guess that’s why I haven’t tested the theory yet (although it’s more because I can’t find frames I like—cat eyes are in again!). More squinting at the computer today. In fact, maybe I should start requiring all my students to turn in their papers in 16 point font from now on!

The Wild West and panic attacks

I am busy having my pre-Las Vegas anxiety attack. Not only am I going out to the wild west for that science fiction conference by myself next month, but I waited really late to book my flight because they were so cheap before… but prices were creeping up, so now I’ve bought my ticket for more than I budgeted and I have a red-eye flight. Evidently I am supposed to land in Charlotte at 6:10 in the morning and drive home without killing anybody on the way. Hm. Don’t know how likely that is. This is the price of procrastination, evidently.

Then I called to get my hotel reservation settled too—but really did have a panic attack when I read off my debit card number and the gentleman told me it was an invalid number. Nothing like wondering where all your money has gone. Fortunately that’s settled, but I’m still having residual adrenaline. I should probably go for a walk. Whew.

Kitchen cabinets

Right now my daughter and I are cleaning out the “plastic crap” cabinet in the kitchen because I splurged and bought some new dishes and have nowhere to put them. I am now of the opinion that kid restaurant cups breed in dark spaces.

Because I am a nice human, I sent my grumpy husband kayaking. He’s mad because today’s our seventeenth anniversary, and I said we shouldn’t buy presents for it (since I just squandered money on new plates). But I had an anniversary card in my card repository (yes, I keep one of those boxes with cards that I buy months ahead of time, although now it’s mostly empty except for a bunch of general belated birthday cards) that I’d forgotten to give him one year, so he’s sulking because he didn’t get me a card and now he feels like a heel. Hopefully the river will cheer him up so we can go out to eat tonight and be happy.

Back to the salt mines.

Week of the Young Child

OK, I confess from the outset that I am Scrooge. I hate the Week of the Young Child. Or I suppose I should be more precise: I hate the way Will’s daycare celebrates the Week of the Young Child. It’s a lovely idea in principle—a week dedicated to a more overt recognition that children need to learn and grow in a supportive environment.

Even though I hate the Week of the Young Child, I love Will’s school, which is wonderful. Properly speaking it’s a “child development center” not a daycare, and certainly not a nursery, which is what many people from these parts call it. The staff are well trained and loving, always good about communicating with parents, and the classrooms themselves are cozy and bright, lots of fun age-appropriate toys which they rotate regularly so that the kids have variety. I always always feel welcome in the center—and some places don’t do that. While touring some other schools, I’ve asked about visitation during the day (which I almost never do, but reserve the right) and been told they prefer parents not drop in because it disrupt the classroom schedules or activities. Show up unannounced at Will’s school and you get to sit right down and read a book with the kids or share snack or whatever. No problem. So I’m very happy with the center.

But the Week of the Young Child is something else. Monday is usually some kind of center-wide fun activity—blowing food colored bubbles or something. A scavenger hunt (imagine dozens and dozens of cut-out shapes of bunnies and frogs scattered like confetti all over the playground outside—anyhow who finds one turns it in for a prize—pretty hard not to find one). Every year we have a book fair too—it changes the whole atmosphere of the center, because you walk into the front office and there are books and toys everywhere—you can barely turn around. And food sign-up sheets for the Friday picnic, and volunteer sign-up sheets for staffing the book fair—and a big bulletin board listing all the week’s events. So far, lovely.

Then Tuesday rolls around. Tuesday is always “Lunch with Mom and Dad” day. The sign-up sheets pop on up the classroom doors for this—“Which parents will be here for lunch?”—and then two blanks next to your child’s name for you to write in your name. Well, it just so happens that the Week of the Young Child is conveniently located during exams, and I haven’t been able to attend a single lunch with my child during one of these events (and I’m counting the years Laura was at this center too). Chris can’t easily get out of class either, and his prep period never seems to be at the right time.

It wouldn’t be a big deal, except that most of the parents do come, and then something happened last year that really pissed me off. We got a note home saying something to the effect of not to worry if you couldn’t come, your child would be “adopted” that year by someone who would take him to lunch. I just about hit the roof. Maybe I’m a gozilla-like parent, but my basic philosophy is that if I could go to lunch with my son, I certainly would, and I wouldn’t be paying five hundred dollars a month for him to attend a child development center in the first place. And I certainly am not interested in him being adopted in my absence. Fortunately the rhetoric of that letter was toned down this year, but I have always felt like a bad mother on this day, and last year I was so angry that I am still holding a bit of a grudge about it now, a year later.

I have been very good, though—never complaining about this, always buying a raffle ticket to support PTO and signing up for juice or something for the picnic. But this year it just so happened that as I was signing Will in one morning, the staff director asked me how many of Will’s grandparents would be attending the Grandparent Ice Cream Social the next day (also a traditional part of the Week of the Young Child). Well, let’s see. Six total grandparents, and all of them at least two hours away. Most working. And none really keen on driving two hours to eat ice cream for thirty minutes with Will’s class—particularly given the fact it’s a Wednesday and they would have to turn right back around and drive home without even having time to visit with us (most of them now complain about driving in the dark—my own mother is generally gone by 2:00 anytime she visits us). So none. The answer is none of Will’s parents or grandparents will be attending.

I must’ve made a face or something (my body language is always betraying me), because Pam asked what the matter was. I gave her a very watered down version of why I hate the Week of the Young Child—focusing particularly on the part that hurts my feelings the most—that I can never eat lunch with Will that day—and this is the kicker. She says to me, oh, he won’t even notice if you’re not there. Now this was probably true when he was a baby in the roly poly room. This might have been true when he was a toddler in the lady bug room. But now my boy is a big three-year old glow worm, and I guarantee you that if all the other parents are there, he’s wondering where his are. I said, Pam, I just don’t believe you, and walked away before I could get ugly, but I’m afraid that this didn’t have any positive effect on dissipating either my dislike of the Week of the Young Child (or my grudge from last year).

I should learn to enter a zen state, not let these things upset me, because I know that I am not the best mother in the world, but I am generally a pretty good mother, and certainly not an outright bad mom. But boy am I a grumpy one that week.

Old age and Old Navy

Of course I hope to have a long time to see if this observation is accurate, but right now it seems as if there is nothing in the world that can make you feel older than taking your ten-year old daughter shopping at Old Navy. All the clothes around you are saying so clearly, you don’t belong here. And your answer to these clothes—no way you belong on my girl’s body. And even if you do buy her something, there’s basically no way you’d let her out of the house in it. Definitely one of those “35/10” Sharon Olds moments.

Favorite student comments

Got the last paper. Grades are turned in. Here’s my last (semi-official) teaching act of the spring 2004 semester. In my first-year composition classes, the final exam question asks students to reflect on what they’ve learned about themselves as writers over the course of the semester. Here are two of my favorite quotes from the essays I just finished reading:

“I am starting to realize that I have a real problem with procrastination. I want to do something about it but I keep putting it off.”

“I’ve learned through the course of this class to not procrastinate which has always been my nature. In this course procrastination equals death or something bad like that.”

Floors, floors, more floors

So far this morning I have discovered there is still a floor in our bedroom! When you pick up all the laundry and toys (and even some miscelleanous trash), that is. Possibly there is still a floor in the living room as well. Unfortunately I know there’s one in the kitchen, because it’s filthy.

Finals and testing

Thank the Goddess. I am finished grading (except for one errant paper, which will be in my email at the crack of dawn tomorrow, right? you know who I mean) and will submit my grades tomorrow morning. And I have completed my term as a juror (there are a couple of big trials going on now that have the courtrooms tied up for the rest of the week, and since one is a double murder, I am most grateful I am not serving on that jury). I am officially free.

Except that I just spent the past half hour remembering the differences between obtuse and actue angles and how to calculate area (thank the Goddess for the internet too). Laura and I just finished studying how many quarts in a gallon and days in a leap year and whatnot as well. Now she’s working on an essay on Harriet Tubman. I hate being in the fourth grade again. The first time was bad enough.

Next week is PACT, the evil South Carolina academic achievement test. I regularly hear our administrators and board members priding themselves about how difficult our test is (generally anytime someone complains about how low our student test scores are). Other states, they always remark, have easier tests, so of course their students score higher—but their scores are fluff. We on the other hand stick by our tough test even though all our schools are failing in the No Child Left Behind standards. That’s intelligent testing for you—test for the sake of it, and make sure it’s hard enough many of our students fail.

My bright and talented and beautiful daughter doesn’t test well, as we gently say about smart people who bomb standardized tests. I feel perfectly comfortable saying this, as I too am one of this ilk. I took the SAT either two or three times and never broke 1100—which doesn’t even approach the “respectable” score one hopes for if you want to be in the big leagues. Fortunately I always thought the big leagues were full of snobs whose great joy in life was thinking they were better than you (grad school has loads of those, I’m sorry to say). And while I never thought I was a genius, I knew I was plenty smart, so it didn’t really scar my ego (although you do notice of course that twenty years later I still remember my SAT scores)—but I sure hate seeing Laura’s test scores. It’s harder seeing hers than my own—I know we’re both getting scored.

Well, I’m not really interested in a diatribe about finals and testing (what! neither are you!?), so I think instead I’ll demonstrate my lesser intellectual state by going to have some popcorn and watch Captain Picard be assimilated. (I bet Captain Picard kicked butt on the Starfleet Academy admissions tests.)

Post deliberations postscript

And this maniacally loud bird is going on and on outside our bedroom window. What’s up with that, bird?

Post deliberations

I’m in one of those states right now where I just can’t sleep. It’s been a weird day all around. The jury I served on deliberated for hours yesterday and then again this morning. We asked to hear some of the testimony repeated. We asked the judge to repeat the law to us. We talked and argued and argued and talked, but we absolutely could not agree, so it ended up a mistrial. At least this time it wasn’t just me. But I must say that my two terms of jury duty have not really reaffirmed my faith in the justice system.

Laura has poison ivy. Chris took her to the doctor this morning, which included handling all of the following unaccustomed activities:

1. finding a substitute teacher for his class.
2. remembering who our pediatrician is.
3. scheduling the appointment with the pediatrician (he was still trying to get them to answer the phone when I left this morning—after a half hour of calling—all perfectly normal for when the office opens).
4. taking my insurance card to the doctor’s office.
5. remembering how much our copay for doctor’s appointments is ($10)
6. asking for a doctor’s excuse for Laura to turn into her teacher tomorrow.
7. getting her prescription filled (and knowing about generics versus namebrands).
8. picking up Laura’s homework after school so she won’t miss all her work.

And I asked him to mail bills this morning and return an overdue library book too. He was grumping, but he managed just fine. I actually did get done with my case shortly before lunch, so I went back up to school to grade papers, which meant he also had to pick up Will and fix dinner (he cooked two Chef Boyardee pizzas—they turned out pretty good). Rough day for him.

I’m a little less than halfway through my grading. I absolutely hate grading the last papers of the semester. I have had people in the past few days asking me questions like, how many sources do we need again? Or, how do I cite a source? Things that either are written in the assignment, which many students evidently only see the first day when I go over it in class, or things that we’ve spent weeks on in class. I swear, I tell them why you have to start the papers back in March. And then I remind (or perhaps the word is nag) and remind and remind . . . I’m reading some very good papers, but so many of them are just a couple of drafts short of done. I read a paper like that and I can see what it would be if it were finished. But it’s not finished, it’s just been turned in.

Lisa, make a note for later: a person should never pay bills, serve on a hung jury, and grade final exams all in the same day. Duh.

Family news flashes

Chris is the teacher of the year at his school! (And in typical fashion he is not excited about it but cranky because that means he has to be interviewed and give a speech and sit on the stage with the bigwigs at the annual district wide meeting—which means he has to at least pretend to pay attention. I of course am thrilled and also secretly jealous!)

Laura has a huge rash all over her face and ears and neck and back! (Her pediatrician aunt says as long as she doesn’t have fever and can breathe she’s ok until tomorrow when we need to go to the doctor, but I am still freaked out.)

I am the “forelady” on a jury! (Again. Although this case may never end. I was entertaining myself with interesting gender-related sociological observations about how the men in the jury roll call were declaring themselves “single” while the women were mostly “unmarried” until once again I got called. I never have these odds on the lottery.)

Will ate macaroni and cheese and a cartoon of yogurt and two peanut butter sandwiches for dinner! (No big news with him, but I thought we all needed to report something.)

Not even the same color

Race is an interesting thing. My daughter is across the street playing right now with three girls, two just her age and one a big younger, and all black except for her, but you’d never know any of them noticed their difference in skin color. And her best friend in her class this year is a black girl. But she’s had this boy calling her all weekend long. Every time he called she’s been out or in the shower or something. She didn’t seem interested in calling him back, and since I’m not keen on her calling boys at the ripe old age of TEN, I didn’t encourage her to return the call. Finally after he called at 10:30 p.m. last night, I figured he seemed awfully eager (not to mention painfully stupidly rude, since he’d called just a little earlier at 9:15 and I’d told him it was past her bedtime and he couldn’t talk to her). So this morning I asked her, who is this boy? A kid in her class. Does she like him? “Mom,” she said (in that my-mother-is-so-dumb voice), “we’re not even the same color.” I did tell her that you don’t have to be the same color as someone to like them, after which I was relieved to have her tell me that she knew that, ok? (And in that voice again too.)

I am, of course, grading final exams. Because I’m a nice person who doesn’t believe everyone should have to suffer just because I am, I sent Chris off to kayak. I’m home reading papers while Will naps and Laura plays with her friends. Of course it’s much more interesting to make fascinating observations about race on one’s blog than it is to finish grading papers. I could look at my grades, for instance, to notice the impact of race on student writing and grades (lots of interesting academic work on this topic, which is also disturbing at times). However, since it seems as if many of my students are bound and determined to proclaim their academic heresy by doing things like incorrectly citing every internet source possible while conveniently omitting any library sources at all, it’s more of an auto-da-fé. I guess I should just be grateful they’re at least trying. Three more in the first class, and I’m done. Whew.

Reinterpretations of the Goddess

I finally finished reading Kidd’s Dance of the Dissident Daughter. I tried to read it about five years ago and couldn’t—I’m not even sure why. Maybe it seemed too new age to me. I have taken such a long journey to get where I am now—in college I was one of those (now really annoying) women who walk around saying (really annoying) things like, “oh, I’m not a feminist, I like men opening doors for me.” I really said that. How I could have shut off enough of my brain to reduce a movement that works for gender equity to opening doors, I don’t really know. Well, maybe I do know—I certainly have by now had enough experience teaching students in my women’s studies classes that just because the media represents all feminists as demonized bitches doesn’t mean that’s what feminism is.

I don’t think I really meant it, though—I think I was just afraid of being labeled a feminist. I do remember very clearly a male intern at Dupont, where I was working as well, getting a much larger raise than I did when we both got married, because he would be supporting his family, and well, I wouldn’t. I evidently made a substantial note of this fact, although I seem to recall my primary reaction at the time as being pleased that I got a raise myself. So while I certainly wasn’t a feminist in college, I had my (very strongly suppressed) leanings. I stopped leaning and started standing firm in graduate school (although my women’s studies classes still were pretty scary). Maybe the first time I tried to read the Kidd book I still just wasn’t ready for it.

I will probably need to read it again in a few years. I borrowed it before, but this time I went out and bought my own copy so I can—and I also ordered one for our library. (Wonder where they’ll shelve it?) I still had some issues with the book. I was really disturbed by how Kidd defines daughters in the book. Early on she writes that “A daughter is a women who remains internally dependent, who does not shape her identity and direction as a woman, but tends to accept the identity and direction projected onto her. She tends to become the image of woman that the cultural father idealizes” (42). I kept waiting as she defined dissident daughter for her to repudiate this definition, but if she did, I missed it. Defining daughterhood as related to this cultural father just that one time really hit a wrong nerve for me—it’s not that I don’t agree there’s this cultural father—I do—or that I don’t think women often define themselves as daughters in this way. I was just disappointed to see that conception of the daughter in the book: how can one be a dissident daughter when being a daughter is defined this way? Can we not be daughters of our mothers too? I will hopefully get over that—it was a single sentence worded in a way that resonated badly with me.

But I was a little tickled at myself too when Kidd starts talking about her initial reactions to the word “goddess”: “It’s hard to describe the sort of anxiety the word created in me, as if the word itself were contraband. It seemed to violate a taboo so deep and ingrained, I felt stabs of irrational fear just reading about it, as if any minute witch burners from the sixteenth century might appear and carry me off” (72). I understand that feeling very well indeed (particularly last semester when I had jury duty and was reading a critical history of breastfeeding in the courthouse waiting room—when the cover of the book showed a bare-chested woman squirting breast milk into her baby’s mouth a foot or two away. That book wasn’t about the Goddess, but certainly I was aware that the people around me were wondering what on earth I was reading—many raised eyebrows, although the only person who talked to me about it was a nurse who was very supportive of breastfeeding, so that was positive).

I built myself a shrine last semester, in fact after reading Kidd’s novel The Secret Life of Bees. I wondered if it would last, because it’s just this small accumulation of objects on a pewter plate, and I really couldn’t imagine that Will wouldn’t pull it all apart or even that I wouldn’t find it something that clutters up my world even more. But it’s still around, and I’ve added one or two things to it (although it is a major pain to dust). A sand dollar, a silver fish button, a piece of Indian pottery that I found one of the few times my father took me walking around his hunting club with him. My favorite things are my mother’s jade Buddha from an old necklace she used to wear all the time and a frog, also jade, I think—a small beautifully carved frog, very stylized, that I bought years ago because when I read the card, it talked about the frog as a fertility symbol—and that was when I had first started wanting children. I find myself getting up in the mornings and choosing something to hold for a few minutes. It seems more like prayer than what I used to think of as prayer. The last few years have been hard in a number of different ways, and during those years I have started to think of myself as very much an outsider—which is how I used to feel. But it feels different being an outsider now—it’s something perhaps I am starting to own. Being outside means sometimes being alone, not being a part of what others are. Not always a bad thing, once you get over the painful part. Maybe the fact I can read this book now means that I’m starting to understand my own path (how new age is that?). One final quote from the book:

In the beginning we wake to find ourselves like transplanted saplings trying to subsist in an unnatural, unfriendly (patriarchal) ground. We discover ourselves becoming sapless inside, going dry in the places where the feminine soul arises, animates, and nourishes our lives. We know that in order to save our lives as women, we have to find new ground. So we set off in search of the feminine ground inside the circle of trees. We put down roots. And if we are patient, if we are true to ourselves, if we are willing to see ourselves through the growing seasons, an inevitable thing happens. We become hearty women who have our own ground and our own standing, sturdy as oaks after the winds. We become women who let loose our strength, whose truth, creativity, and vision fly like spores into the world. (198)