ChezWhat?

Bye Bye Blogger

2008-04-15T22:25:00.000-07:00

Update your links, y'all. Got a brand new bag. New springy look.

chezwhat.net

Come 'n see me now, y'hear...

What do you do with a pregnant teacher?

2008-04-15T19:13:00.000-07:00

As a pregnant teacher I am feeling a bit like a big question mark. I am asked daily what my plans are for next year. While I can hardly worry about things like the perceptions of my colleagues, I am planning on staying home next year and going part time after that. There was a huge turnover last year at this school (20%) and since the start of the school year I have fielded the question of whether I planned to come back next year. I always said yes, happily. Now its a little different.

Students are asking me too. I do not have the heart to say that I am not going to be back. I can handle leaving the adults and their politics more than the kids. Their next teacher might be better, or might be worse. They have to cope more with new teachers.

I am hearing the questions daily. I don't want to look at them and say "No, I am not coming back next year." But that is what it amounts too.

And with good reason, J and I are doing everything possible for me to be home with kids. We will sock away as much as we can so that ends will meet each other. Yes that car replacement will have to come later. After that I will be part time, probably for quite awhile. And I am quite good with that, I want to still be a mom. But I don't want us to go broke doing it.

It always strikes me as ironic that in the 70's women fought to be able to hold jobs, and now some of us have to hope and even fight to stay home with the kids.

Well, this pregnant teacher is going to aim for the best of both worlds.

Technology in education

2008-04-09T18:54:00.000-07:00

AprilMay posted about use of technology in education and it has raised alot of things that I deal with on a daily basis with technology, and have dealt with for several years.

At my last school, mysteriously some departments would get laptops and projectors. While the math teachers were still teaching in rooms set up for science labs and the rest of us were sharing sluggish iMacs, a select few were mysteriously granted these items. In the interest of being professional, it never managed to come up as a problem. After all, it's nice that at least someone in the school got to use technology. The rest of us tried to suss out space in one of the labs, a total of I believe just over 100 computers total to be used by a school with just shy of 3000 students. All bets were off when state testing started until they scrounged enough computers to make a lab exclusively for testing.

In teaching, survival is the way. We learn to make due with what we have and eventually even the whiniest teacher learns that they will be happier if they just forget about it. But when I went looking for a new job, in interviews someone literally rolled their eyes at me when I told them the extent of my internet use in the classroom was having kids make a powerpoint out of drugs that they researched. I redeemed myself slightly by telling them that the information they used to research was hand picked and loaded onto a portal I created, but generally speaking they were entirely underwhelmed with the breadth of my integration of technology.

However when the time was for me to ask them questions, I asked them if they had any projectors to facilitate the use of computer instruction in the classroom. They did have one. The high school shared it with the district office and it could be checked out by the Human Resources person. I tried to choke down my snort.

So now at my new school, I can pretty much use laptops with wireless internet everyday should I want. They also have a bunch of programs for podcasting and whatnot. And the question is not getting technology, but what to do with it once we have it.

At AprilMay I learned that my reluctance to allow my kids to use Google Image searches is justified, as some districts block it altogether. And while I understand the blocking of YouTube, there is some really good content there mixed in with the pornography. Yes, it should be blocked. But if only there was a way to get the good videos while leaving the bad. Have learned how to capture these videos to .flv format, but then need software I don't have to get them into a format that will play on Mac.

There are alternate sites. But for my ELL kids, at least at the outset they are like thick forests where information is allegedly hidden and navigating to it is a little less than intuitive. And sometimes, too often, nothing pops up. For example, nothing about Cesar Chavez or the Aztecs on teachertube, and nothing about other wierd subjects my kids need like "habitat of the quetzal" or "the battle of Puebla".

iMovies are hot with my kids. Strangely enough though, all I have seen anyone do with them is make glorified slideshows with a customized soundtrack. I can do that in Keynote/Powerpoint.

It is interesting, everyone wants teachers to know about technology, but it is generally out of reach, and teachers are likely to be edged out by others with the money to have had a chance at access. Digital divide among teachers as well.

It is hard for me to not wonder why Intel and Apple aren't doing more to equip the educators that are going to help open doors for kids, and not the ones who just messed with it till they figured it out. I know there are a few programs, having participated in "Teach to the Future with Intel" (I received a PC for my classroom which was "absorbed" by the administration 2 years later--heard enough stories about teachers writing grants for technology which districts then utilized for their own purposes. Waiting to hear "Why don't the teachers write grants?" so that they can be reminded of why).

What are your all technology stories?

Pregnancy 14 weeks

2008-04-08T20:41:00.000-07:00

Being pregnant while working. I know I am not going to elicit sympathy here, but it makes me look forward to summer that much more.

Aside from the "Gads, what am I going to wear today" problem (wherein I consider wearing the same thing every day from now till the end of the school year) there are also 2 coworkers who say "Ma-ma" every time they see me.

I guess I would just never do that to a pregnant lady, I mean, she is liable to karate chop you.

I also had the fun experience of telling bosses who pretty much already knew. At least they didn't ask me if I was probationary like my first boss did (He may not have intended it to sound so bad, but it did)

I have had people asking me all year if I would be at this same school next year and the answer has always been "Yes" but with pregnancy, especially now with a second child on the way, our plans were that I would stay home and go part time after the kid turned 2 so as to avoid checking an infant into a day care.

So people are asking me what my plans are for next year. I feel if I tell them I will be home, I am saying "yes, I am new, and I am also a nonfactor for next year". I would much prefer to be planning on staying, mostly for the kids and the sake of consistency.

The kids are very nice. But I still get very tired toward the end of the day such that I have last period prep and it is always some small temptation to hit the road.

But this is standard moaning and groaning. I am of course very excited having seen the baby two times to imagine holding a newborn again, and watching her grow (she is a girl in case I didn't say so earlier). I am excited for the mothering furlough ahead. It is a nice time, as I recall with Addy, I just got to be a mom for a little bit. Nesting, making dinner, making plans with friends...it was all a nice time.

New scrapbooks, new baby nesting and the fact that it seems almost like an otherworldly time of life that only lasts a short time. Am very excited, and will be much more so when this school year is over.

A Good Day

2008-04-01T19:55:00.001-07:00

For the past months I have been trying to find a doctor in our new community. I found several...I was trying for a female, and a family practitioner if possible, but willing to take what I could get if necessary.

What I found out was:

1. At work, all my calls are automatically forwarded to my voicemail where I do not know the password.

2. There were at least 3 offices that wouldn't take you if they couldn't get you in between 8 and 10 weeks.

Hence this week was the first time I was able to see a doctor. The following thoughts went through my mind while waiting for this appt.

1. Maybe it's just a tumor that makes the hormone to set off the pregnancy tests.

2. Maybe it's not really a baby.

3. I have an alleged baby.

But today, I went to my new doctor, who if she wasn't just as good as my old doctor, she was better. Furthermore, their office has an ultrasound and I saw this child.

Now I can rate this day as highly as the day I heard Addy's heartbeat, and I am for the most part out of the high risk part of pregnancy. To make this all better, as if it could get better, I got to have lunch at Greek Cusina, ride bikes tonight and get my first spring pedicure.

hoorah!

Had ourselves a snowy little spring break

2008-03-31T22:47:00.000-07:00

I think everyone who stayed in Oregon for break was a little indignant and disgusted with the fickle but decidedly freezing weather on break.

One's logical thought process:

Oh look, the sun is out. I will go get a jacket and we can go ride bikes. (goes to closet, returns to front door. Upon opening door, is blasted by 30 degree weather and hail which the child is referring to as "beads!") Frik! Now what. No no more TV. That's right, go play with your trains some more. Adult totters around house picking up random misplaced objects, knowing full well this task is among the most futile in the universe. Walks past window to observe a sun break. Oh look, it's a sunbreak, maybe I will go get the mail. (opens door and steps out just as raindrops the size of small lakes deluge and soak any foolhardy enough to venture out) Frik!

And this goes on pretty much every day for a week. It rarely got out of 39 degrees.

What really happened over break? I stopped trying to wear my old clothes while pregnant. And no I am not going to wear those forsaken pants with the 12 inch rubber waist band. I am going to wear dresses with those little stretch pants underneath.

I told my students today though, and they were very happy. I guess I was surprised? I know better than to expect much from middle schoolers...

Retrospective

2008-03-27T20:23:00.000-07:00

I just had to post these, she won't be our only little girl anymore, but a big sister. She keeps talking about a baby brother, but man the child is only 12 weeks along, I am not sure if itself has determined whether it is a boy or girl.

Spring Break and Good news

2008-03-26T22:09:00.000-07:00

I am at the end of my first trimester of pregnancy. I still have not seen a doctor, because doctors, particularly female ones are hard to come by in a small town. To make my desires more specific, I was hoping to be able to see a family practitioner, but the one that this town has works like 15 hours a week. Next Tuesday I will see the doctor.

It is difficult not having heard a heartbeat of this child, as it is hard to feel baby is so real. It is easy to focus on the logistic issues that will have to be dealt with, and to lose the real joy that needs to accompany this kind of event. It is interesting to see other people's responses to the news. I really appreciate the joyful responses, because I need to be reminded that this baby is an anticipated blessing, and that really, everything is going to be ok. The flatlines or no responses are strange to meet. How can a baby be anything but a huge huge reason to smile and be joyful?

I guess it reminds me of all the experiences I have ever had giving people good news. How they responded often informed me about them more than anything else. For example, what can you think when you tell someone about a great new job, but they point out negatives? People at work are mostly flatline about my pregnancy. Family members tend to be joyful, but I have had a couple meet the news with indifference or sort of "How nice for you" and a quick change of subject. These responses make me not want to tell anyone.

There is always a contingent for whom the baby is an apparition until it is born, then less of an apparition, but not fully real until the child begins to interact with them.

In other news, A friend of ours gave me a guitar to give J for his birthday. I went to the guitar shop to restring it and have it fixed up. I was very excited to give it to him, and he spent the whole evening on it...I hope he increases in interest with time even. There is something about starting something new in life that really feels very exciting. Sort of like a new little daffodil after a long winter.

I think this gift was about as exciting to give as it was for him to receive....

Where did she go?

2008-03-13T20:41:00.000-07:00

I have written about people who have touched my life in significant ways here on old Chez What, and today I am gonna tell about Jill.

Jill and I were in Peace Corps together, in Western Russia. Well, aside from my parents getting a divorce when I was 13, Russia had to rank right up there with one of the most strange and stressful things I ever did. I think the same could be said for just about every person in my group, but of every person in that group, I had the most respect for Jill.

Aside from obvious assets that Jill had, like being fluent in Russian, having already lived in Ukraine, having an eternally cool head and having a great sense of humor, Jill seemed to manage 99% of the time to float above all the crummy things that were happening in this time in Russia. Example?

Jill's first placement was with a woman who took her basically as her own little personal American slave. She loaded Jill up with classes to teach, and while the rest of our group had apartments, Jill was living in this freezing cold dorm sleeping in the same room with 2 other girls (students) and sharing a kitchen that was nothing more than a hotplate on top of a fridge and a seat next to a window.

Almost miraculously, she got PC to change her assignment (for some reason this was utterly unheard of) and she went to a different school in Moscow.

This new job was less problematic, except that the living situation wasn't much improved and where she was living was so dangerous she told me of being held at knifepoint outside of her dorm at night.

Now Jill was savvy and able to make connections with the teachers she was working with. She arranged for herself through her own connections to do a teacher training way out in Izhevsk (VERY far from Moscow). She charmed and wooed them (an easy task for her she was capable in Russian and had a charming personality) and they invited her to teach there with them. She had essentially done for herself the job that PC does for volunteers.

When she asked PC if she could go and her reasons why (safety, better circumstances) they said that she was not allowed to change sites again. And with the most amazing testicular fortitude, she ditched PC and crossed Russia on her own to teach in Izhevsk (a small remote burg), trusting them to pay her, help her out and give her a place to live. They did all that and she stayed there for the remainder of the time she was scheduled to be in Russia, after which, I believe PC flew her home.

Now it might not sound like a biggie, but to be in a foreign country without a sort of organization behind you to back you up or pull you out of a jam, well, that to me sealed the deal as Jill having real courage, and confidence. I don't think she ever though twice.

Jill and I kept in touch after PC. This was during my salsa dancing phase. I went to Monterrey to visit her as she got her Masters in teaching Russian at the Monterrey Institute of International Studies. She came up to Portland and I took her around and to my family. She made fun of where my parents lived, in Gig Harbor, called it Geek Harbor and then laughed really hard and slapped her knee, she only ever referred to it as Geek Harbor. I thought it was funny too.

I admired Jill because she was so determined, so focused on what she wanted. She was all about Russia. And while my language abilities in Russian faded (I learn fast and forget equally as quickly) she had started publishing and got a job in Washington D.C. with ACTR (American Council of Teachers of Russian). With them she would bring Russian teachers of English to the U.S. to train and she would go to Russia to stay for trips.

She did things professionally that I thought were beyond cool, she presented at TESOL. She interpreted in important meetings. She was travelling, publishing. During this time of my life, I was basically trying to figure out what to do with myself after PC, hoping to avoid the Masters Programs so I didn't accumulate any more student debt).

Jill now is an occasional intermediary between my host family in Russia and myself. I have sent her several letters, and not heard a word from her. She sent me a gift when my daughter was born, but the last letter I received had the wrong phone number for her in it. I think I called it about 5 times, leaving messages. The email too, dead. How wierd!

Jill told me once about how she had a friend in Russia who she had basically ditched. She told me how awful she felt about never writing her back, never calling her after having been as thick as thieves for years. If memory serves, she said she loved her dearly, but that the friend had become very reliant on Jill.

It is true, Jill and I were very different people, especially at that time after Peace Corps when I was trying to figure out which direction to take. She would tell me her professional travails, and all I could think was how lucky she was. I encouraged her, told her that I admired her, especially as this 2 year period saw my life sullied with ridiculous jobs, choices made out of boredom and a lack of real focus.

Jill and I were really different, she never seemed to be the remotest bit interested in marraige or family. I hadn't been until I hit about 29, then it dawned on me: I wasn't sure if being single was what I really wanted. She seemed to float above that. Marraige wasn't at all interesting to her, her work completed her it seemed like.

Well so I have no issue if Jill dropped me off along the way, I am glad to have known her. She still kind of inspires me with her focus. I am not her, I do wish I could speak with her, if only to hear tales of her meteoric rise. I don't doubt for a second that she would achieve among the highest goals. I hope she is well, and perhaps we will cross paths again.

Monday wasn't as bad as I feared.

2008-03-10T21:04:00.000-07:00

My last post detailed my fear about this new trimester.

I found some consolation in the fact that there are only 2 weeks until break, so I can come up with something to last 2 weeks, and then I can plan out for the last 2 months. Are you bored yet?

I was fearing today my stuff would be all limp, my kids would be all irritable, my stomach would be doing its thing where it hurts, and I would be exhausted by 9 AM. Instead, everything worked, the kids loved it, we even got color copy enlargements (yes this is a BIG DEAL) of the maps of Mexico. They are totally into it. Hooray, Monday went by without incident. I came home all ready to make dinner, and yes, even our breakfast burritos rocked.

So while we were making dinner A was watching her new DVD of Fat Albert. I thought it would be fun to get this. I am not that crazy about it, but it did bring back memories. And I realized that Bill Cosby seemed to make a career out of creating positive media images of family for kids. Good for him! And then I randomly remembered the a statement he made about blacks not so long ago that was a little less than positive. It was wierd to hear him saying that. I wondered what happened between Fat Albert and when he said these things. He got old?

"Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal," he said, according to The Washington Post. "These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids -- $500 sneakers for what? And won't spend $200 for 'Hooked on Phonics.'"

And honestly, I am more used to hearing Bill Cosby say things like this.

Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope.

“Women don't want to hear what you think. Women want to hear what they think -- in a deeper voice.”

In researching this, I have good memories of listening to his records when I was little because my brother played them, and the doubled-over laughing until we were crying giggle fits that he brought us. He is 71!

My parents let me watch all the TV I wanted and then some. J's parents had limit (Good for them). I was largely raised by Love Boat, Gilligan's Island, Bewitched, Fantasy Island, CHiPs, Eight is Enough and the list goes on. That's Incredible, Wild Kingdom, Marine Boy...I could go on. Seeing that Fat Albert reminded me of all I learned from the TV, and not necessarily good stuff.

And Fat Albert, while funny sort of, I wonder if show as loaded with non politically correct ways would fly today. Again, I wonder about PC-ness, and whether it is actually a good thing.

teacher honesty minute

2008-03-09T21:18:00.000-07:00

Our last trimester starts tomorrow. Since this is my first year at this school, and because there is no curriculum, it means that I get to create everything that will happen in all 5 of my classes from scratch. I've done it all year, so, no biggie right? Well, first semester I used the books, figuring that at the outset that would be fine and I could see how I liked it. Well, all the "themes" in the book were so random I genuinely had a hard time trying to fit this book to my kids needs and my normal teaching. Had a hard time generating interest, and I was bored too. So second trimester we scrap it all and do stuff that we want to do. We studied Cesar Chavez. This worked out really well.

So now, third trimester. I asked the kids what they wanted to study. Part of the struggle is that I teach all levels of language learners, from the newcomers to the advanced kids. So I cannot recycle much, and my advanced kids are my last classes of the day when my energy level is lowest. So far this year, I have done much better with my less english skills kids, who I knew I was going to teach all summer, anticipated them. My higher level kids, well, now is the time to meet the challenge with these kids. They are on permanent "We are interested and excited about nothing" mode, which is strange for middle schoolers.

To make matters more interesting, the news arrived awhile back that I am to bear a child. Pregnancy is effective for me anyway, at distracting me from school significantly.

I have 3 months left before summer (we get out early June). While normally as a teacher most of my energy goes into what cool stuff we can do in the classroom, I have to admit to some serious distraction, and not even a comfy established curriculum to lean on. I mean there is nothing.

(cue world's smallest violin)

Wish me luck!

My 5 minutes

2008-03-04T16:47:00.000-08:00

I was published in the Oregonian today.

And when I came home there was a message on my answering machine to appear on Lars Larson.

Tomorrow.

I guess this is it, my 5 minutes.

edit: He interviewed me today at 2:30. I didn't really know who this guy was really (I think I had heard his name thrown about, but that's the extent of it) but now I see he is basically a repackaged Rush Limbaugh. Whatever... he was nice.

New rollers

2008-02-22T20:14:00.001-08:00

I visit Dooce monthly, usually just to admire her banners. But I just took her off my roll because her ads have gotten crazy. You cant even see her content, just her ads.

I added Area Woman Falls Prey to Narcissistic E-trend (my sentiments exactly about blogging) and Hobo Teacher. They are both teacher, E trend in a Catholic school.

Meanwhile I am still perplexed because all my referrals are coming to a slight off hand reference to a travel channel thing I saw 2 years ago about the Mek Tribe. I am getting ridiculous amounts of people coming to Chez What for that.

And in other news, here is a sneak preview of new home.

chezwhat.net

its about time.

and just because one blog really isn't enough, here's my work blog where I just posted some podcasts my kids did this week about Cesar Chavez.

Phew, and to think I was going to have to exercise my democratic right...

2008-02-20T20:49:00.000-08:00

Sure am glad to hear that once the Texas primary is over in early March, the party nominations will be set.

Seeing how we don't get to vote until MAY here in Oregon, it's nice to know that my vote will really make a difference. I am relieved that everything with the party nominations will be decided once I go to cast my vote, because what we really value here in America is that everyone's vote COUNTS, right? So, it's like a little vacation from my democratic duties to choose my candidate, I can let the rest of America do it for me. Phew!

Fidel: your friend and mine

2008-02-19T14:08:00.001-08:00

Today while I was driving home from dentist I got stuck listening to "World Have Your Say" which is an annoying enough call in show where people all over the world, honestly, anyone with a radio and a cell phone can call in and begin shouting in heavily accented english whatever their opinion is about that days subject.

The host makes jabs at all the callers to get them to take a side or demonize them and then usually cuts them off before they can finish their longwinded retorts. This also bothers me, I hate interruptions.

Its like a carnival on the radio. I hate it, but I still listen usually til I can't take it anymore. I think my main addiction is the accents. Linguistics nerd, I especially like the intonations of Indian speakers.

Today's subject was whether Fidel Castro was a monster dictator or a hero, since he announced stepping down. There was nothing new really, but there were some voices of reason with a couple "experts" acknowledgiing his "legend" status, and it did bring to light a very little known person. But when the man from Tamil Nadu and the woman from Chile start yelling at each other and talking over each other I have to turn off the radio, though no such upset occurred today.

I guess consider it an upside of moving, I get lost everywhere I go and take ten times longer to get back, home, also ironic because the reason we moved was to drive less.

And the dentist? Well she told me I need to floss. I thought once every 6 months was enough, guess not.

And for my fellow linguistics nerds:

The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again
asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by
adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new
definition. Here are this year's winners

1. **Intaxication**: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts
until you realize it was your money to start with.

2. **Reintarnation**: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

3. **Bozone** (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops
bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows
little sign of breaking down in the near future.

4. **Cashtration** (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the
subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.

5. **Giraffiti**: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

6. **Sarchasm**: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the
person who doesn't get it.

7. **Inoculatte**: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

8. **Hipatitis**: Terminal coolness.

9 **Osteopornosis**: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

10. **Karmageddon**: It's like, when everybody is sending off all
these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and
it's, like, a serious bummer.

11. **Decafalon** (n.): The gruelling event of getting through the day
consuming only things that are good for you.

12. **Glibido**: All talk and no action.

13. **Dopeler effect**: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter
when they come at you rapidly.

14. **Arachnoleptic fit** (n.): The frantic dance performed just after
you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

15. **Beelzebug** (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets
into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

16. **Caterpallor** (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.

teacher sick day

2008-02-14T18:04:00.000-08:00

Teachers don't really get vacation, primarily because we get so many days off, spring break, winter break and of course the three reasons why we are teachers to begin with: June July and August. However, in complete honesty I know I am not the only teacher who has taken a mental health day.

Today I was sick. It wasn't a mental health day, I am really sick. I would much rather be at school than sick.

But I have taken a mental health day, and despite the fact that we have to spend 2 hours writing up 5 pages worth of sub plans (which they will probably never read), I still have taken these days.

The question at large is: what do teachers do on their mental health days?

Do they clean the house *shudder*? Do they correct papers (again, *shudder*) Do they go shopping? Do they hang out at the library with a bottle of wine in a paper bag? Do they make science experiments? Do they catch up on their sleep? Do they recycle? Do they sweep the garage? Do they hide under their beds? Do they write letters to their grandma's? Do they go shopping for some new clothes?

What do teachers do on their mental health day? Hey help me, I want to know?!

for posterity's sake

2008-02-10T19:50:00.000-08:00

Knowing full well that no one care, but just for my own sanity I have to talk about the good time He and I had this weekend. Friday night we went to lil pub that's our favorite, then to Home Depot to look at stuff to make our house better.

Sat. we had to go look at some rocks (don't ask, we are going to build a wall) but the rock place decided it was closed even though it said it was open on the website, but to redeem the day we did some other fun stuff, like getting donuts (one knows one is old when getting donuts seems so rebellious-in fact He even suggested we take a walk around the library "for fun" haha!) then went to a shop we had wanted to go in, came home and I went to a gym and nearly passed out because I haven't actually gymmed out since August. Sat. night we got all duded up and went to a wine bar, which was a little more foofy than we wanted so we ended up at a Bistro a little further south that had really yummy food, and was a perfect place for us, I got to sit next to the fireplace.

This AM we got up and went to a bookstore and got coffee, traded in books and bought some for him and I and for the girl. Then we went to the store that is the definition of a baffling ordeal (Ikea) and bought a small dining table and some other stuff. J likened the place to huge trash heap of instant garbage. I had to point out that pretty much everything we have ever bought there is still serving us quite well...

And then we went to pick up the girl, who was very sick and sniffly and looked very tired. We took her home and snuggled her, fed her and put her to bed with some medicine.

This was out Valentines Day, and I am relishing it because more than likely we won't be having time like this again until summerish.

freeeeeeee

2008-02-08T21:44:00.001-08:00

For the first weekend since November, A is with granny and we are just a couple. And I might add that in November, we had to move into a new home so it wasn't like much fun was goin on.

Time before that? Errrr...August of last year? I don't know actually. So it is a long time coming. J and I are having a sweet time of it,we always make our future plans in times like these, and I fall in love with him again.... despite missing her like mad.

Inspired... or something

2008-02-06T19:45:00.000-08:00

Inspired by Chucheria talking about her class that almost does her in, I am inspired to tell of my first Spanish 1 class which will live on in my hippocampus in infamy.

The year I had them, I was in my third year teaching and was juggling teaching classes from 3 different departments. ESL, Health and Spanish. I was also pregnant in the smallest classroom on campus. The class list as the year started was 53 students. I asked for more desks, but was told that the students might winnow down as the first day arrived. Three of our five principals started running around finding me desks as kids filed in, when I called the office because they were sitting on window sills and floors.

I was nervous as I watched this huge quantity of kids file in. Thankfully there was a very set curriculum for Spanish which is helpful when one is starting out, unfortunately, the Spanish department staff were a 20 minute walk away and think only 2 of the 4 on staff knew who I was, and that I was teaching Spanish.

Eventually the size of the class went down to about 22 after the first 3 or so months wherein they had to move me to another classroom to accommodate the size of the group. I will never forget them.

As I describe them, keep in mind they are way out of the league of what is normal in a classroom for me.

Skinny E: one of a very small number black kids in our school, he would never look at me as he spoke, and never intended to ever do any work. When I asked him if he would turn around when I spoke to him (he put his back to me) he told me he "only faced his mama". I was always gently perplexed and never got to know him before they moved him out of my class.

future Shaq: who threatened other kids with expletives as he entered the room late. His administrator who I sent the referrals to was on her year before retirement and told me to my face she didn't have time to deal with him. I was glad to see him go, though felt bad for him as I saw him trying very hard to be the partying player basketball star, before he was kicked off the team for his stunts.

Shaneeka: also a study in early pregnancy. also gave me intimate details of her female issues.

molester if I care: parents divorced, dad was trying to straighten up wayward son. made sexual harrassing statements to one particular girl in the class consistently, and felt that I was completely out of line to step in.

devoutly religious homeschooler girl: she was just so happy to be in school, and though she mangled the spanish, because of her sheer effort and enthusiasm, I knew she could do it. As she graduated, she won the class award for being inspirational and positive.

abercrombie blond: confused with home issues, the unspoken leader of the class. Initially tried to be the class pet, which made me uncomfortable probably because of the amount of power she wielded among this group of very immature 9th graders (they would name their teams after her when they competed, she chose a name from Lion King as her spanish name --at the time I hadn't seen Lion King)

"I'm dumb" boy: Got C's until he decided he couldn't do Spanish, then tried to get out of the class. I protested, knowing he was smart enough, but he just never tried again. I guess now with experience I would let him go. He always just gave up before ever attempting anything.

"but I am a missionary!" goth girl: I will always remember her. Mid year she went goth. She was a year younger than her classmates. When she didn't understand a very simple concept (she was pretty smart) I told her to skip it because I could tell she was getting really frustrated, and I figured we could come back to it. As she left the classroom that day she sobbed "I'm going to be a missionary, you know!" in such a strange way as to suggest that I was somehow impeding her from this noble goal.

Her brother was in the class, and while we were learning colors he was incensed that I wasn't aware that he was colorblind, and so how dare I introduce colors. How strange. Once I learned he was colorblind I told him to not sweat it, but still I had dared, which sealed the deal that I was so unfair.

I have never experienced a class like this one, the kids did projects and tons of communicative stuff, I learned alot of fun activities this year from a really excellent Spanish department, but still I somehow got branded as the wicked witch of the west. Was it because I wouldn't let that one boy draw dirty pictures on the whiteboard? Maybe it was the girl I sent out for her thong underpants and cleavage? Maybe it was because they had to do homework?

Guess I'll never know, but I was okay with it when they all graduated.

American Pragmatism and Economic Responsibility, part 2

2008-01-30T20:37:00.000-08:00

Coming on the heels of being astonished at the size of my electricity bill in my new home, pragmatism I suppose has been my approach to money.

Now, I haven't taken economics. But I have a dad who managed to emerge in retirement as a millionaire from a career as an engineer, and he freely shares money advice by talking to his children like they are blithering idiots. I still have his voice in my head, saying "*&*%^$# Heather!" as he expresses amazement at our decisions. We have learned how our dad is, we take his "quirks" with a grain of salt. And along the way, he has impressed upon us some good economic advices.

So for me, when I hear of this economically stimulating package that intends to pay out a total of over 150 billion to us and other families in the nation to "save" the economy, I am wondering how is this responsible? We have a war and 9 trillion in debt. I am flummoxed.

Is this normal? Have I somehow lived my whole life not knowing that it was normal for the gov to send benjamins back to taxpayers... so thatultimately they would go to WalMart to stimulate the Chinese economy? Have they done this before? Isn't the interest we are paying on this money costing America a ton? Isn't interest sort of like a hole in the bucket?

Why do I feel like George W is a cracksmoker? Why does he always give money back to taxpayers... no one else ever did that, did they? Aren't they just going to ask for more later? How does this economics work?

Am I alone in feeling like these are wierd martian economics? Sort of like when he told us to go shopping after 911. That an adrenaline shot to the heart isn't really going to solve a long term downward tilt of our economy...

Either that, or I am the only one without an economics course, and clearly handing out money to citizens is a very fiscally responsible thing to do. It's a new world. And I am Emily LaTella (from SNL).

Am I the only one thinking that this "stimulus package" seems like bizarre election year economics that smell like a republican bid to garner positive feelings to a languishing political party? Not mention that this was the same guy who vetoed health insurance for kids?

Weigh in y'all! (all 2 of you)

edit: Irony.

So I know that George W. did this once before back in the days that I was in college, when I needed a kickback the most. Unfortunately, as a student, even with 2 jobs, I didn't make enough to qualify to get a check back. Subsequently, it does seem like this never happened before. Though I know that our state just sent our family back 700 some odd dollars, I can handle this come from a state economy (for some reason) better than the federal economy. All I know is that they better not say that anything is going unfunded if they are going to take all that money to send me back a check.

Logistics

2008-01-26T23:24:00.000-08:00

America is full of pragmatists, and well, I guess along with other things, I am pragmatic too. So, in the spirit of American pragmatism, this writing is going to be about BILLS.

Why? Because since I moved into my new house, my electricity bill has doubled. We are running around like dervishes turning off lights, closing fireplace dampers, closing doors, turning off fans, reducing the amount of appliance use, closing drapes, trying to find ways to get this electricity bill down. I do not understand how our bill has doubled.

My PGE bill is coming in at 120 a month. What is up with that? It used to be 40 to 70. You'd think that we had a Las Vegas Style sign in the front. We are a little curious. Same company, different town, smaller house even. One story instead of 3. Huh.

Our heating bill is scraping 200 a month. With those kinds of benjamins, we should be walking around in our underpants with the heat cranked to 80. We aren't. I wear sweaters and we never even hit 70 degrees. In fact, the heat stays off most of the day.

It's enough to make an environmentalist out of me. What can we do though? Short of dropping 20 K for a high efficiency heater and new vinyl windows (which we are discussing).

Is what we pay for utilities a big secret? Can we talk about this? Or is it boring to everyone except for me?

Are you paying this much?

2008-01-22T20:55:00.000-08:00

She Blinded me with Science

2008-01-17T23:19:00.000-08:00

Thank goodness we have scientists to let us know that water is wet.

Lately I hear all this stuff about if you don't sleep enough it increases your chances to be overweight. Well this is just grand news for someone like me who thinks there are few better ways to spend 15 to 20 minutes than to lay down for a nap. Stolen time, most delicious! And to feel that it might actually make up for the fact that I haven't been exercising since moving to a new home! Yippee!

But then it starts to get a little out of control. In Morning Edition the commentator starts saying things like lack of sleep can be one of the biggest problems next to obesity and smoking in terms of causing accidents. They talk about how lack of sleep affects our bodies and minds.

And it took a team of scientists to figure this out.

I remember in some science class in some book I read, the book said that scientists view common sense information as being fallacy and the scientific method reinforced a necessary reliance on tested fact. I thought that was interesting. So, by that logic, common sense was useless and only things proven through the scientific method had/have any validity.

I mean, I can see where they are going with this, but does anyone see how this puts our collective learning for the past thousands of years back to square one, because if it hasn't been scientifically proven, it's not reliable. Like the fact that it is important to get enough sleep, like say, 8 hours a night. Did I really need a team of researchers to tell me this? Apparently I did. What about if I approach a rabid dog with some steak in my hand, should we conduct some experiments to see if this might be hazardous to my health?

When I was young, I eschewed much conventional wisdom. I had this fabulous delusion that just because it happened to them, it didn't mean it would happen to me, because I was different. You know, there is actually brain research to show that teenagers are missing the neural connections to understand that they are fallible, mortal and how to cope with all this. Ack! More science!

Now that I am a little older, I think the whole world has gone crazy when I hear that we have to hear on the radio that sleep is good for us. It takes a team of researchers to tell us this. And, it is good for our bodies and metabolism! Friends, it is because we are sleeping instead of eating.

I have to admit, when I was living in Russia, some of the conventional wisdom there made me snicker. Like if you tape peppercorns to your ears it will help with a sore throat. However, if health insurance and health costs continue in this country as they are where people are going madly into debt to get medical treatment, some folks might just try rubbing vodka on their areas of malaise instead of paying a 3000 dollar hospital bill. Heck, then they can drink the vodka and be okay at least until the morning and still have the 3000 in their pocket.

Not that I am recommending that.

Anyway, every time I hear these teams of researchers discovering things like "stress makes people unhealthy" or "eating is linked to obesity" or "scientists find that exercising can help weight loss" or other things that I thought were just logical, it makes me glad that someone is paying these scientists to come up with these things and test them out for us. Because heaven forbid we should just rely on accepted, time tested collective wisdom. So I am happy that these scientists can carve out a little niche for themselves in the world to test the things that most sensible humans already know. They truly must be smart, because they have created a market for themselves to tell us the things that we already know.

As an aside, they did mention some interesting research about sleep patterns historically, basically that our sleep declined immensely with the advent of the electric light. Which I should probably now turn off and go to sleep so I can lose some weight.

All the lonely people...

2008-01-12T01:28:00.000-08:00

This statue is "Eleanor Rigby" per the Beatles song of the same name. It is in Liverpool, England.

I promise to post about a happy topic soon. But for now, lately the radio has been talking alot about people who die and there is no one] to bury them.

The link to this story here. It was on This American Life, called Home Alone.

They did this special about a woman in Los Angeles who worked for the county government. It is her job to go into the houses of people who have died and figure out who the relatives are. This way the deceased can get a proper burial.

She described the house of one woman in a sort of "on the scene" interview. The woman had died. She was in the morgue. Because she needed to be buried, and the family needed to be notified, they sent this county employee to the home to find out if the deceased had any relatives to bury her.

Going into the house, there are little paths. The bed is in the living room, a path sort of cleared to the TV set. There are tons of boxes, some unopened and some opened from the Home Shopping Network. She goes through the deceased womans bills, her papers, her files, her check stubs, her Christmas cards, trying to locate a personal contact that she can communicate with. She wants a personal address book. No luck. She really hopes to find a will that indicates what should happen after she dies. No luck there either...

After several days of going through this woman's stuff, she is able to place a couple calls to connect her to someone. The someone doesn't know her, but thinks his wife might. The wife says that she thinks the deceased woman might be something like the stepmother of an aunt that married into the family or some such distant relation on the guy's side. They never really seem to clear it up, but the guy says on radio that he wants to do his duty for the woman.

Someone else apparently pops up in the investigation who claims the woman. All of a sudden there are now two people.

And for the county employee it is on to the next case.

But what if they don't find anyone to communicate with? This happens too. Every year there are at least several hundreds who die and no one claims them to bury them. Every year they have a mass burial of these people at a cemetery. They have mass lots, each with a different year, they bury all the people together.

Then another story about a woman who died after five years in convalescent care, during which time not one single person ever came to see her. Olive Riggs.

This story takes place in England, and so the investigator in this case puts an ad in the paper. Olive Riggs. Some people respond, but mostly to offer condolences, and no they never actually knew her.

People don't like to think of other people dying alone. They don't want it to happen to them...

Weeks later, someone who might have known her calls.

I keep getting these inputs. I think about the elderly I have known, and know now. I don't really understand how it can happen that a person ends this way. But then I know families with a distinct live and let die mentality towards their brothers and fathers and grandmothers.

I don't know how to end this elegantly. This whole story is distressing. It makes me ask what is going on? How can this be? And it brings me back to ideas of losing community, what we got in exchange and whether it was worth it.

When I looking into the Amish a year or so ago, their life seemed to exemplify starkly the trade-off for community. They have amazing strong communities. Their close knit-ness from bloodlines, same churches, living arrangements, marraige celebrations, same schools, common traditions bring them together tightly as a community. There is never a problem of finding a babysitter in an Amish community. In Rumspringa, kids are released from the standards of the Amish community. Most all of them come back. The trade off of 221 channels of direct TV, cars, jeans, beer, video games, movies, books, stylish sneakers and buttons (yes, buttons, because women in some areas can only use pins) isn't worth the relationships & community that carry them through life.

"Abandonment is the greatest of all poverties"

-Mother Teresa

the forecast. for too long

2008-01-06T00:37:00.000-08:00

Tonight: Overcast with rain showers at times. Low near 35F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
Tomorrow: Rain. Snow may mix in early. High 39F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.
Tomorrow night: Considerable cloudiness with occasional rain showers. Snow may mix in late. Low 34F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Monday: Rain showers in the morning becoming more intermittent in the afternoon. Snow may mix in early. High 41F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
Tuesday: Mainly cloudy and rainy. Highs in the mid 40s and lows in the upper 30s.
Wednesday: Showers. Highs in the low 40s and lows in the upper 30s.

Flickr & Yahoo stink

2008-01-05T17:19:00.000-08:00

Flickr seemed all that and more for quite a long time. I loaded many, many photos there.

When A was born I originally loaded pics on Yahoo, because that was who I used alot, Yahoo. Plus I could print to Target, go pic up images when it was convenient for me.

In about August or so of this year, Flickr said they were moving all my Yahoo pics to Flickr and wahoo wasn't this excellent, I was going to get a free Pro Account! For 2 months. Wow, how generous.

Then, they told me that if I didn't pay 24.95 all my pictures would become unavailable. And they did. Now, I am only allowed to have 200 pictures on Flickr, andI cannot view them in the large size format. Convenient, just as I have recently purchased a nice dSLR and now Flickr is basically offering me nothing anymore. Unless of course I want to pay 24.95 for a pro account. I cannot see the large image size, I cannot print to Target, I cannot upload new pics each month without having other deleted.

I was given the old bait and switch. It seems like when Yahoo came along all Flickr offered went away. I voiced how this was a kick in the head, I got a canned email in response, ostensibly saying "this is how it is".

Bye Flickr and Yahoo. I am laughing because I have gone from having Yahoo do most all my web services to none. Google offers more. I'll keep pics on Picasa.

Photo Essay: Holidays 2007

2008-01-04T20:30:00.001-08:00

This is S post Christmas, a shot taken by her brother. Here we are in Redding, CA at J's parent house.

On the drive home from CA, normally made during the day, J took this shot of at all places, a rest stop.

On New Years Eve, heading home, we stopped to see the A's who are parents to a A3, who likes my A, even though seh jacked his Curious George slippers (My A has a slipper fetish)

This is taken after all festivities have come to a close and life is approaching a normal pace. Here we are checking out the park nearby and A is pleased to have climbed up this structure.

I didn't realize her swing had run out of steam, and she was just sitting there, because I was er, too absorbed in the moss.

Our holidays beginning. Another lovely noble. Thankyou twee.
A enjoying her gifts, making a call to her agent?
A proving me wrong: that musical boxes are in fact, very interesting.

Only in California do these flowers grow in subzero temps.

Always something to take a picture of....

Rain rain rain rain

2008-01-01T15:32:00.000-08:00

It begins to bear down on one when every day sun is looked for but yahoo weather predicts rain every day for nearly 2 months.

Bust out the Billie Holiday and renew the gym membership because I can feel the christmas goodies collecting in all their favorite spots.

Year by year I care less, but the exercise feels really good, and I guess that is why I bother.

So I am bracing myself because happy new year y'all, it is the time of the year for naps, good books, soup Billie Holiday and samba (oh I forgot, that is all year round) and making photo albums.

All I need is to remember that all is not lost on clouds, but life shifts its focus from hiking and biking to making soup.

Best get to that, now.

What's a teacher, anyway?

2007-12-25T01:08:00.001-08:00

I am a Yule Log. I have never seen one of these before. I think it would be fun to make one.

So the other morning we were listening to a sermon when the guy starts telling, just briefly what a teacher is. He said they were a person that did something special in the life of a young person, something really good that went beyond their subject area. I can't tell you exactly what he said because I can't remember, but the general impression I got was that for him a teacher really was someone besides a person who conveyed general knowledge.

Now, this was news to me. Sort of.

It is interesting though to learn what other people think my job is.

Because somehow I got the idea that the main thrust of my job was to teach stuff. If my job is to win a popularity contest, to be young people's best friend, to lift them up and to be something special in each of their lives, err, how is it that I missed that part in my training?

I do think it is every teachers job to believe in, have confidence in, to be friendly towards, to be a positive influence the lives of kids. But even though I am confident that I do that as task number one every day, I know that there are enough kids who would be happy if I just taught them something they didn't know before. They don't want me as their role model, they just want to get through the day.

Yes I start every day with a smile. I start every day with a sense that I am there as a positive person in their lives. I know that. I make it a point to be sure that I am the one who always believes in their abilities regardless of their test scores. That is not always easy to do. But am I the inspiration of a lifetime for every kid that walks through my door? Well, wouldn't that be nice?

So it is interesting to hear other people's take on what my job ought to be. It would be helpful to know the parent's ideas on what I should be to their kids. But only up to a point.

I consider one of my mentor teachers. There would be no kid of hers that lauded her as a huge inspiration. But did she teach them Spanish? Heck ya. She was amazingly efficient in this area. Skilled, organized. She handed every paper back the day after it was handed in. She knew where they would be at any point in the year regardless of what book or what level she taught. She had been doing it for 30 years. Would she be the one that students confided in? Definitely not. Was she warm and fuzzy? No. Did the kids talk to her outside the class? Um, no. Was she a teacher par excellence? Well she was voted teacher of the year in Oregon. So who knows what a teacher is.

any ideas?

Who doesn't have a heathen past?

2007-12-23T01:22:00.000-08:00

Props to Chucheria for pointing to this.

You Are a Yule Log

While you do have holiday spirit, you have a secret, heathen past.

What Holiday Food Are You?

One of the coolest things I have seen yet on the internet.

2007-12-04T20:40:00.000-08:00

www.pandora.com

I was looking for a way to listen to the music I wanted while I was grading. I didn't have any CD's or Mp3's on my work laptop. Pandora is internet radio. The catch is that it only plays what you want it to.

Type in the name of the artist or song and it will play it. Thank God someone has finally done this!

It's because I am old

2007-12-02T23:59:00.000-08:00

Reorienting. Questions are like this:

Where am I supposed to buy Christmas gifts way down here?
Dude, they don't even have a Trader Joes nearby, how are we supposed to have appetizer night?
I need some clothes. I dress like a schemiel. Where can I go here?
Oh man we really need some Ethiopian Food! Let's go...oh wait, I forgot. We live in THE BERG.
Hey let's have Pho tonight, oh yeah, we live in NEWBERG.

So yes, I am missing the cultural selections in Portland.

On the bright side, every single one of our neighbors have brought us tasty baked goods, and have warmly welcomed us. We live in a nice place! There are mountain-looking things nearby! There is a rockin coffee shop that has a play area for kids AND WiFi!

Why is this all making me feel old? Because not having the stuff I love and am familiar to makes me think I should just stay home. Then I remember that is how people become shut ins. I remember thinking once in my 20s that the key to forever youth is the ability to adapt. I feel some ways I am adapting poorly.

Shush, I tell you secret.

The other day I felt like a cantankerous old hag. I was acting just like my parents.

ABORT! ABORT! It was so easy.

I think really its because I just need some time wandering around Portland, preferably on my bike (not likely) and eating Ethiopian Food to make it all okay.

Changes

2007-11-29T18:44:00.001-08:00

Because it just wasn't enough to move to a new community and start a new job, J and I also enrolled A for the first time in a child development center. It isn't exactly day care. It is part of University and funded by a teaching research organization where J works. I went to the place and it seemed good. There A does stuff she doesn't so much get at home, like lots of interaction with kids around her age.

But the first day was rough. I let J know that he really should not email me about incidents where A is sad and wants to go home because it was too hard to bear while I was at work. The kicker was that ELD teachers are required to organize 3 parent nights over the course of the school year. And that was the day A started, so I didn't see her until the next evening after her second full day at the CDC.

I am sure I am not alone in going through this. It is very debatable as to whether I will be full time next year...in fact the plan is: no.

Surely I am not the only mom in this situation.

Free rice

2007-11-28T20:08:00.000-08:00

A fun site where you try to see how many words you know and at the same time donate rice to the UN food program.

freerice.com

What can I learn here?

2007-11-25T00:32:00.001-08:00

In my late 20's, much to my chagrin, I moved every six months for several years.

No I didn't like it at all. But in one house a roommate wouldn't allow any of my friends who weren't native English speakers (what is up with that?) and the other roommates defended him. I just ended up having to move alot and it stank.

About all I wanted after grad school was to move as little as humanly possible. It took us 3 moves to get there, but I think we have arrived at that spot.

But oh, the mess.

Once I do get a room cleaned, I am disappointed by how thoroughly white and undecorated and monochromatic the room seems. In our last house, our colors worked out so well, many of the people who looked said we had chosen well. We are back to white. So, it is clean, and there is an echo and at least there are no boxes.

Next time I move, it will be overseas.

Went to Ikea today.

I cannot believe what a baffling ordeal that store can be. Had picked out the bookshelf and toy storage thing online beforehand. Had a few other things. It was just ridiculous though, it was as though by design the store was trying to tax every last bit of patience and make me wish I never had to ever ever ever go there again to buy their cheaply made garbage. I predict other people will feel the same way...

As one enters the store, they do everything possible to make the shopper ascend to the second story to commence, but they don't really tell you this. They all but block access to the first story and make carts unavailable, which if you are looking for a cart to enter the store, from the very get go it is a bit difficult. Then, when the shopper chooses to ascend to the second floor, they will not allow the shopper to bring their cart (??), ask them to park it downstairs. Where my cart was subsequently taken with all the merchandise I had gotten as I meandered through their serpentine layout. I decided I would sooner skip it than walk through their maze again.

So going upstairs I had to find another cart and start again...but of course you cannot pick up larger items until you get to the very end. Rather than being able to just go to the warehouse, because of their layout I have to double back and forth and around and around, constantly seeing signs that promise an exit that never comes. Once I got to the warehouse to pick up the stuff, it was heavy and high up so it was nice that a person working there helped out, even if he did seem a little put out by it.

You have to buy bags there, not a biggie, 5 cents each, but in the scheme of things already seeming like a baffling ordeal, not having a bag to carry whatever cheap garbage was purchased seems kind of like another reason to expect the most annoying shopping experience ever upon setting foot in the place.

Did I mention the perpetual throngs in the place? I have never visited an Ikea when there weren't 35 million people there.

I left and now have a couple things from there, but have never been so irritated by that store before today. Honestly, if people saw what most of their stuff was made out of, I don't believe they would ever buy it. Sheets are a good deal there. A few other things too. One has to be picky about their furniture, but it is altogether depressing to buy furniture there because it is so Mickey Mouse, it is almost like instant garbage in 10 years (if you get that much use out of it).

If you do not believe, or think perhaps I am exaggerating, I invite you to their website where they freely disclose that bookshelves are made of paper, foil and embossed painted cardboard.

They do have products made of wood, but it is veneered particle board. For that, the buyer can expect a very heavy bookshelf that is also sadly just a half a step above target furniture, and sometimes not even that much.

Happy shopping. :o)

Never again

2007-11-20T23:26:00.000-08:00

Cue that song "Have you never been mellow" and change the word mellow with "grouchy" and this was my mood today. And yesterday. And yes, the day before.

It is strange for me because I aggressively temper grouchiness. I do not let it run its course. But whoaho ho!

At my new school, one of the "norms" for some of the old timers seems to be utter disregard for all other teachers that they don't know well. Initially I found this surprising. Sometime humorous. Today when I was interrupted twice by this same old behemoth bag of a bossy English teacher I gave her to stink eye probably more than I even intended. I was just having difficulty comprehending this notion that no one valued for anything in her world unless she stooped to give them value. She noticed my look of utter disbelief and then I finished what I was saying...but I guess I kind of surprised myself.

And it didn't end here. I was speaking my mind frequently. Probably much to the annoyance of my colleagues, but I felt like I had just kind of had it with the people there. And since it doesn't matter if I work there next year, I guess my caring about making a good impression went on utter reprieve today. I rolled my eyes, slouched in my chair at meetings when the principal said things like "collaboration is mandatory". It didn't last long, I caught myself, put on my listening serious face (which I learned from my division chair, who very adeptly nods and seems to be listening very carefully but I always wondered if maybe he wasn't contemplating dinner or something more interesting than whatever the person he was speaking to was blathering on about) and attempted to not act like a petulant teenager. Not always an easy task!!

It's all wrong, but I feel utterly justified in this cyclone of grouchiness, with smart aleck comments approaching 120 miles per hour, don't come to close or else my sarcasm will at least wreck your hairdo.

I moved this weekend. I moved my woodworker husband who has massive quantities of wood and heavy equipment as well as a complete home office plus my daughter and her 35, 000 stuffed animals and 20 tons of Walmart half broken toys that I can't throw away because they were given as gifts. Between them, they made me look like an ascetic who doesn't believe in keeping material goods. Clearly I need to go buy some clothes.

After this experience, my strongest sentiment is that I will never ever move again, and that I would sooner move out of the country and donate every thing I own except my camera and my photo albums to the poor (who wouldn't care about the photo albums anyway).

Bye Bye East Portland

2007-11-13T19:25:00.000-08:00

I think I have mentioned before that I have lived all over Portland. Downtown, Alberta, Mississippi, Southeast, Northeast, North, Southwest and Northwest. Every part. Where I didn't live, I worked. I am a good person to ask about things in Portland.

Little did husband know when he married me that I was a woman of goals. I determined that one year after marraige, we would buy a home. And that was just how it was to be. We would also somehow manage to afford an operation that would cost alot of money.

Seredipitously, I scored a teaching deal in China that kept me from spending money all summer, kept me travelling without spending a dime in China and then shipped me home 1600 richer. China shouldn't be missed.

When we came home I decided it was time to buy a home. We looked in August and September and then because we didn't have much money and Jeff was self employed at the time and I was up to my eyelashes in student debt, I thought the possibility of us getting a home was slim to none. That's when East Portland came in.

Despite the fact that it wasn't very savory part of town, we found a decent nook on a quiet street a biggish home with a private back yard surrounded by trees. It was our first home and even though it wasn't an opulent palace of hip, it was our first home and a small miracle that we got to buy it.

We set ourselves to creating the palace of good taste and well appointed colors and finishing touches. In the end, these are probably what ultimately sold this otherwise nothing special home with kids stickers stuck on the doors, doggy scratches on the wood work and old drafty windows. We swapped out nearly every door, painted inside and out with good colors, replaced all moulding and put builtin maple fireplace and cabinet work in the living room. I loved doing it.

We had 15 years of trees to trim before we could ever even think about making the yard look decent.

We had a baby. Jeff got an awesome job. We turned 5 years of marraige. We made goals for the future. Our life here has been so very very good.

And almost every day I got to drive past the businesses, graffiti, tweakers and playgrounds overrun by thuggy kids that made me wonder how Portland could abandon this part of town to building codes that crammed in as many people as possible and made low price housing and a haven for those at the lower end of things. I forced myself to focus on the good parts of this place. But in my heart, it was not the Portland I knew, the one I fell in love with. The Portland of my college years, my motorcycle years and my 20s where my life was spent in class, serving coffee and figuring out how next to get overseas.

Now almost 20 years after moving to Portland, I am leaving. I know it isn't good bye forever, I will be in a smaller community called Newberg. Whenever I tell people I am moving there they always comment on what a nice place it is.

For awhile it was looking like we might not be able to get a better home than the one we were currently in, even though the area would be nicer, so I am grateful that not only are we moving to a nicer area, the home we are moving to, while not an opulent palace but a rather unassuming little place in a nice neighborhood, is a bit nicer, about the same size.

I won't say bye to Portland, home of my youthful folly, but bye to East Portland. I will remember the struggling families here and hope they are blessed to raise their families wisely.

Music of the young years

2007-11-11T20:33:00.001-08:00

I am not old or anything, but I am old enough to have music that I listened to 20 years ago.

Tonight I am packing my house and naturally one needs music. These days about all I listen to is Brazilian jazz/samba and books on tape. But back in the day, I went to shows in Seattle and all, listening to bands in living rooms of dorm rooms, bands that went on to drug overdoses and infamy.

Since I was just tired of Samba, and it doesn't do much for trying to pack up (except make me want to kick up my legs and rest) I put on some music of the young years. My goodness how it takes me back to a very very specific time of life.

Tonight it is Jonathon Richman and the Talking Heads. In that music, I am 17. My life is a mess. I am sad and young and when I look at pictures of me from then I think "I was so pretty and so messed up."

A friend described it well when he bid me farewell, his nice, flaky croissant.

But Jonathon is always happy. And the truth is my life is happy now. Music though, it's wonderfully powerful.

I tried to listen to some of the stuff I had listened to and it was a study in contrasts. Listening to Beck Odelay while playing with PlayDoh with my 2 year old. Um, no.

Smashing Pumpkins while feeding said kid? Um, no turn it off. NOW!

What about even Propellorheads? Massive Attack? Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan? Agh. Didn't I ever listen to anything normal????

No, the answer is no. I didn't. But Jonathon, well he is always good.

The Battleaxe in B202

2007-11-08T18:52:00.000-08:00

It is only fitting, when I am feeling like an overly strict and altogether too boring teacher to speak about my worsts when it came to teachers.

I tried to explain (misguidedly in Spanish in interviews) why my worst teachers also taught me valuable lessons about teaching.

But they have. Because they reached a place in their teaching I never wanted to be.

I remember the woman who made a seating chart that was predicated on each student keeping their front right desk leg stuck precisely on the masking tape which she had put on the Berber carpet of her classroom floor. She announced prominently (and she hardly ever spoke, because we were just supposed to do our worksheets and leave her alone, as I recall) but this day she announced that if our desk leg came off the tape on the floor we would receive detention. She would then disappear behind her desk which seemed to have endless stacks of plastic organizer things. She was old with dyed dark hair with white roots. She did not smile. I didn't not like her, I feared her only, and I didn't understand her. My main goal was to escape the class and not get a detention, and perhaps learn something?

I don't remember that we learned anything, maybe some social studies?

I remember my middle school Earth Science teacher. Sort of an old recycled heavy set crusty stubbly hippie man who spent most of the class in the lab out of sight. He would come in and sit from time to time. And show a movie regularly. In this class were the glam rock girls who without provocation decided I was a good target for bullying. It was utterly bewildering to me. It was well known that they had it out for me and other kids told me to keep my head up even though the girls picked on me daily.

Mostly though, I remember my high school and college teachers. The newspaper teacher who sat in his office with his feet up most of the time listening to Steely Dan on his walkman.

My tall gangly gawky French teacher who without shame admitted to liking bluegrass in the new wave eighties. She was actually pretty cool.

My newbie biology teacher whose child died of SIDS in the spring of his first year teaching. An incredible tragedy. I learned alot in his class...despite arriving late daily.

The Social studies teacher who I again didn't recall teaching us anything rather he told us about his car accident and we mostly were just supposed to think of something to write in journals we had to bring. He never read them. But we had to write. I think it was more of a writing class than a social studies class. He drank Diet Coke for breakfast every day.

I remember our speech teacher who did teach us how to do speeches, we called her the Space Needle because she was very tall with a red round face. She was very nice though, and didn't deserve such a naughty nickname.

The coup de grace teachers were a few prominent linguistics profs who were alternately weird and cruel. One who told me I was not cut out for linguistics. How can such a teacher be? How can a teacher be one to tell her student she was not smart enough? Another who granted a better grade to my ugly friend who dozed all through his class than he did to me, when I was going to study groups all over the place...Did I mention that he did northern European folk dances on the desk with his wiry and cranky little self?

It all sounds surreal, such is my strange memory.

I was a bit of an ingrate student. Certainly becoming a teacher has wholesale altered my perspective not only of authority but leadership and education.

There were teachers who were gentle, and yet tough. Empathetic and yet challenging. They saw how mortified I was in oral Spanish tests and were kind enough to not make it more difficult. The Anthropology and Psych teacher, the great readers who shared their finds.

great words number 458 & 459

2007-11-04T19:49:00.001-08:00

Luddite

Main Entry:: Ludd·ite; Pronunciation:; \ˈlə-ˌdīt\
Function:: noun
Etymology:: perhaps from Ned Ludd, 18th century Leicestershire workman who destroyed a knitting frame
Date:: 1811

: one of a group of early 19th century English workmen destroying laborsaving machinery as a protest; broadly : one who is opposed to especially technological change

— Luddite adjective

hurly-burly

Main Entry:: hur·ly–bur·ly; Pronunciation:; \ˌhər-lē-ˈbər-lē\
Function:: noun
Etymology:: probably alteration & reduplication of hurling, gerund of hurl
Date:: 1539

There is a story why this word is so great. And it is such one of my most favorite stories I have to tell it.

When I was teaching in Russia, there were many things different.

In the English classes there, for example, the teacher mostly didn't know English. And really how could they have, since they largely had never heard the language. Remember, they were less than 15 years into Glasnost and TV wasn't in English and they seldom had that opportunity to travel, plus Russia spans 11 time zones and truly a behemoth of a country. The mere fact that they could get everyone to learn Russian and basically speak that without too much variation was a feat in itself. To me it is amazing they knew any English at all.

So in Peace Corps they pair you will a "counterpart" and that counterpart facilitates work for you. For me, my counterpart basically trotted me around the countryside of Chuvashia and said "First I brought you George Soros money, and now I have brought you AN AMERICAN" One would expect the crowd to gasp. I felt like a show poodle.

Through this however I got to (yes I am getting to the good part) see alot of classes of Russians teaching English. They are fascinating. I largely felt very sorry for these teachers, they often hadn't been paid in months and the mere presence of a higher up meant that this could be the day they lost their jobs. I tended to be very nice. Because actually, I didn't care much one way or they other. But they sure did.

The one teacher who I will never forget was a rotund happy faced middle aged woman who I believe all her students just loooooved her. She had some elementary students. And she started off with the weather. As you read this, don't merely read it, sing it, and sing it with an operatic tone and faux british accent to really appreciate her voice.

"What is the weathah like outside today children!?"

"It's raining! Thaht's right it's raining" (all children repeat, and she asks individual students to parrot back to her)

"Yes, children, it is raining, and in fact, it is raining very hard!"

"It's raining very hard, it's a HURLY BURLY!"

And if it wasn't odd enough that she was teaching children 15th century English (which I bet was actually pretty fun for them because the word was sort of unusual), she had placed rubber bands on all their desks and had them practice pulling out their british vowels Huuuuurly Buuuuuuuurly.

Now in SIOP they teach us to use kinesthetics as much as possible, and never before have a seen such a thing as 15th century English taught using ahead of her time techniques. You go teacher!

I'll never forget her voice though...

happy

2007-10-31T21:46:00.000-07:00

Let's talk about teaching middle school.

2007-10-30T19:56:00.000-07:00

Today I am compelled to change entirely the focus of my blog and talk exclusively about those who would choose to teach middle school ELL.

They must be stark raving mad.

Oh yeah, that would be me.

So there was a man a plan and a canal with this job, which is a ridiculous way of saying there was a logic behind taking this job. Basically it was "If I like it, I will stay. If I don't, I will attempt to move back to high school."

Frankly, I think the first year anyone teaches anywhere, they should expect difficulty. Not insane difficulty, but challenge. So, it is truly no surprise.

But every day I get more and more referrals in my box about what my little newcomers are doing outside my classroom, which explains sufficiently why they are acting so wierd inside the room.

They are, to be succinct, beating, kicking, slugging and verbally harassing each other, in that gentle way that only middle schoolers are capable of. Yes the school disciplines them every time. Yes, they get expelled. And then they come back, and once again we suffer through the days until they are again sent out.

I have seen teachers that give up. They become more of a referee than anything else. And why don't I just pull a Freedom Writers on them? Because they cannot speak English, and this is my job. They are very, very smart. But their English is kindergarten level and max first grade.

Most days are fine, nothing to comment. But once every couple weeks, they just go bananas on me.

What's going on here? Today the issue was "what is a swear word". I learned a few choice Mexican swear words living in Mexico. It is nice to know them, even if you aren't really going to use them. And my kids use them in class. And when I tell them they are not allowed to use those words in class, they fight against me "But my mom uses this word at home!" And while my mind clicks through many comments, the only one that comes out is "But you don't use it here, got it?" They believe I am horribly, horribly strict. Beyond strict, I am ridiculous. But to be honest, these kids are from the sticks, often their parents cannot read. I met them at conferences, they are wonderful people; humble, thankful, proud.

In teaching ELL, or any language really, the classroom has to be a safe place to make mistakes, practice pronunciation. But when a 40 percent contingency of my class is alpha bullies and the bullies, kids so short they look like 3rd graders, safety looks like an impossible goal. Not only am I teaching them English, I am socializing them. I expect that too, but some days (I got 4 behavior writeups today about these kids) I wonder if maybe it wouldn't be nicer to be an Instructional Assistant part time.

fall on me

2007-10-22T19:18:00.001-07:00

news

2007-10-16T20:30:00.001-07:00

Our house has sold and we are accepting a counter offer on a home in wine country tomorrow.

Our close date is 19th November. J's 4 hour commute will finally be coming to a close. Glory be. And I will be within 15 minutes of work, rather than 45.

Best of all, the neighborhood is amazingly wonderful, as is the community we are going to. It is so nice to see the compromises made yesterday come to fruition today.

enough

2007-10-14T19:17:00.000-07:00

Teaching ESL. I thought it meant just that.

But I can see that really, it does not.

It means teaching, but it also means being the one who translates documents at the last minute, is co-opted to be the leader of the Latino club, has to make calls to all the families for Back to school night or Parent conferences, arranges translators for the teachers who need them, deals with the matriculation of the kids from level to level and is in charge of their Woodcock Munoz scores, is the person who administers these tests and scores them and tracks the database for their exiting the program, and then has to figure out how to monitor them, and also needs to organize 3 parent nights for the year, volunteer for community liaison activities with the library, migrant program and other social programs for the kids (like 4H), deals with ELPA testing and their scores for that, and because none of that takes very much time you get 3 to 5 preps that change annually and you need to be okay with being the one who also teaches them PE, Art and Math because everyone else is afraid that when the kids speak Spanish, they are saying bad things about the teacher.

Is it any wonder there is a shortage of ESL teachers.

I look at these kids, and they are so smart, so sharp, so full of potential. And they will give back to our communities what we put into them. But the education they get is less than what their white peers are getting mainly because of fear. Teachers are afraid of them. They let the kids sit, not doing anything, where all the white kids are getting to work. They don't get PE or Art and if they do, it is by a person who has no idea what they are doing. They don't get to participate in all school activities. Their gym uniforms arrive months later than everyone else's. They stretch the teachers to cover every aspect of their above and beyond needs, even though they get extra money from the state for their education. Where are all the people who can pour every last drop of themselves into these kids with no time or money to do so?

Baby Kong

2007-09-29T23:01:00.000-07:00

Today in downtown we went shopping together to get some farmers market stuff and then to the toy store. It's sort of a tradition, there is a toy store downtown that doesn't have the typical "let's market a character to children" fare, but just cool variations on old standards.

Am not sure what inside of me revolts against the marketing of characters to kids, probably to old prig in me.

We got her a few things, blocks, teaset and she was in love with the little mini stroller, so we had to get it for her.

She walked the six blocks back to the car pushing her mini stroller. She walked passed all varieties of people, including biker dudes with zz top beards and chirped "Hi! What's your name?" as she pushed her small pink plastic stroller. It made me happy to see her bringing smiles to not only me.

At one point she was trying to get it over the curb. She lifted the thing up over her head like a baby king kong going to smash the world with her small pink stroller. But the stroller came down and the world was safe again.

Devil is in the details

2007-09-26T20:04:00.000-07:00

It has been the first month of school. Of this new job.

Here is what I have learned in school.

I was hired into a political battle and have a colleague who has an axe to grind with my being hired.
She is very political. She isn't really very friendly. She is in my department that consists of 3 people.
The kids are alternately wonderful and alternately very naughty.
There is one group of students who can't seem to go 5 minutes without slugging someone.
Overall things are fine.
My day is longer than it has been in a very long time, with about 3 hours between arriving home and going to bed.
They don't show you how to do attendance, yet you are required to do it. The don't teach one how to do anything on the school database for student information, but speak as if you already know. I think they are waiting to see if you make it through the first year. Very different from my last school. Future newbies should be warned.
The English teachers make mistakes in parent letters.
If you don't bring cookies or chocolate to share, you best not eat an m n m.
Remember, don't speak unless you have political capital.
Only one other person on staff has small kids at home, meaning, long hours are the norm, normal hours mean you must be lazy.
No, there is no curriculum for what you teach.
Like I said though, it's actually all pretty much par for a job. What did you expect?

I don't miss the old place, but I do miss the culture of it. Though the faculty was 150 teachers, there was a strong respect and sense of smallness about the place. At staff meetings they gave out gifts to newlyweds and new babies, and they sent flowers to those grieving on staff. Every faculty person gave 5 dollars toward that fund at the outset of the year. People were getting their toes stepped on alot toward the end, but the sense of community, welcomeness and generally everyone being glad that you were there and now you were part of this most awesome team was inspiring. Every new teacher I started with wanted to take on extra duties to contribute to the good atmosphere of the school. It was easy to be positive there. I guess since that was my first school, to me that is how it ought to be. The principal was a rather amazing fellow, well loved at least. When he left, they made him a photo album of all the babies that were born while he was in charge there. I loved that.

I have been reading a very good book at night that is helping me keep perspective and has really just been the best book I have read in a very, very long time, though I think it has something to do with timing.

Props to J and A who have been my support at this time.

Cue "Out of Touch" by Hall and Oates

2007-09-22T10:30:00.000-07:00

I don't usually get political, even though I read and listen daily to news.

But that aforementioned song was playing in my head while I read this. This George is really, really not touching into reality on this angle.

Children's Health Care bill vetoed.

The New Deal

2007-09-08T20:23:00.000-07:00

People all around have been asking me, "So how's the new job goin?" I kid, but let me tell anyway (it's my blog, I can do this).

At my old school, for supplies, each teacher was issued one black pen, one red pen and a small box of paper clips. At my new school, the stuff they give us just keeps pouring in. Now, you'd think I had taught exclusively in developing countries, because I got excited by:

my own room that was not shared except for a movable wall
a free lanyard
My own MacBook
2 brand new fancy office chairs that I didn't have to beg or buy myself
2 free new bookcases that I didn't have to bribe anyone for
A huge box of supplies on the desk, the new desk, I had in the teacher planning area, including white board markers, glue sticks, file folders and just a huge amount of stuff, such that people were COMPLAINING about where to put it all
My own storage areas, abundant
My own Infocus mounted in the class
My own document camera in my room
A cart of 16 macbooks to be shared among 8 teachers
100 bucks with which to buy stuff (I will buy either picture dictionaries or other dictionaries)

It just goes on and on.

But as someone said as I left my old place (so inspiring they weren't) that it will merely be a case of trading in old problems for new ones (with friends like that, who needs an enemy?)

Plus I have no duty.

I also however, have no prep time (well I do, but because of "collaboration" and schedules, I will be cool with the fact that my colleagues great ideas leave the ELL teachers with kids to watch after on prep, it's not a biggie though), I have 4 different classes to teach, and there is not a single set process in the school and things change willynilly, because it is a new school and the teachers want to make it be how they like it be.

The place is hugely political. All the staff are chiefs, the bossy leader types. The environment is much less warm and welcoming compared to my last school, which I practically predicted. A few exceptions of course, there are a couple really nice, understanding folks. My last school was filled with truly very kind people. They rolled out the welcome wagon to newbies and everyone introduced themselves warmly. So, what have I learned at the new place? Don't talk in meetings unless you are asked to, and keep the nose down.

And classes? How is moving from high school to middle school? Well, the kids are needy of course. They all need help opening their lockers, they linger around me and are watching me very closely. I am teaching newcomers. That means a dynamic that is more intense. I am bilingual, but code switching from Spanish to English sets a very bad precedent. So since it is an ELD class, I am pure English but since they are newcomers they speak to me in Spanish.

They are so eager to please so far, despite the fassad of the first day, they are kids after all.

Fun fun fun

2007-08-28T21:23:00.000-07:00

I was given a new MacBook. It has a camera built in. Naturally, they give it for work and the first thing we do is goof off.

Food, Beauty, Joy, work and rest

2007-08-24T16:58:00.001-07:00

Maybe it is the end of the summer that does this to me. Maybe it is the deep colors, fragrances and tastes of happiness that saturate me to my bones and make me reprioritize what is important and what is not.

This, my last day of summer, I spent promising myself I would get alot of stuff done.

Well I did, but which stuff of importance, I don't know.

Instead of arranging to have official transcripts sent (again), I swept the patio and tended my dahlias, mums and pansies.

Instead of packing more teaching things out to the car, I took my daughter to the park and hung around for an hour or more.

Instead of vacuuming the house thoroughly, I watered the garden and sat and ate sunflower seeds on the back patio. Shamelessly, almost hedonistically wasting precious time.

Instead of making the bed, I wrote cards to people whom I knew needed a word of encouragement or love.

And what a perfect perfect way to spend the last day of summer.

Back

2007-08-23T23:16:00.001-07:00

I will be full time this year, working at a new school with a homogenous group of language learners (meaning they are all Spanish speakers) in a brand new middle school. I still do not know what my schedule will look like.

Things I am learning:

Where old skool was rigid to the point of being ludicrous, this school is very flex, and hard to pin down. For example, what I was hired for changes depending on who you ask. Although they all agree I am a teacher, so that's a good start.

They do teacher blogs here. Interesting!

They are very wired projectors/dvd's in every room and school is a wireless environ.), and I will be able to, for the first time, maybe actually do some exploring of the possibilities with technology without meeting perpetual frustration and utter indifference. Am already getting good ideas.

Did I mention I still don't know what subjects I am teaching? Hmmm.

My new community is well, it's like a golfing and football type place. One woman called it a "sports community".

I am trying to refrain (brgaslhnung!) from making comparisons from my previous school, like wow! no duty! wow! my own chair! new! wow! they are giving me whiteboard markers!

J and I are going to be paying a bit in child care and we will be carpooling to work, which will be nice. We have already discussed division of labor issues as I go back FT and he will be working from home much of the time. So, his job being so far is a bummer, but his schedule makes up for it, he can work from home 3 days a week.

At this time, I might point you to my new and totally not done teacher blog, which I will have to do in Spanish...

new skool

2007-08-22T20:05:00.000-07:00

There is something reassuring about an old school.

And there is something frightening about a new school.

But the mere fact that I am typing this on the laptop I got from the new teacher meeting, and the fact that I will not have to keep my fingers crossed to get a chair for my desk, and that I was given a box of supplies to start the year with, well that is a good start.

Revenge!

2007-08-20T12:30:00.000-07:00

Jane's blog supergroup wrote a note about revenge and it resonated with me.

Before I write anything, I have to admit, I am too much of a weeny to actually exact revenge on a person. I just don't believe in it, at all.

Back in the late 90's, I was just returned from doing my stint in Peace Corps in Russia. I came home from this "mountaintop" experience with little cash and alot of school debt. The idea of going on for a Master's at this point nauseated me, knowing I would just end up making that debt larger. And while I wondered just what it was that I was supposed to do with my life, I worked as an Executive Assistant/Office Manager.

I began the job ambitiously, hoping they would see good things. But I don't think they could have, because my level of frustration at being reduced to inventorying paper clips after having had done the job I did in Peace Corps left me with a strong sense of anxiety and desire to escape.

When a person doesn't like their job, it is usually at least somewhat evident. Changing printer cartridges, training people how to use their voice mail, showing VP's how to use their cell phones and feeding the fish of the man who originated the company was making me crazy (because I was supposed to be doing more than this).

So my demise/liberation was at the hand of two women who were disgruntled because they had been left them off the party planning committee for this big bash I organized at the Portland Art Museum. No one ever told me I had to include them, so I didn't. I think I was just suppose to know.

I enjoyed planning the party, but honestly when they hired me, I was supposed to be an executive assistant, and event planning was not something I was skilled, trained, experienced or otherwise. Everything about it was relatively easy and fun, except for the invitation lists.

*edit*
I pretty firmly believe that one of the only ways a person can be happy in life is to forget the bad stuff and just remember the good stuff. Hence, remembering this is going to drag up stuff better left in the sediment of my memory.

The long and the short of it was that I ended up being a disgruntled employee. I got hammered for doing wrong something I was never told how to do and had never done before. Something that was ultimately superfluous. As I left, my stifled anger was so acute (my job wasn't the only source of frustration at this time in my life, I can safely say that nothing was going very well...) I concocted some very well crafted plans to humiliate and inconvenience people at that company who I deemed, well, evil. Naturally, I didn't do any of them, but the plans were therapeutic.

But alas, in the end, it all turned out ok. I left, happily, the cool people there came to a big going away party for me at a Greek restaurant. And I left it all behind like a bad memory.

And there was a time when I was (gasp!) unkind. I was graduating college. I made a terrible mess of a relationship. It was awful and stupid, and by the time it was all over.... well, because I had behaved so poorly, I had a mean rock and roll song written about me, wherein I was compared to Holly Golightly of the book Breakfast at Tiffany's. My bad behavior was not motivated out of spite as much as fear. Alot of it.

That last one constitutes the only thing I did that I ever really regretted.

NOW I want to hear your revenge stories, y'all! pony em up! Happy Chick, Mrs. T, let em rip!

A new funny thing

2007-08-13T23:58:00.001-07:00

Ya think?

2007-08-09T12:34:00.000-07:00

Ellen Pompeo of Grey's Anatomy says the media sets a bad example to younger generations by the celebrities they cover and the celebrities are irresponsible with how they use their famousness.

Nooooo! Ya think? Could Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan and all the other ilk out there who live to starve themselves, take a buncha drugs and make a living out of partying like rock stars, could they be being irresponsible??

Say it isn't so...

Pigeon or Dove? and my cheatin heart...

2007-08-06T22:20:00.000-07:00

Ever met someone who just had to be right?

There were some doves in the parking lot. I made a light joke about the spirit of God being there...

Then an older woman, a woman who I know very little about except that she is rather unfriendly and she runs the school in the building there, let me know that those were not doves, they were pigeons and that was that. She pointed out the pigeon breeder close by. And repeated no, most certainly they were NOT doves, out of the question.

I couldn't have cared less, I preferred to think of them as doves and ignore her. This is how I am.

But then I remembered. And I wondered if it was right that what I heard about doves and pigeons being basically equal was right.

I read these things.

A turtle dove is the common name given to ringneck or mourning doves, (depending where you are). Dove covers them all, (dove family). Pigeon is the forms from the wild rock dove.

Pigeons and doves comprise the family Columbidae within the order Columbiformes, which include some 300 species of near passerine birds. In general parlance the terms "dove" and "pigeon" are used somewhat interchangeably. In ornithological practice, there is a tendency for "dove" to be used for smaller species and "pigeon" for larger ones, but this is in no way consistently applied, and historically the common names for these birds involve a great deal of variation between the term "dove" and "pigeon."

So there it is.

Summer reading, I have been poor.

I am still reading Silence by Shusako Endo. It is not a light book, but it is not too heavy either, and I like it, but it isn't the book I make time to enjoy or spend an afternoon with.

I just started This Beautiful Mess by Pastor Rick McKinley.

and this is where I admit, I have been cheating. I have been writing another blog, and actually have been more there than here, and enjoying it alot. sorry. I didn't think anyone would care...

I been here, making it homey. This is where you all find out what is really on my mind...

Ay, Ay, ay! Taquitos, Flautas, no me importa...solo tengo hambre!

2007-08-01T23:33:00.001-07:00

After a couple experiences with these things, was told they were flautas.

Found a recipe here.

But one (a gringo como yo?) called them chimichangas and made distinctions with taquitos...

Now, perhaps I am wrong, but I never saw taquitos or chimichangas in any place where the spanish was the only language spoken.

Flautas is what my student from Oaxaca called them when she made them, so I am thinking that is what they are...

But now I am so confused...I never ate a chimichanga because they sounded so ridiculous to say, and I know the taquitos seem to look like what I am calling a flauta...

guidance anyone?

For the potluck (late as usual): Chicken mango curry salad

2007-08-01T00:47:00.000-07:00

This is pretty easy, but I almost never have all the ingredients so I have to remember when I am grocery shopping to pick up cashews and mango.

I also add cooked rice to it to stretch it because I like it and I like it to stay around, it preserves well, and in fact the flavors get more intense and more delicious, I think.

Husband and 2 year old child also like it as well as the very conservative eaters in my life. :o)

Ingredients:

1 cup or so of cooked chicken (no bones)
1/2 cup celery
1 cup (optional) cooked rice
1/2 cup mayo
curry (to taste, start off with a teaspoon)
1 T apricot jam
Juice of a lime
1 peeled sliced mango (use jarred if they aren't in season)
3 green onions, sliced
1 cup cashews, crushed
1/2 cup raisins (optional)
pinch of cayenne
chopped cilantro

for the dressing: mix the mayo, lime juice, cayenne and curry, apricot jam in a large bowl, mix all together.

Then add the chicken, rice and remaining ingredients saving the cilantro for garnish. Mix it all together and let the flavors "make love" in the fridge for as long as you can stand before you have to eat it.

Add cilantro for garnish.

This is a salad that I love so much that I am perfectly happy to eat it standing up in the kitchen and call it dinner, but if you want to actually sit down, it goes nicely with a chilled white wine and crusty bread or pita or naan. It goes particularly well with some Samba, a la Caetano Veloso...eat it this way and welcome to my world.

Holy Mother of all that is sacred

2007-07-30T23:23:00.000-07:00

Ikea has opened in Portland.

I do not understand why. Why I go there, why I am so strongly compelled to nest, store, and accessorize my home with their well-designed garb.

But I enjoy it so that it puts a smile on my face for the rest of the day to drop a C-Note there on bookshelves, coordinating baskets, candles, wine glasses, picture frames, storage solutions...

agh, a sickness it is, to be certain.

N: It was not crazy busy at all. I got a front parking spot. I walked right in. I had sitting, and I am glad I didn't have a kid with me. I went at 1 pm on the day after it opened. The girl at the checkout said that it didn't get really busy until everyone got off of work, and I would say definitely avoid the weekends. Late mornings though, early afternoons I would bet are fine. Early morning I bet it's even more quiet, not sure when they open. I was bummed, couldn't find the 500 count bag of tealights for 99 cents (I might be exaggerating on that one a bit).

We had so much yard trimming stuff to do, I think we did something like 10 truckloads, and had "the pile" in the back yard for at least maybe a year. None of our trees had been trimmed in eons. But, I learned how to use a chain saw, and that was fun. However, as we look at 2nd homes, any overgrown trees are well-considered.

2007 Trip away

2007-07-27T01:22:00.001-07:00

I liked this motel because they boasted color TV. And electric heat. I can imagine the conversation on deciding where to sleep.

"Ooh! Electric heat! No more standing by a flaming barrel just to get warm!" or "Oh look, honey, this hotel has Remote Control on their TV's!"

One year I insisted that we go somewhere else, for fun. A vacation. J was not sold. I had to insist. He said he didn't feel like he needed a vacation. I had to find a cheap place to stay because we don't have much in the way of camping gear. Plus I didn't really want to camp long with a little kid.

We ended up last year and again this year going to the Redwoods on the North Cali coast. This is a really good vacation. There is tons of cycling, lots of cheap places to stay (or camp) and no end of things to do, all of which are basically free.

We explored some old places, that we had been to before, Smith river, Stout Grove in the Redwoods, some other little places, but this time we also went to Patrick Point State Park. We went to Agate Beach first. There was alot of driftwood on this beach. Can you believe some people sell this stuff online?

People there on the beach were making little house type things, very intricate, with the many shapes of driftwood. I wonder why so much driftwood comes to this particular beach.

We had to hike downhill to get to the beach, which left us with a really nice view on the hike.

Here is A occupying herself with driftwood at Agate Beach.

I didn't really realize how interesting this guys shell would be ...

There are a lot of beaches because we stayed in a beach town, crescent city, made little trips to Trinidad, ate fish and chips and did alot of riding our bikes along the beach.

This ride is from Pebble Beach Drive up to Point St. George...a short ride, about 10 miles or so.

But then there was the Redwoods, when we got tired of the beach. These clovery things are purple on their back sides and their back sides turn red when they are growing off a log.

We met some friends in the Redwoods. This one is kinda shy.

This burl is taller than my 6 foot husband. You can grow a whole tree from just a little piece of the burl.
I am a little in love with the shots of the sun filtering through and the trees dwarfing my family. However, after this I did go our and get a filter for the camera for skylight, as many of the pics have a sort of blue look to them.

Addy is on a gigantic redwood stump. It is about 15 to 20 feet across.

These pictures were taken on Walker Road, places easy to access and not at all crowded.

The roads that went through the redwoods that we were on, ended up at the Smith River. It is the only river in California that is not touched at all by human activity. No dams and it receives no effluent from water treatment. There were a bunch of tadpoles there.

The only down side really was that Addy was sick most of this trip. In this pic I had to photoshop out her drippy nose. She kept us pretty tight on her nap schedule because she was trying to get better. Our room, the place we stayed, was only 65 a night with all taxes and it had a swimming pool. But there are so many cute little cabins and stuff, I think next time I will explore a different spot...the pool was a big plus though.

Where I am

2007-07-23T19:44:00.000-07:00

We are in Crescent City, Trinidad, Redding, and in the Redwood Forest... it is a good po boy vacation, and it is our second time here, so we need a new spot!

Where's a good po boy vacation (meaning inexpensive, decently nice, pool is a big plus and lots of fun inexpensive things to do...we like cycling alot). Want your tips!

New favorite African Destination

2007-07-16T00:30:00.001-07:00

Zanzibar. Off the coast of Tanzania. On the east coast of Africa. Known as the Spice Islands.

Sorry Fitena, you are not here to defend Mauritius, which has held the title of best African destination for a looooong time. But you are being bumped.

Zanzibar.

When most Americans hear the word Zanzibar, they think Spice Island, that tropical paradise east of Tanzania in the Indian Ocean.

Oh they did? I thought they thought of a fictional place made up somewhere...That's what I thought.

As a matter of fact, you can walk down the streets and alleys of Stone Town, a world heritage site, and feel as if you're in an old movie. Zanzibar is an island only 50 miles long

Am I the only person who wants my life to resemble The Year of Living Dangerously? Why these remote beautiful places that no one knows about burn in my heart. And especially now, when my list of things to do include buy a decent stroller or figure out what's for dinner or weed the yard, Zanzibar looks like the place my daydreams are looking for. For awhile anyway...

And, of course, miles and miles of the best beaches in this part of the world. The majority are along the East Coast, where the quaint fishing villages dot the landscape. The big secret hasn't been told to the major resorts. You'll find one or two along this Island paradise.

There are more than 30 beaches in Zanzibar with some of them so isolated, time has literally stood still. Waves lapping these brilliant shores for eons have hewn such an artistic pattern of natural beauty, we're kind of glad they're not that close to civilization.

I am waiting for the part where they tell you that the airfare costs something like 3000 roundtrip. (no wait! New York to Tanzania is only $2141! Wouldn't it be nice if money were no object?)

No big resorts here. No paved roads probably either. Just total escape, to what I consider to be real life. Life reduced to what's to eat, and how will we pass the time. Not forever, mind you, just maybe 3 weeks of the year. To remember that life isn't just a list of things to do.

Yeah, I really enjoyed Hawaii. And Spain is a dream. I never really got to see the beaches of Mexico, and Ecuador I love because of so much more than its beaches. But Zanzibar... well it sounds like another planet I guess.

This isn't the first time I have become obsessed with remote places. In about 2000 I investigated as many atolls and archipelagos that were basically people-less as I could find. The idea of a place with no people. No nothing. I know that after the novelty wore off, I would be ready for a cup of joe, but I was okay just thinking about it.

So but Zanzibar jut has the right amount of everything it seems...I must admit here that as I see this place the laziest, richest and most sultry samba of Celso Fonseca drifts through my mind. It makes me happy to know that these places just exist, even if I can't be there now...

My favorite Question

2007-07-15T20:28:00.001-07:00

Whatcha readin?

No I mean you, no don't click to go somewhere else, WHATCHA READIN' YOU?

Summer reading is almost as sumptuous as a few months at a spa.

Unfortunately my summer reading hasn't even really kicked into gear, but I do have some books that I have nibbled, some munched. I haven't found the right one yet.

I started with John F. Kennedy's "A Nation of Immigrants"

It was a little more historical than I was hoping.

I started reading Shusaku Endo's Silence. And it looks excellent, but its more like a steak and Cabernet Sauvignon when I am in the mood for a Chicken Caesar.

And I have The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho waiting for me. I think I will love it. I got the notion from Z, thanks Z.

I ordered a David Sedaris book.

So what else should I read?

I am also trying to read John Piper's "Don't Waste Your Life" but it isn't the world's lightest book.

Okay, I am open for suggestions! What are you all reading? What are you recommending?

2007-07-10T00:01:00.000-07:00

My daughter.

I was counting like The Count from Sesame Street.

"ONE scary zombie! muahaha! TWO scary zombies! muahaha! THREE ..."

When she started to finish for me by doing the "muahaha!" part.

I never knew I could love anyone so much.

The devil and James Dean

2007-07-09T23:41:00.000-07:00

I must be old and old.

I was watching East of Eden after reading the book. LOVED the book. The movie irritated the heck out of me. It doesn't seem to have nearly anything to do with the real story, it is just this vehicle to promote treacherous tortured adolescent idiocy portrayed a la James Dean

I got so tired of watching his teeth gnashing soul squirming and puling and pouting I turned it off. I didn't like the female lead either, she was annoying.

So then I started to read about James Dean, him dying at 24 driving a race car and that everyone wondered if he was gay or bisexual or what.

Who cares? And the thing is that he is this icon. For being this annoying whiny, kid who can't really even act except for to exude angst and misery and all variety of flaky and tormented behavior.

Wikipedia has him referenced in something like 50 songs. All referring to this notion of his "mystery" and his "badness" and his sexual experimentation and dying young. Like all this is a good thing.

Let's go kill ourselves now in a car crash while we are young so we can be cool like James Dean.

Because everyone knows that that is cool.

Kids believe this crap.

What about living a happy long life where we do good stuff? Things that help the people around us? Nah, that's too boring. But it seems to me that that's where the real rebellion is, to recognize garbage like idolizing James Dean and opting for something better.

What a stupid rant.

Heart ache and the Home

2007-07-06T16:35:00.000-07:00

Most grownups who have a home have gone through the process of home buying/selling.

We are going through it now.

The market is as squishy as a jelly donut right now. So the house we listed early, thinking that it would be best to unload and move sooner than later. First we discovered that the town we were considering moving to is priced about 60K higher than the area we are looking, on average.

A love story.

When we first bought this home, I really, really didn't like it. I didn't buy it because I liked it. I bought it because it was October, and the plan was to move and the house was large, had potential and hardwoods and was basically structurally sound with few glaring major repairs. Yes the stove is prehistoric. Yes all the wood moulding was 50 years old and very beat up, yes the landscaping was rather sad, yes the interior decor was beyond basic, with metal blinds in every room...but like I said, hardwoods were in good shape, and everything that really needed to be done was just cosmetic. And we had no babies, and it was 11K below appraisal, and it was close to work, and it was near a park, and it had big trees around it, and it was in an established neighborhood on a corner lot. I counted the goods about the house and tried just to be happy that I was for the first time going to have a house.

Financially, we couldn't afford much. J was still self employed and would need to submit all tax records which wouldn't show much more than he barely made enough to live, so we bought our first home totally on my humble teacher salary that was also burdened by a mountain of school debt. The house looked totally solid, and like a project we young marrieds could sink our teeths into.

And so we did. J made himself a woodworking shop in the garage, and the first item of business was redoing the fireplace wall. When we bought the house it was a monstrosity of bricks that looked like they had been painted 10 times over and a bunch of swamp wood on the wall at a nice 70s angle made to look cozy, rustic and chic. In 2005, it just looked old and yucky. After redoing it with maple builtin's, we were happy. Slate around the fireplace and a nice mantle.

After that, we started up stairs. We had ideas for sconces, paint, new trim, new doors, window treatments and rugs.

We are mostly done, if we were to stay, we would probably get new doors, but Addy's room is 2 shades of violet, dusty and deep but light, and an eggplant below the chair rail. All rooms got new floor and ceiling moulding and new window finishing as well as new paint. We were happy when we were done.

The next step was the main floor. This included the kitchen, which if we were going to stay, we would have done something to that, because it most direly needs it. I long for a kitchen, but it won't be happening in this home, not with us.

We painted the living room a dusty muted fennel green, were gifted a decent couch, and made our first grand furniture purchase of a nice rug. We put new moulding in the living room and dining room and changed out the really horrible double sliding glass window where junk got stuck between the panes, not to mention a variety of dead bugs with a new vinyl window. We replaced the exterior doors including the front door with a craftsman style solid mahogany door (before it was a hollow core old sad thing).

The kitchen left wanting, with highly sheened veneered plywood cabinets that show every fingerprint, and very retro round chrome fixtures...the prehistoric stove and the dishwasher loud enough to drown out an ariplane taking off and a fridge that was clearly a factory reject as it doesn't seal, not to mention an atrocious choice of tile which makes the floor look permanently dirtly and wood finish look formica, the kitchen is some version of a 50s/70s yellow/gold nightmare. The saving grace being that it is generously proportioned and ripe for a complete overhaul with only the imagination as the limit.

Probably the best part of the house is the size. At 1750 sq ft, it is a good, if not perfect size. The trilevel layout we have really found a good one. I still wish I had a proper entryway, and of course I want a wraparound porch, but that will be in the future maybe.

Downstairs was black vinyl tile, original, which had a knack for looking dirty no matter how clean it was. We replaced it this winter with new carpet and J did his first tile job in the hall and mudroom/laundry room. But that was really about as far as we got downstairs, we never really decorated, and that is where I sit right now, in the 21 by 12 foot room that does many duties as a bedroom for stepkid when she comes, TV room, computer room, playroom, and the extra bedroom downstairs is J's office.

So, our humble home. On the exterior, we repainted with a hip color, made new shutters to replace the lame originals, and planted flowers all over the place, and not to mention a TON of tree trimming and ripping our ivy that I honestly don't think anyone did for 20 years previous. We hauled off at least 20 truckloads of limbs that came down from the front and rear.

Now we are trying to sell. We are trying so hard. I bought a bunch of hanging baskets, have been diligent in watering and every other weekend an open house. We made an offer on a home but they said that they wouldn't accept the contingency, perhaps because they knew how slow the market is. We haven't dipped below what we thought we could sell it for yet, and we still have some cushion to get out the equity we need, but all in all, it is slow going, and sad and here this house I really pretty much loathed when I moved in, well it's all homey now, and I am sad to see it getting this poor reception...

BUY IT!

A reason perhaps, I stopped writing a journal

2007-07-04T00:03:00.001-07:00

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Silly Heroes

2007-07-02T23:26:00.001-07:00

When I was about oh, young, my mom the seamstress made me my coveted and much awaited Wonder Woman costume for Halloween.

Well, she almost did. She told me I couldn't wear the underpants as tight as that and go prancing around the neighborhood, because it would surely be cold. And I would have to wear a sweater, because she was not sending her young daughter out in anything that was strapless. I was under 10.

I was really disappointed. I had envisioned me, a little like a cross between "Little Miss Sunshine" and "Napoleon Dynamite" because I had me some ferocious buck teeth, lassoing people with my magic truth lasso and I had practiced dodging bullets with my silver bracelets.

So instead of being the Wonder Woman that I was inside, I was a shmaltzy cheerleader, which I had never wanted to be, but at least I was warm. And my costume kicked booty over the witches, all 3000 of them in our small neighborhood that Halloween.

Except for LH. When we arrived at her house to pick her up, she was a very big parka with the fuzzies and the hood and everything. She had little rosy cheeks.

"Lynn, what are you?"
"I'm Admiral Byrd!"
"Whozzat?"
"He discovered the South Pole,"
"Oooooh." K and I said in unison.

Poor Lynn. She was brutally made fun of all through school, particularly when she went goth in high school. But I digress.

Wonder Woman. I am glad they gave the little girls a few superheroes. Wonder Woman was beautiful and strong and she made people tell the truth! I can be the first two, but I will never be able to dodge bullets, fly around in a glass plane (which I always thought was very hokey, but I still believed) and make people tell the truth. Now that's a superpower.

I never thought much of the Bionic woman, until I met Anna. Anna worked at a large coffee retailer with me in the college years. She had a self confidence as a young person that I wished I could have manifested. Anna had grown up in South Africa, and she was always hip and stylin. She had the most phenom ugly shirt collection. I have been tempted many a time to start one of my own, but couldn't afford one in the early years, and now can't make myself do something so frivolous. Maybe I will do it if I have a midlife crisis, rather than buying a Maserati.

Anyway, Anna was pretty amazingly obsessed with the Bionic Woman. And she was a fount of Bionic wisdom. She knew every detail about Oscar, the Bionic Woman, her teaching and her amazing abilities. She made a fanzine about the Bionic Woman (because she was dating a Kinko's employee and so it was all free, except the amazing amount of time she poured into the stupid, er, interesting thing). I bought one. I read it too.

But Anna went a little far for me when she started getting tattoos of bionics on her arm and stomach and stuff. I started to wonder if she was dropping acid or something. Seemed like alot of the folk at that coffee retailer were kinda kooky like that.

Anyway, I grew in my knowledge and general awareness of the Bionic Woman through this Anna and so the Bionic Woman also make the list. She seems pretty cool, a teacher and all. After all, Lindsey Wagner did graduate from the high school where I been teaching, so she must be pretty alright!

So, readers, who is your favorite silly superhero?

Retraction

2007-06-30T20:31:00.000-07:00

Hi.

I posted at 2 AM and I am letting you know I am officially unpublishing the post titled "Green".

I thought I may live to think "that was an ill thought post"

and I do. And it was.

Peace out.

Swim lessons

2007-06-27T15:17:00.001-07:00

A is in swim lessons. I guess I am in parenting lessons too. The lessons are every day for 2 weeks. The first day, she did pretty okay, even though she didn't really do any of the stuff the teachers were leading through, she was more interested in being independent.

The second day, she got through the first couple things, but locked onto the toys, and that was the end. Everything out of her mouth from that point on was "NO!" The lesson ended prematurely for her that day.

At home she was singing the songs she learned, and kept asking to go to the pool. We kind of had a toddler sort of nonconversation about being a good girl at the pool, and tried to get her to put her arms out for when she does tummy floats.

After yesterday, I was wondering what is the best way to approach poor behavior in the classes. I decided that the abrupt end of the lesson, despite my own disappointment, was about the only thing I could do. I couldn't stay with her in the pool when she was behaving badly, it wasn't any fun anymore and she was disruptive and her yelling "NO!" was really not okay.

Today she did alot better. She pretty much held her own the whole time, and I was happy to have her more or less participating rather than yelling "no!" and marching off.

Yesterday though, I had to continually remind myself that I was lucky to be able to be at home with my kid. Because it just didn't feel that way.

Right now she is napping. (sound of relief) She is a good girl, but she is still 2.

Discipline

2007-06-27T00:29:00.000-07:00

I heard a radio show about a guy, veteran teacher of 18 years, who had his jaw broken by a student.

They also discussed kids with severe discipline problems, children who were born to drug adled moms, foster kids...many kids who are put into the "system" and then what happens from there.

In Texas apparently a 6th grader who kicked a classmate in the face was charged with a misdemeanor. He was struggling with a diagnosis of ADHD and bipolar disorder. His mom knew he was a handful, supported the teachers and school to help her with the boy, but was just amazed at the misdemeanor charge that she had to defend him against. It was like a regular criminal charge. She was asking the same question anyone else would ask "Is this the best we can do?"

And it's true. Kids who don't comply are ejected.

The same day I see a mom from a boy of mine, a student, a smart student who had a ton of problems in school and finally dropped out of school. Seeing her, a single mom, grocery shopping with her daughter (just as I was), I wanted to say something kind to her. But I didn't know what. We had talked extensively at parent conferences. And what if she preferred that I said nothing. That is precisely what I did, I said nothing.

This year I had this realization, one I might have had before.

Every year there is going to be one intelligent kid who has a whole mess of problems. Ones that are way beyond my reach. And these problems will manifest themselves in my classroom. Attendance problems, disrespect, not working or distracting other kids, bringing the class down with their attitude...and these are pretty mild things, but after awhile they need to quit. If they don't quit, they will get worse, and that isn't acceptable either.

As a teacher, I have had this "You're either on the train or you're on the tracks" mentality about life/school. The problem is that some of these kids are on the tracks. And they know it, and they don't even want to be on the train. If I push discipline on them, they will leave. They will drop out. Now I know that means they will go to the counselors most of the time and say "Homeschool". Never mind that no one at home speaks English. Homeschool is a more acceptable reason for attrition than flat dropping out. Homeschool is more like a construction job somewhere, or alot of babysitting. What have I done for this kid at this point? At some point he will realize he should not have dropped out, I know that.

Most of the time, the kid doesn't even cause a problem. They do an absolute minimum of work, they might attend regularly, but they literally goof off every single day it seems like, and they scrape out with like a C minus. Whether or not they will ever remember a single thing, well probably not.

But the kids that can't get the jist of the mass productions education system and sit quietly in their desks for 13 years, well the options are just lousy. Vocational high school. Juvenile detention centers. And ultimately prison. It reminds me of something a professor said once. He said that if the government can't educate kids, then eventually a high percentage will get the education of incarceration in the prison system.

As a teacher I know how to run a classroom. But not when kids refuse to play by social rules. And when they don't play by social rules, and if they are running over other students in the process, I have to do something. Sometimes kids don't get it in the regular classroom. There should be something more though than what is typically available.

Ahhhh Summer

2007-06-26T17:57:00.000-07:00

Swimming lessons.

Planting flowers.

Making cards.

Tossing salads.

Sleeping in.

Hanging out at the park.

Despite Sunday's realization that houses in my neighborhood are consistently priced 50 to 70 K less than the area we are looking to move to, plus the lackluster open house, even just a couple days away from that is some small relief.

There are probably a million things I need to do.

I lost a post about obnoxious billboards, Blogger ate it.

Time to count the good stuff

2007-06-24T20:46:00.000-07:00

I was overwrought today.

We spent 3 days pulling weeds, washing windows, packing clutter, planting flowers, touching up paint, dusting, burning, mowing, cleaning like fiends for the open house we had today.

I might mention, we do not live in a dump. But as we were out looking for houses, most of them smaller than ours, not necessarily in better neighborhoods and typically less cool than our, also were listed for up to 70K more than what we are selling for.

This isn't new. We know this community is full of cracksmokers where the prices of their homes are concerned. We think it is because of a slowing of development in the area, hence a temporary cap on new homes and so the residents seem to think that 300K for a 1400 square foot home that is everything average is suitable. We aren't looking in SanFrancisco, this is a bedroom community of Portland Oregon. These people are smoking crack.

The prices are starting to come down I think because the houses aren't selling in this slow market, but still. When you are in a house that is just fine except for the total whitewashing of every piece of wood in the place, and the fine plush royal blue carpet, after 6 months of keeping on, I just started to get down. A fine neighborhood, barring the barbed wire over the top of the fence to keep out fairgoers that will border us once a year. The house was priced nearly 60K above ours, was about 300 square feet smaller, and didn't have nice stuff we have now, like wood, and built ins and hardwoods. I felt myself wanting to escape.

We looked at many houses like this one. Did I tell you our realtor has told us we are listed too high? She hasn't generated any comps because I think she has given up on us. J is having a hard time lowering a price when less than 10 people have looked at the place in 6 months, although ultimately, we know we will need to do so.

Our realtor is amazing. She doesn't help us with any information about any of the areas we are looking at. She doesn't send us houses to look at, she doesn't even call us. It is my humble opinion she is afraid of the people looking at the house. One of the people she showed to was an immigrant from (gasp!) Africa. This is par for us. I am an ESL teacher, I work with these kids, know how cool they are, but she is from milktoastland apparently where no one has any color in their skin unless it is from a spray on tan. She expressed concern about this man, that she was a little uncomfortable.

Huh.

Now we never hear from her, the most she has done to augment or help us is put "Sellers Motivated!" on our internet listing which I wish she would take off. After dealing with 10 or 20 of her "oops!" situations, the decision is that she is just not the brightest bulbl on the christmas tree, and I personally think she is afraid of immigrants.

Today, after looking at myriad crappy houses that were smaller but "in our price range" (read: up to 40K above our current home price) and just generally getting queasy at the prospect of living in these homes, our stellar real estate representative told us that not a single person came to our open house. We began to wonder if she had advertised it at all or put out a single sign.

We know the market is the slowest it has been for 20 some years. This didn't stop me from feeling nauseas for the rest of the day and realizing that I had to go back to square one and be glad for what I do have.

We are moving because J is commuting 4 hours a day to work. I got a new job, a little closer to his, but not too far away from Portland because his job has almost no stability of funding. If he gets another job, it will be in Portland area. But now if we don't sell and move, we will both be commuting a loooong way.

So now I am going to compile some photo album stuff because it always reminds me that there are lots of good things in my life outside of our very sorry excuse for a real estate agent.

Now we get to decide whether we are going to go FSBO or with a full service broker. Any opinions?

A very touchy subject.

2007-06-21T21:33:00.000-07:00

Immigration, somehow I don't think that in the cloistered world that George W. lives in that he really, I mean really gets how our country is changing. I think he is surrounded largely by white people and I have noticed that it seems like anyone with any racial diversity around him seems to get stuck with some pretty lousy work. Gonzales for example. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if W put him up as a sacrificial lamb to do dirty work in the partisan way. Colin Powell, an amazing man, also trod over (not listened to), it seemed pretty continuously. Connie Rice, a woman who amazes me, I am waiting for her slam dunk.

And as a teacher who works with kids whose parents are getting hauled away on raids...kids who I love (no I am not afraid to say that) because I know how hard they work and the tough spots they are in at times.

My kids were going to the rallies for immigration this year. It was very good for them to organize, to participate in the political process. I know they are subject to racial attacks regularly, we live in a poor area where drugs and gangs are very real to them. And so is ignorance from everyone who is not with their same skin color. It would be better for them to empower themselves through visibility than to fall into rebellion via gangs/crime.

Immigration. The whole process, every step of it is pretty astonishing to me. To risk ones family, ones babies, marraige to push into another country. To leave their communities, their churches, schools and families. The streets they know, the language. And then to come here, with a new language, get jobs in the lowest most taken advantage sector, where the work is more akin to a kind of benevolent slavery. I know they do it out of hope for a better future, for their kids and their grandkids. Ten percent of the entire population of Mexico has done it for that reason.

Immigration, particularly illegal immigration, seems like a violence to families. I am against it. It is so hard on families. They put themselves in a state of total dependence. It is a risk that I cannot comprehend.

I will not be the one to deny bread to a mom who needs to breastfeed her child. It would be inhuman to deny care to people who are hurt, food to the hungry, or education to their children based on political status. To rub people's noses in their own difficulties or turn a blind eye because of political status. I don't comprehend who would do that either.

My kids tell me they march with the flag of Mexico draped on their shoulders. I think they are confused. I know they want to not be ashamed of their heritage, indeed, they should be proud. But in the face of people making the laws of the country of America, people wearing Mexican flags have no voice among the lawmakers of America. There is a confusion of identity. America is not Mexico, it is not for the legislators to make laws endorsing the desires of people of another country.

My students tell me that if a person is against immigration they are racist. And the conversation ends right there. There can be no dialogue if there is no listening. They tell me that their life is hard, and I know. I know they are stuck, and for that very reason, immigration is not a good thing any longer.

I believe that America, in its wealth, has a responsibility to be generous. And we should be. But when I hear people chant that they are going to take back California because it is theirs..., or call me a racist because I don't want to hear anymore stories about people perishing in the backs of semi trucks attempting to cross...

I want my students to stand up. But wisely. Not to shoot themselves in their own feet. I want them to have access to all I have access to-college and health care and jobs and legal status. But I don't want them to demand this in ways that create a wider divide. And I want everyone to have enough food for their families, and I want even to help them. But I think immigration, especially this mass movement must end until there is some way to make the transition less desperate for families.

And I don't think anyone should be called a racist because they think immigration is something that needs to be addressed.

Goodbye Scots

2007-06-19T21:34:00.000-07:00

It is hard for me to imagine that I lived my entire 20s in a state of constant flux, moving nearly every six months and 7 of those 10 years overseas. Because now I want nothing so much as to avoid too much change.

It is with nausea and a feeble attempt at positiveness that I look forward to no longer being the teacher at the school I am currently at. I keep hearing, there is no school like DDHS, and while I believe that, I will be relieved to not have to move my classroom every year, to not have things I acquired "reappropriated" (yes, I am still disillusioned by that) and to be able to teach near teachers who teach the same stuff as I.

My new school is housed in a brand new facilities that is astounding in its forward thinkingness. I think sometimes so even to those who teach there. Collaboration and technology, two things that excite me, are worked into every aspect of life there. So it is exciting, hopefully the good things will be happening there for me....

Step (Mom)

2007-06-17T22:14:00.000-07:00

The past couple weeks have been not really normal. In a way good, like pure summer. No chores allowed really. No errands. Nothing that was remotely resembling drudgery.

We had 2 pretty special visitors. My husbands kids.

We did alot of stuff. Alot of bike riding. Alot of time at parks, backyard volleyball, smores over our fire pit, family meals, swimming, excursions, crafty stuff, matinees. Oy. I wonder to myself "Will they be able to go home and say it was boring?". After these 2 weeks, I don't think so.

Stepmom is not a title most people relish. Trepidation is the main, predominating feeling I have towards that word. J and I have in the past had moments, clarifying roles, motivations and points of view. We see things differently, but I am grateful that by and large we approach the whole thing with empathy towards each other.

And the kids are good. They are good kids. I feel like I hardly know them, even after knowing them for 5 years, and I say that knowing that good kids, even the best kids, are still kids. And that means normal kid behavior.

The more time we have with them, the more normal it feels to have them around. It is our hope to establish familiarity with our family, as much is possible with kids we get to see about 3 weeks a year. They are a 30 hour drive away. Laws are such that mom can move them where ever she wishes. And their mom does. She also changes their last name to suit the current man in the house. But I won't go any further with that. It is illegal, but there is next to nothing we can do to stop her.

I won't accept the feeling that "step" anything is somehow "lesser", or "bad", or infers some misbehavior or lack of goodness. The way I have been taught, family is family, and these kids are family, and we show them nothing but love. My stepmom is awesome. Sometimes better than the real deal. I want to break that mold of bad step parenting, I think people expect less of themselves because that stigma exists.

Attached are pics...
messing around in the back yard

down at the east bank esplanade

the statues

With S jumping everywhere it was like the photographic olympics, can I catch these action shots at low light? By and large the answer was no. This one came out okay only because of the flash.

Weather

2007-06-02T20:45:00.000-07:00

It is beautiful here in Oregon. Weather at about 85 degrees, a little warmer than what is truly comfortable, but really not that bad. However, my dining area is 78 degrees according to the thermostat, and upstairs it is even warmer, so it has to be in the 80s. Downstairs from where I am writing this it has to be a mere 73 degrees, cool, relatively.

Jeff is driving to Wyoming to pick up my stepkids and they will be here from Monday until probably Sunday the 17th. Since S sleeps in the room where my computer is, I anticipate a sparseness of posts.

I tried to take A to 2 different pools today. One was closed entirely, apparently the schedule I was looking at doesn't take effect until the 19th. And the other pool was so packed there was an hour long wait just to get in. We went to the park nearby in attempt to redeem the day, as she was pretty unhappy about getting in and out of the hot car.

J got a 2007 Jeep Liberty to drive to Wyoming (rental). I went out and opened the door just to take a big whiff of the new car smell. My car is a 1999 Subaru Legacy Brighton (read: the most stripped down model of this car shape) and his is a 98 Toyota pickup that recently hit a shopping cart that had found its way to the middle of the road one night. We drive junkers, ostensibly, by choice. But after driving the Jeep home, for the first time J commented that it sure would be nice to not have to drive a junker. I put in my plug again for a new hybrid for him, since it looks like his commute is just flat out permanent.

We have chosen to not make major car purchases because we don't want to live in debt. We do owe a small amount on my car, but it is negligible. We could pay it off, and would, but our interest rate is only 3 percent, so it hardly seems worth it. Our entire goal in life right now really boils down to making the right choices by the kids in our lives and avoiding debt/interest.

Pretty exciting, huh? But I have my 20s to look back on, and a future that I know will bring lots of more opportunities, so it isn't such a big deal. All I ask is a vacation (a cheap one) once a year. And if we want a big purchase, we just save up for it. It makes it that much more wonderful when we buy the thing (am thinking about my new Nikon here)

And in the small print here, I say this: My dad has told me 3 times now that he wants to pay off my student debt. He has the means to do it. I wonder if it will happen. If it does, we will be 90% of the way to being debt free.

Story of the year

2007-06-01T23:33:00.000-07:00

Every teacher in our school has to do a "duty". Even as a part time teacher, I have a regular full time teacher "duty". Last year they had me working down in the basement under the school filing portfolios. I strongly didn't like that. It was such a ridiculous mess.

They changed my duty though, last year, to the computer lab. Thankfully.

This year my duty was to collect up kids with attendance issues from their classrooms. No biggie, kinda fun because you get to visit so many different rooms. I anticipated no problems. I even really liked all the walking in the morning because it got my blood flowing. Our campus consists of about 7 buildings and covers 5 square blocks. It is a behemoth of a school.

So I anticipated no problems, but then the guy I was supposed to work with, not by saying so much, let me know I had no idea what I was doing and that he needed to show me how to properly do this job. Okay, irritating, but he did seem to have a pretty finely tuned system worked out so it wasn't as though he was full of bluster. I learned some stuff from him.

Every morning though, he would make me basically follow him. I wasn't very much allowed to do anything, look up kids locations: no. Get a few kids out of class on my own: no. Just follow him. When I got a little impatient with (again, not by saying so much) he asked me persistently if I had drank too much coffee.

These are the times that one must be trained to smile, while inside thinking "Good God, what zoo did they find this guy in?" At first I was foolish enough to assure him that I only do a cup in the AM and not more than that. But the whole idea of defending myself to this (ugh) person, activated my nausea.

Can I just mention here that this guy, a science teacher, while very intelligent I am sure, teaches mainly by showing videos?

So for the better part of the year, he deigned to allow me to follow him around the school. I probably wouldn't have cared so much, except my feeling is with "duty" is that I want to do a good job. I want to DO a duty. I want to be useful, valuable, period. This is me, this is how I am.

Perhaps I would have said something. But the guy who we reported to whenever he saw me asked where the other guy was. It was never Hi, how's it going? it was "Where's N?" This happened every single day that I arrived early until probably May. "Good morning W, what have we got today?" "Where's N?"

I don't care if anyone who reads this thinks I am making a mountain out of a molehill, I know it is a molehill. But it was a molehill that was there every every day. Whether I did a good job or not wasn't really an issue, I did a good job, I swept a huge campus every other day for kids.

The differences between N and me are there. He is an ugly, cranky old guy who LOVES catching kids doing the wrong thing and then "Bringing them to justice" or whatever. And I think he knows that administrators LOVE this. He also calls all the coaches "Coach" because I think that he knows that in their world this is like calling them something of very high respect. Since I have never been in sports, calling anyone "coach" is pretty foreign to me. Coach to me is the way I have to travel on the airplane. Also, I am a young female. My actual age is 36, but I could easily pass for younger. I like bringing random kids into the office about as much as I like potty training my daughter. It is necessary. I do it when necessary. It is not hard, scary or otherwise, it just is. I would rather not deal with it, but that isn't so much an option at times.

As this school year ends, I told "Coach" that I was leaving, commented on how insanely hot his office was (it had to have been well into the 90 degrees with the AM sun). Something novel, amazing and really kind of cool happened. We had a short conversation. I felt for the first time acknowledged by him. I told him I was leaving for another job. We discussed house prices, school districts and he (as well as many people I have told) told me he wanted to leave too. He said good things about the district I was going to. He said the real problem with our school was that it was too big. He was right, I was sort of shocked, no one had ever stated that obvious fact before.

Small victories

2007-05-29T20:54:00.000-07:00

This is O, who never makes a peep and is beautiful and smart.

This is L who will argue about anything and does a very good job of being contrary.

This is S, V and E. S recently brought his Grill to class. I would have told him to put it away but I was amazed. How incredibly stupid.

S, V and E again. V has no idea how beautiful she is, and E needs to relax.

This is M, who I don't know because she is very quiet. She seems to always have a humorous secret.

V took most of these shots, and she did a much better job than I usually do.

I have spoken here before about my last class of the day that can only be described as a class that is a chore. It is a chore because I have to stay focused, positive and plus since I am teaching it for the first time with no set curriculum, I am coming up with every thing from scratch.

Round about this time of the year, things get quite dicey, usually.

So I have taken special care.

I have been having success after success in this class. I am excited by how excited they are even at this time of the year when excitement about anything besides break is in short supply.

So first it was Whack Whack, a sub-academic game that actually lends itself perfectly to the lower level ESL classroom, especially at the end of the year. Dispensing with the details, the kids have to practice their vocabulary pronunciation they have received throughout the semester and a person slow on the call gets their desk whacked with a large rolled up piece of butcher paper. They looooooove it. It lends itself well to reading fluency with hard words to pronounce, or words that they are loathe to practice pronouncing. In this game, they have to and they love it. I learned it in a Spanish classroom. It is not so appropriate for the beginning of the year, but for the end of the year, wow.

So then, we did a warmup today where they had to brainstorm 15 words to describe a person. I let them go free, throwing out words for them so they wouldn't stick so close to "nice" "good" and "cool" or "interesting". I walked around saying "lively", "creative", "personable", "talkative", "stylish"," responsible", "fancy" and any other word... I let them use dictionaries. They came up with "adroit", "self destructive", "critical", "positive" and "loving". These are level 2 kids!! That means they are reading at about a 3rd grade level!

After that, in carrying on with the "Dead Poet's Society" that I had shown them, indulgently, though with notes, I decided to have them illustrate a poem of their choosing. I showed them examples of what the Level 3 kids had done the year before. "This is very hard" I heard an advanced student say. So taking heed of this feedback, I went and got a bunch of childrens poetry off the internet, and tapped our librarian explaining to her the level I needed. She gave me a nice cart of books of poetry, haiku, all kinds of stuff that was perfect. They were excited, they laughed at the poems I read, they couldn't wait to dig into the cart of poetry and get started. Normally I have to press these kids! There are only 4 days left of school! I felt ecstatic! I helped a couple of the lower level kids to understand the poems they had chosen, let them do a couple haiku instead of a full poem. I told them we would put it all together in a book. One girl had even written her own poem, in English!!

The bad attitudes dissolved, the grumbling subsided. I bubbled over with happiness that it worked out.

Year end misery changed to motivation, love it love it love it. Gotta celebrate these small victories.

After having fallen off the face of the planet

2007-05-28T20:17:00.000-07:00

I have been reading El Viejo y el Mar. This book, which I read in English in Russia, (The old Man and the Sea) made me cry. It is all about basically that life, slowly, somehow when you aren't ready for it, will bring you low. And the best thing to bring a person low is to conquer them in pursuit of what they feel they most want and need and can't live without. And so is the story of the old man and the sea. He is trying to catch an enormous fish. He catches it. It drags him out to sea, and he starves to death.

I was in Cheboksary, in the winter, surrounded by peasants, with a sun that set at 2 or 3 pm. And I was wondering"How did I get here?". Fortunately this town had a small English library and I tore through all the Hemingway, and nearly started on Graham Greene before I left.

I have also started on East of Eden. I have a feeling it is going to have some of these same themes as Old Man. So far I am enjoying it immensely. It was recommended by a highly recognized English teacher at my high school.

And there is an awful lot of stuff I don't talk about here.

This past weekend was a memorial for my grandmother. I spoke at the service, reading a very nice poem she wrote.

Here is the poem.

My Valentine to You

I dream of a day - not to far away

When our children are grown, and our house is our own

When we stand hand in hand on our own piece of land

And we can say as we stand side by side

We’ve come along way. We’ve faced days of gray

We’ve taken our knocks, and they’ve put some gray in our locks

But we’ve stood it together in all kinds of weather

But when we’ve come out on top, then we can stop

Not for long, just a minute to survey the limits

Of all that is ours, the fir tree that now towers and when we first came

Our heights were nearly the same

The rose, the arbor, the willow, the pool

The moon trapped in lake waters, shadowed and cool

I see our lawn stretched rolling and green

Our flowers and shrubs, a sight to be seen-

By the many people who pass by

To look and marvel, and sometimes to sigh

For the envy the beauty, the warmth, and the cheer

That you and I created as we toiled year by year

It’s still just a dream, but dreams do come true

The three main ingredients are,
Love
Me
& You

Bert. Feb. 8^th, 1955

My family is divided on stark lines between those who believe Christ is the son of God and those who do not. Those who do not have lives that are a mess. All varieties of poor choices, large quantities of failed marraiges and alot of sadness at her passing. Those of us who are believers fared much better. Grandma was saved at the age of 80 after living a life trying many different religions.

The service was a sort of witness for those who had not yet found the value of life as the gift it is from God. A man named Dan came and told about Grandma's conversation with him through a cemetary wherein she prayed to God to accept her. When she was 80 years old. My grandma, she is still very much alive for me.

My favorite student, L, brought a paper to me the other day. She only wanted me to read the last paragraph where she was trying very hard to bring together many things, a passage, a painting, a book. The gist of it was though was a sort of question. Either we can choose what we want to fear (God) or we can go through life fearing in a sort of haphazard way at whatever thing that comes along that we perceive as the greatest threat. Whereas, if a person chooses to fear God, that person has nothing left to fear at all.

This paper, written by a girl who says she is not really got "booksmarts" really impressed me. I have been thinking of it ever since, trying to find the best way to express thesis of hers. She is a language learner. I assured her that she should not at all feel bad about not being able to express this thought, as it is a very difficult notion to express. And I love that she let me read it. I have been lingering happily on it now for days.

2007-05-27T22:53:00.000-07:00

Chucheria sent me questions for an interview and like a big goofball I sent her back the answers rather than posting them to blog, like I think I was supposed to do. See why I wasn't a very good student?

And of course she was probably too diplomatic to email me back and say "Hey goofball, you are supposed to put the answers on blog"

well here they is

1. Name 3 smells that trigger a trip down memory lane for you and
what memory is associated with each.

The cologne pi by Givenchy is what my husband wears. It is the most beautiful fragrance I have ever smelled. It reminds me of everything good about him, dating, finding him. It smells like cedar and vanilla and wood and some warm crackling fire spice...it is the best. Give it a whiff.

Smoked Salmon or grilled Salmon, will always remind me of the restaurant that an old friend used to work on the Park Blocks, and riding my bike down the Park Blocks in Portland while in college during any time of year. The smell is so rich that it almost was like eating without paying for it (it was a ritzy place).

The gym. A place with its own consistent smell. If you like the gym, maybe you like the smell in a twisted sort of way... I like it because the gym is my time.

2. What are 5 things that you have for dinner on a regular basis?

Sushi, we found a good joint that serves it so fresh it is almost warm.

Cubano/Brazilian Black Bean soup

Fajitas,, enchiladas, quesadillas, tacos...homemade.

Bento (chicken skewers with peanut sauce and spicy sweet sauce with rice), though I am getting sick of it.

We used to eat more Pad Thai though I am getting sick of making it.

Then comfort food...casserole, meatloaf, a chicken with potatoes...

3. Name 4 characters from books you've read that you wish were real
people so that you could hang out with them- and tell why, of course.

Holden Caufield, would like to have met him, just because that book (Catcher in the Rye) is one of those things that one reads when they are young...

Augie March from one of Saul Bellow's books

Garp, from John Irving, I liked him.

more recently? I read less and less fiction, so...um, maybe the character Alex from Everything is Illuminated by Jonathon Safran Foer because his Ukrainian ESL english is so premium.

4. What brought an unexpected smile to your face today- other than
the obvious, your sweet baby girl-?

Um, well, maybe the beautiful sunshine and the nature of Washington park, finding some unexpected beauty there and thinking about taking some pictures...

Today wasn't a day of many unexpected smiles, I was tired and just going along...but there is good stuff in any day I know...

5. It's that time of year- what are some things that your students
are doing that drive you absolutely nuts?

It doesn't drive me absolutely nuts because I think the more I teach the more I train myself to ignore or quit caring so I can get through...

I have another kid who is a drop of pure poison bad attitude in my last class, it's nice when he isn't there. Otherwise he murmurs a running commentary in Spanish to the other Latino kids and they sit there smirking. Never blatantly disrespectful, and I have done alot to help this kid out, (replenished supplies I gave and he lost, review things he missed when absent) he's just kind of a jerk. The more I ignore him, the better it is, but the more obnoxious he gets. But if I confront him it seems to settle down for a little while, but it's back like an infestation of roaches. Pure poison.

Nut shell

2007-05-22T23:53:00.000-07:00

I keep thinking "when this is all over, then I'll post".

Well nothing is all over, except for the delicious 3 hour nap that I had immediately after putting A to sleep this evening. Hence, here I am at midnite.

So how is your eye, H?

Because I know everyone waits breathlessly to hear about my health, I will share. I have had a red eye for TWO YEARS. Maybe longer. Earlier this year, after seeing both an opthamologist (4 times) and dermatologist, I started to lose hope. One of those dear sweeties in my 7th period? She liked to make fun of my Very Red Eye, and by the time she came in the door of my room, it was usually as bad as it ever gets. I hated and hate to go to the opthamologist because unequivocally I have to:

1. Find child care
2. Wait for an hour to an hour and a half after my appointment time
3. Every time I have done this, my eye has returned to its original redness.
4. I have to pay the sitter to sit and wait for a doctor who has yet to fix this problem.
5. I don't believe his diagnosis (ocular rosacea) is correct. But then, I am not the doctor.

And it's not merely red, but it hurts, feels like there is sand in it and is extremely dry. For TWO YEARS. And my vision in the eye gets progressively worse.

I went in today and he sent me out with a whole mess of drops, most of which I had used before for temporary, though not long lasting relief. My impression now is that he has given up "curing" my red eye, and wants to merely control it, which sounds to me like a whole lot more trips to this man. He told me I really needed to come in for the follow up appointments.

I toss around the idea of a second opinion. But mostly in these cases, I feel sometimes like the medical profession is target practice... and sometimes the mark is not hit.

In other areas, because I know you all care alot about how the last five days of school are progressing, things are on a day by day basis. And I am part time, so I know I have it easier than full timers. But things are going well. I had to teach STD's today, without a doubt my least favorite subject of the year, but perhaps the most relevant to my students.

I feel like I did better this year illustrating why these pernicious little things were to be paid attention to. The information available on the subject is more relevant these days than it used to be, it's like someone somewhere got realistic. My kids were paying attention, while I blathered on. Not a small feat at the end of the year.

And the last class of the day, well it is touch and go with these guys. The lesson I am learning here is long time in coming. The lesson is the value of distance in teaching. The value of giving the work and then stepping away. Of one on one teaching as opposed to whole class teaching. The value of just putting the space between them and myself. Not paying attention to the bad attitudes at this time of year, because if their attitudes haven't changed by now, it is out of my hands. Very likely, it is less me than the kids themselves. I have only 3 out of what, 80 students total, so that is fine. Let them imagine how evil I am. I know otherwise, and so do the other 77. It is their problem because ultimately they are doing little more than making their own lives harder.

Our home hunt is going. Our realtor is amazing. Amazingly useless. I like her but she is barely there. She tells us to rely on her but does little to nothing. She will send us listings in areas we cannot afford and have shown no interest in. And she apparently doesn't get emails asking to be able to view homes, when she does get them, it makes little difference. She never arranges an appointment anyway. No one has come to see our home in at least 2 weeks. We are looking away from Canby increasingly and on to Newburg, which is further away, but where we can get much more house for the money, and is an equally good if not better community. We are in a wierd spot, we are apparently signed with her until August...and I don't want to be a jerk, but wow, we need someone who will actually do something.

Remember how my bike got stolen? Well, this past weekend I got a newby. A Trek 7000. It is my first new bike since like 1990. I paid a couple dollars more, than the list price, but I just didn' t want to drive all over town more than I had. And even though it is not a top of the line bike, I will just be happy that my chain doesn't fall off when I shift and the bike doesn't make an eery creak when I ride it, sounding like it is going to disintegrate underneath me. Thursday I will ride to school. Yippee!

Ready

2007-05-20T00:37:00.000-07:00

The end of the school year is upon us.

Things are cool, we are studying reproduction, so even though my kids are all burnt out, at least they are paying attention.

Its just in my last class of the day that things are awry.

Things are actually fine.

There is just maybe 3 kids in that class that make me crazy. And since there are only about ten, 3 is enough. And I wonder about the fine art of ignoring irritating, though not necessarily class killing behavior. This class divides itself starkly on racial lines, which makes me uncomfortable, it is the only class I have that does it. And it is a new class, and at the end of the day, I am exhausted...

And I cannot wait until it is over. It is at this point that I consider whether I would teach this class again. I do know that when the room assignments were passed out this past week, watching all of my colleagues have to move to another building pretty much...I was relieved to have that over. The idea of spending 3 unpaid days moving and resetting up my room just gets added on to the many things that teachers do that just get sucked up. I am glad it is over.

And now, I cannot wait until I never see those 7th period problems again.

The personalities of numbers

2007-05-18T21:09:00.000-07:00

I was listening to the radio the other day while I was prettying myself up in the bathroom and a guy came on who was a savant.

He was talking about how numbers when he was young, were his best friends, the most comforting.

How odd.

But then in the twilight when I was trying to sleep I was thinking about this again. And in that fuzzy place between wake and sleep I could see the personalities of certain numbers in a way ...like they had been there all along. Yes, this will be one of those crazy posts.

So for a long time without clear explanation 36 has been my favorite number. I always felt like it was such an easy going number, kinda went along with all the other numbers because 6 times 6 was 36 and it was divisible by 2 and yet it had the 3 in it...it was the number all the other numbers wanted to hang around with. It was easy to do things with 36, and it was so round, and it seemed just kinda okay and happy, or at least without anxieties and hangups.

And so then I started to think about the other numbers, and the first one I thought of was 9. Another number I like. 9 was like the cool mellow artsy kid in school. He saw the world a different way so things didn't really bug him too much. I could even imagine 9 in his rumpled artsy clothes and too long hair.

Remember, this is me trying to go to sleep...

then I went down. Though 9 was the cool kid, the one I hung out with more or related too more was 8. I liked 8 for his or her predictability, it always looked the same, no matter how you turned it, and it had this look of infinity on its side...

And 7. Poor 7, such high expectations "Lucky number 7" so afraid to disappoint and be found out ...that he wasn't really any more lucky than any other number.

And poor 6, a true middle child, perpetually overlooked, awkward and self effacing.

And 5. Again, the high expectations and working hard to live up to it. A little tense, but still overachieving...serious.

Am I projecting here?

then I went on to 12 and 14 and then I think I fell asleep, thinking about 22 and 28 and all the personalities, all the subtleties and details that it was to just describe them enough to put me to sleep...

Don't let the sun go down on me

2007-05-17T00:15:00.000-07:00

Can anyone explain why we aren't supposed to let the sun go down on an argument? It just doesn't make any sense to me.

What about thinking about what it is exactly that is the problem before bringing it up? What about just sitting on things, and maybe with some time one is able to let go of it before it gets to be a big monster?

Why can't I go to sleep? That is all I want to know...why this rule? And why do people say it is this crazy fundamental thing?

A teacher joke

2007-05-15T22:47:00.000-07:00

Then Jesus took his disciples up the mountain and, gathering them around him, he taught them, saying:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven
Blessed are the meek
Blessed are they that mourn
Blessed are the merciful
Blessed are they that thirst for justice when persecuted
Blessed are you when you suffer
Be glad and rejoice for your reward is great in heaven

Then Simon Peter said, "Is this going to be on the test?"
And Andrew said, "Do we have to write this down?"
And James said, "How many points is this worth?"
And Phillip said, "Can I borrow a pencil?"
Bartholomew said. "What came after poor?"
And John said, "The other disciples didn't have to learn this!"
Mark said, "I left my notebook at home."
And Matthew went to the bathroom.

One of the Pharisees who was present asked to see Jesus' lesson plan and enquired of Jesus, "Where are your anticipatory set and your objectives in the cognitive domain?"

And Jesus wept.

I saw this on the bulletin board in the lunch room 6 years ago. I laughed and I still like it...

For G

2007-05-14T23:26:00.000-07:00

These are some pics of G that J scanned in tonight and I sent on for the presentation for her memorial service. These here that I have posted remind me of G's country spirit the most. Here she is waving hi from the barn.
Grandpa and her at the farm, she used to make yogurt from the goats milk with fresh strawberries from her garden. I was a little suburban girl and didn't really appreciate how cool this was at the time. I preferred my bowl of Buck Wheats and a bunny shaped pancake that she made for us.
Here Gram is pregnant with my dad, about 1941 or 1942 here.

Youthsome and toothsome, as Suley would have said.

And my favorite, a side of her I saw less, her younger years of high spirits...

There are so many stories in my family that I wasn't privvy to, like why she only went one year to the University of Washington before she married grandpa. She was studying to be a librarian. How cool is that? When I see grandma and all the places she travelled and how she loved books and cooking and gardening and verse and some drawing, I know that she gave me some of her good stuff too.

I wish sometimes there weren't so many years and so many miles between her and I, she would have been interesting to know as someone my age.

Love you gram.

Update

2007-05-13T22:04:00.000-07:00

Hi all. I am still here. The weather is too nice to be on the computer. School is getting to the part where it is work. I am pulling out all the end of the year activities. I am mentally starting to wrap up. I am counting days. I am making summer plans.

And we are shopping for a home. We have learned the communities we had been looking at are insanely overpriced, by about 50K. So we are trying to figure out what to do. I think the answer lies somewhere between wait for the homeowners to get a grip and increase what we are thinking we might pay.

The weather is nice but I feel more busy than ever. I feel overloaded and all I want to do is have fun with my daughter, do the things I have to do and not be bothered. I am this Mother's Day dealing with a plague of grouchiness.

I have no fun stories right now. I will try to remember them, mostly all I have is a list of things I probably shouldn't put in my blog.

Days like these

2007-05-08T18:51:00.000-07:00

I have to believe that I am not the only one who has them.

My schedule this year is the roughest I have ever had. My last class of the day is a class I have never taught before, with a new textbook. All the teachers that teach this class as well are a 10 minute walk away in another building. It feels like we are worlds away. I was given no curriculum, no idea of what to teach. I am a teacher after all, I can figure it out.

But that last class of the day does me in. It is not large, and there is nothing specifically about the students. They have the normal collection of student things, intelligent kids with a low level of english. And I am to teach them how to read. But by the end of the day, often times they are exhausted and keyed up at the same time, or maybe that is just me. They have a hard time focusing on the reading, comprehending it to do more than decode the words.

By the time they enter the door, I have been on my feet nonstop since I arrived at 7:30, and in front of students for a solid 4 hours. I know my limits. By the time this last class comes in, I have reached my limit.

To make matters more glorious, on days when it is warm, the room heats up. Seventy five, eighty degrees.

I do great in the first two classes, I am on top of things. I am not feeling overwhelmed, tired or otherwise desiring to hide. I am patient, gregarious, a good listener and intuitive to what they have learned and what they haven't gotten yet. I know how to meet their needs. It shows in their grades, their behavior and the cadence of the classes. But by seventh, I can't get attendance in, I am misplacing things, I am misspeaking, I am not as clear about our direction (since I have not been given any clues) and the class isn't where I want it. It takes all my effort to every day keep our class on track, meeting the needs of my lower literacy students, being patient with my attitude problems, and this is to say nothing to the abyssmal attendance problems that have plagued the class.

Not all days are as bad, as discouraging. Ninety percent of the time I keep us focused, I have engaging activities, they are reading daily and can answer to what is going on. But I have a couple who are trying to slip through the cracks through silence. The failing grades that try to do all the work and never ask a question, but manage to fail because at the heart of it, it is clear that they are only getting about 50 to 60 percent, if that.

Today, I was trying to figure out if these kids were state testing or not. Unclear, and without an answer from my higher ups until the class was over, we were particularly lacking focus, despite the task at hand.

I know these days are opportunity days. These are days to reflect to make the next year better. To know specifically how to fix what is wrong. But still one has to live through them first.

Afterward, a student of mine wants to hang out with me. I am unclear of how this works. I am not their friend, I am not their parent, I am not their sister...mostly I just listen and repeat what they say back to me with gently observations. But this takes effort too, especially when feeling downtrodden.

After all this, I go to our local park with A. There are kids there, about 11, who are spitting and throwing bark. When I politely but firmly confront them, they leave, but not before they call me a "goody goody". I am actually complimented, because they know I am not like the other bangers and tweakers there.

But I don't want that stuff. I want to relax, not tell other kids to quit throwing stuff. I won though, they left.

Bye Bye G

2007-05-06T23:56:00.000-07:00

This is where I talk about G.

G is Roberta Tarble Brooks. She lived in Chewelah, Washington until this weekend. She died on Saturday. I think she actually died earlier, but her body didn't know it yet.

I have alot of memories of G, but right now my favorite is this:

I drove from Portland to Chewelah in March in the snow with my 2 year old daughter because I suddenly got very fearful that G would die very soon. I felt I couldn't wait a month. It took 7 hours. I arrived at 9:30 at night. I stopped by the home where they were caring for her and thought I probably wouldn't be able to see her, but thought what the heck. It's not like she has to be up early in the morning. The lady said it would be the best thing in the world for her to see me.

I went inthe room. G had been going downhill slowly and quickly for several years. Last year she broke her back 2 times. The first time she healed, and the second time just about took the wind out of her sails. About a week before I came the doctor said she wouldn't make it through the night. Well, she did and went on to live another couple months. G was 85 or so. When I arrived, she was seldom waking up, barely getting food, and had lost her ability to take care of her personal needs. She slept all day. She stared out the window at the birds eating from the feeders outside her room when she was awake. She could no longer hold the phone to talk. She had grown incredibly weak and to know her was to know how unacceptable this was to her.

When I arrived after my long drive, A crawled up on the bed and I sat down. I stroked her hand and she woke up. When she saw me and A, she got an enormous smile on her face. That is how I want to remember G.

She didn't really speak the rest of the time, she was far too tired. She knew we were there. When I told her that I couldn't call her because the phone wasn't staying put on her ear, she said "Well I guess we'll just have to go to Radio Shack and get a new one," That was the only thing she said, really.

G was a matriarch. She was a gardener and a farmer and a lover of the natural world. She became Christian by baptism when she was about 80. This is the kind of mind she had, it worked very, very well. Sometimes I think she loved her animals more than her brood. But, the waywardness of her daughters (each married in excess of 5 times), one might understand that. She was a lover of cooking and an avid reader and writer.

When I was little, I really just wanted her to pay attention to me and bake me cookies. She was my only G, and that is how I wanted her to be. But she was not. It took me till I was in my 20s or so to see how cool she actually was. How she was one who gave me many parts of my nature. We didn't always get along, she could be ornery. I could be awkward with her. I wasn't on her wavelength and I knew it.

Still G was an amazing woman. I feel lucky she was my forebear. I am glad for many things, I am glad she was released from this world.

Bye Bye G.

More than one love

2007-05-01T15:09:00.000-07:00

My dear man, J, has furtively been setting up this project since we married. it is called Creative Pro Office. It is an invoicing system for creative professionals. He released a stable beta launch on March 1 and the world has been paying attention.

My man sneaks down to his computer and, if I let him, would come out only to grab more tea and Doritos, if I bought Doritos, so he is instead stuck with bowls of MiniWheats. For him, a concession is to watch TV with me, which is some nights our only form of bonding (we are aware of this not being a really great thing, hence the no tv or computer for a week last week).

But in the past 5 years he has created a really amazing little web app, and his feedback and users has soared into the stratosphere. Good job, man. He has some crazy number of hits and I think it is some variety of a fulfillment of his lifelong dream to be a real computer programmer. Not bad for an EE major.

He gave me some real encouragement the other day, even higher than what he normally gives, and it hit home. And when I look at what he made, I think of all the hours, the hours, on the puter, but ultimately I am proud of him, as it makes him very happy. And I make fun of him for having a mouse growing out of his hand and the fact that he works on 2 computers at once.

Mistooken

2007-05-01T00:17:00.000-07:00

These pictures were taken this weekend at a retreat on Mountain Hood (this is the way an old student of mine used to persistently call it, defying gentle correction).

It is the end of the year and I cannot form a reasonable sentence in English anymore. It is a peril of teaching ESL and listening to it all the time, it takes an actual effort to keep the funk out of my English.

You know I started this blog because I was so excited that my guest speaker said he thought I looked 21 when guessing my age. But then as I started to write, I felt so stupid because I realized he was just being a good man, a good politically astute man.

I guess standing in the shadow of 40 I am starting to test the water in the pool to see how it feels on my toe, to know that I am so close. Sometimes I feel like it is 2 steps forward and one step back, as Lenin used to say (are you there Jane? Have you seen this quote 343,004 times like I have?). Sometimes I still act like an 19 year old, not in a good way.

Here are my best new pictures. I am noticing that I am more interested in closeups rather than sweeping landscapes...

2007-04-26T21:15:00.000-07:00

What is your favorite book of all time AND what is the absolute worst book you've ever read?
Well, as I told Chucheria, I like Confederacy of Dunces, thought it was hilarious, wierd. I also liked Kite Runner, House of Sand and Fog and A Fine Balance. Am reading again Old Man and the Sea which always nearly moves me to tears, cept this time its in Spanish so I am to busy trying to figure out some of the words. I also have recently read Whats So Amazing about Grace and can highly recommend it esp for people who are leary of Christians, same with A Generous Orthodoxy.

What's your most irrational fear?
I worry about stupid stuff sometimes, like if J comes home too late I think the worst, car crash. I didn't to worry, but I think it goes along with more love...more fear that those you love would be harmed somehow. I worry that A will contract a rare uncurable disease or someone will hurt her somehow. I don't like the idea that there are things I cannot protect her from. And what threat? I dunno. I dunno...

If you were invisible for one day, who would you spy on?
Hmm. If I could spy and go back in time, I think I would like to spy on some famous person that did amazing things... for me it would be Mother Teresa. I mean is she really as good as all that?

What was the first CD you ever bought?
I believe, wait CD, my first record was Grease. Which I promptly learned all the words. I think my first CD might have been either REM Murmur or Cowboy Junkies or hm, The Unforgettable Fire by U2.

If you have to do a shot, what's your alcohol of choice?
Sorry, ever since my pop was in such a bad way with alcoholism I have taken the absention route from the hard stuff. It wasn't a hard choice. In Russia, a rare time in my life, I did drink vodka, until I learned better.

And for all 2 of you that have been following my travails with the job hunt, wish me felicitaciones, I was hired by my #1 pick: Canby School District in a brand new school working with newcomers in the middle school. I am very excited. Brand new program, the challenge there seems just amazing, but so is the opportunity.
It is a brand new school and resource rich...it is amazing in the building and the technology available and it is a wow.

A

2007-04-24T23:54:00.000-07:00

In her mind, this is the correct way to get on a trike.

Food took on new meaning after Easter. Everything had to be candy.

A is just over 2 now.

When people ask me how I like being a mom, the answer is easy. If I had known it was this much fun, I would have done it much much sooner.

After awhile though, the novelty of having a baby wears off, though there is this new little person in life. She repeats everything we say. So we try to get her to say fun interesting things. Like "Buy! Buy! Buy! Sell! Sell! Sell!" and strange words like "gubernatorial" and "percolate" and "fuddy duddy". She names everything she sees with incredible import when we are driving and because I am a maniacal driver she says "Whoa!" when we take a corner on 2 wheels.

She readjusts my attitude in this time when I am probably trying too hard to make things better. I read something tonight about how we really can only worry about today. But I am so not that way.

I also struggle more with nerves than every before. I used to travel all over the place with a pittance in my pocket and shrug it off, now I wish I could just be ok with things. I told J I don't want to be a highly strung mom, but that is how I am feeling.

I do wish that I didn't have to keep her strapped down every time she left the house, as she has no concept of speeding cars or that there might be a place where she shouldn't be, like the storage area of a grocery store or the kitchen of a restaurant. I told J that now I now look wistfully at children who walk next to their parents without darting hither an yon into traffic and in front of kids on swings and think "Sigh. I wish A would do that".

Once my brother said that eventually I would be astonished by the way other people raised their kids, and feel a sense of disapproval. I rejected that it was okay to be that way, because I know I don't want people doing that to me. But it is true. I cannot comprehend raising a kid vegan or feeding them preformed dinosaur shaped breaded chicken nuggets (though I have been tempted). Nor can I comprehend the lady who would shake her head in disapproval of me not putting a sweater on A by oversight before going to the play structure, or get in the pool without a life vest. That tsk tsking is just all bad, all wrong.

Don't laugh

2007-04-19T00:15:00.000-07:00

I answered in the direction I want to go, not necessarily the way I have always responded to incidents in life.

Desensitizing

2007-04-17T20:33:00.000-07:00

I watched once a Spike Lee movie about crack in the inner city. There was a scene where a kid was playing a video game where he was riding around on his bike killing people with a gun or something, then later in the movie he did kill someone from his bike (or something bizarrely similar to the video game).

I will never rail on this stuff, I will never start an activist group over it, but it seems pretty clear to me that for the same reason athletes visualize themselves winning, violent images, behavior, music, hate speech, hateful or violent media of any sort has an effect on peoples brains in not such a good way.

I am not saying that Ozzy is telling kids to kill themselves.

But it seems naive to think that when one loads themselves up on a certain kind of input, it won't desensitize them.

People think advertising doesn't work on them. That's the devil of it. For that exact reason (and more), it does work on them. The power of suggestion is real and there is a correlation to advertising dollars spent and consumption of a product. The biggest target is teens, who consider themselves way beyond being able to be swayed, but are also the largest consumers of media.

I would suggest additionally that our habits will also influence who we are. Whether it is eating habits, habits in loyalty, habits in how we spend time. Habits in how I spend time, meaning its time to get off the computer now.

peace out.

Momming

2007-04-15T19:47:00.000-07:00

J and I made this decision when we wed that I would be home with kids, until I lost my sanity or when someone came to repossess the house or whatever.

We started this marraige with every kind of debt except consumer debt, having bounced through lifes experiences on our bums and wound up well educated and employable, but not without the future mortgaging students debt and the care payments made to a woman who makes redneck look like a step up. And a business loan.

Financial wisdom was an imperative if we were going to make it out of the hole and make it to our dreams, which was basically living in service, preferably overseas. Some might think this lofty or high fallutin, but it is just what will give my life any purpose.

These days we are getting used to a lot of flux.

Moving will happen when I am offered a job, and I know where that job will be. It may be I stay at the same job, but moving will still happen. He has said that unless they fund his position to the extent that he can make future plans, he won't come in more than thrice a week, and if he gets funded, that is the most he will come in because of the distance.

Time is making decisions clearer, but immediately I am without child care for going to interviews.

Someone really needs to come up with a nannying agency.

So for now we have the future, the present and the past all here at this minute. And all decisions are unclear.

I take turns ruminating on me as a mom and me as a professional. Me as a mom who winces at a full time job and more than one kid in a care center. But I know that this is what will be next year, without a doubt. She is 2 now, so for some reason, it seems less hard. But that wierd momming instinct comes in and I feel that "my babay!" feeling coming up from inside.

A guy said today that everything changes after kids. He is right. Before kids, child molesters seemed like a bad thing, but now these elicit much stronger feelings. The urge to find community, a safe place for kids and thoughts about what I want to offer to them. Before that, the only concern was really how cheap the rent was and how hip the neighborhood was. Gangs? Who cares. Drugs? Whatever, I don't need them. Busy streets? Well look both ways for heavens sake. Community centers? Why? Parks? Um, ok. But I will probably never go. All these things are more there now than before.

Now on to prepping for classes tommorrow.
Peace out.

Parent Night

2007-04-12T23:36:00.000-07:00

One has to love parent conferences.

Usually it is only parents with kids with not such bad grades, the other parents often don't seem to come.

Tonight was a reverse of that.

I have one young man, who though very intelligent and capable, just has more fun cutting class, coming unprepared and kind of showing what a low priority school is. He seems to magically elude any substantial consequence because he is mostly pretty nice and all, if a bit aggravating.

Today in the computer lab he downloaded a pic he probably shouldn't have been accessing. Our computer lab lady, bless her heart, printed off the pic in question and handed it to me. Yeesh. Her unstated but clear question seemed to be "Are we doing anything about this?"

Well so tonight the conference with Y's mom starts with me glowing about Y. He is smart, he is capable, he is just a kid. But I didn't stop there. We looked at the vacant grade, full of opportunity. When he comes, he succeeds, he just doesn't come. He thinks school isn't fun, it is more fun to skip. It is more fun to see the teachers reaction when for the 593th time he has no pencil, no paper, no work, no binder, and he leaves all his papers and work on the desk, abandoned at the end of the period as he walks out the door. Y smiled behind his paper while we smiled back at him. The teacher will always give him another chance, because he is never mean. Mom thanked me for seeing the good in her son. For having a charitable eye, for understanding he is just a boy.

I talked about the opportunities for kids with all F's when school is over. What jobs he might be able to get without college. What colleges he can go to with no high school diploma. Where he might find himself in 5 years. Mom nodded and stared at her boy. Bad boy, whatever will we do.

I talked about what he could achieve if he would stick to it.

And then I talked about the path he was on more seriously and told her about the picture, and what may happen since he has a history of bad attendance, bad grades. Alternative high school? No computer privileges? Where was this path leading him?

She looked shocked, ashamed, but still she smiled at her boy, her only boy, as he smiled back at her, knowing he would get away with it.

She apologized at least 3 times before she got up to leave. She told me she was very ashamed of him. But that seemed to be it.

It has to be the oldest story on the planet.

Jacked, and fascism

2007-03-31T20:45:00.000-07:00

Someone has jacked my blog title. ChezWhat? has been me since um, 2005, actually 2003 when I launched a weak little site that never went anywhere.

Now, as it is clear that my famous blog is such a tour de force with a readership well into the tens, someone else should not steal another person's blog name, because that is not very cool.

So, they ought to be reminded that theft is never okay. Harumph.

On another note, J and I keep having a conversation about the definition of fascism. It seems that everyone has their own definition, so submit your definition blog world, all my vast quantity of readers, FASCISM!