Some Pig

Letter From A Broad, Domestic Front Edition

Dear Michelle Obama,

I can call you MIchelle, can't I?  After all, that's how you signed all those emails you sent to me during the campaign.  And not to be petty and small, but we were all buds for those thirteen or fourteen months, and then?  Since the election?  Well, you've been a little ... distant.  Distracted, almost.  I mean, it's not as though you're watching as the fate of the free world is being decided -- oh, wait a minute.  Never mind.

Anyway, I've been hearing all about how your two main causes are going to be military families and work-life balance.  I can't really speak to military families, because other than my ex-navy-officer dad waking us up for road trips at 4 a.m. by flipping on the light and shouting, "Time to get up!" for the joy of watching his un-militarily-disciplined children squirm, I don't know from military.  However I do have a work-life balance and so I feel eminently qualified to discuss ideas about that with you.  And oh, boy, do I have ideas - I have ideas like Aretha's got hats.  By the way, I don't know if you got a chance to take in the Queen of Soul's raiment at the inauguration, but let me just say, that was a HAT.  That was not a hat you cram over your bedhead to run out for eggs and a quart of milk of a Saturday morning; that hat demanded an occasion. That hat said something.  There's been some grumbling about it being too gauche or too gaudy or too much, but I say codswollop!  A big day calls for a big hat! While I'm on the topic, you know what two groups of women wear hats?  Church ladies and Englishwomen.  Isn't that an interesting combination? 

 I appear to have digressed.  Where was I?  Oh, yes, work-life balance.  I certainly hope you can do something about work-life balance for the mothers of America, because right now I have a full-time job and a full-time life and not a balance in sight.  Even as I'm sitting here, things are getting more and more unbalanced because I should be doing something productive, which blogging does not count as, but if I don't do something that's not filed under "O" for "obligatory" I am going to go stark staring mad. As proof positive of the imbalance of my life, let me present Exhibit A:  Mount Washmore.  Yep, that's what half a week's worth of laundry looks like at my house, dumped on the couch in the spare room because I don't have time to fold laundry and make lunches and plan lessons and blog.  Clearly something's gotta give, and here chez Pig it's wearing non-wrinkly clothes.

Anyhoo, Michelle, you've got a bully pulpit there at the White House, with the ears of all those big-kahuna policymaker types right near by and all, so I figured I'd give you an idea or two to send their way. I've already talked about how I'd like to flat-out eliminate the arsenic hour altogether, so don't be shy about borrowing that one by way of easing into things.  While we're on that track, I had another great idea about the dinner hour:  I'd like to see a government program that matches poor college students with local mothers as nannies from 3:30 to 6 pm every night.  The college kid would play with the kids, read endless repetitions of Clifford books, make forts out of the couch cushions, whatever, while the mother in question would have a few moments free to collect her thoughts and figure out what to cobble together for dinner.  After all, your husband has mentioned many times about how the government needs to help make college more affordable for everyone; think of this as a work-study program on a massive scale!  Add to that the increased productivity of all those working women who don't have to worry if their kids' brains are going to rot from watching too many cartoons during dinner prep time and that alone will catapult us into the 21st century!

The other policy change I'd like to see has to do with the space-time continuum.  Specifically, I'd like to have back all that time I wasted from, oh, 1989 to 2004, a span of years that you will notice coincides with the phase of my life in which I was an adult but not yet encumbered with children.  Lemme tell ya, I had no idea how much time I had on my hands when I was out there doing the single-career-gal thing until I had absolutely no time at all (viz Mt. Washmore above).  I mean, holy crap, it was technically possible for me to work late, go grocery shopping, work out at the gym, go home, take a shower, make dinner, and read before going to bed all in the same day!  I remember when a "busy" day meant I had to run an extra errand or two outside my usual routine, and I would be thoroughly irritated by the fact that I had (deep sigh) so much to do and not enough time to get everything done. This is not meant as a commentary on my non-child-bearing friends by a long shot, mind you, it's just a rumination on what a time suck children are.  Not only is there the time one needs to provide care and feeding at home and to transport said offspring to and from a facility that will provide care and feeding when one is not home, there's also the additional time needed to do the things that used to take one five minutes at most and which now take the better part of twenty.  For example, putting on a coat and getting in the car:  A simple task, no?  Now try doing that with a two-year-old, one who wants to wear her spring raincoat and a pair of water socks when it's negative three degrees outside.  When I think of all the days I dithered around for an extra ten or fifteen minutes and still managed to get places on time, I'd really like that back now.  Can you help on that?

I think you're the perfect person to address another issue, particularly since you have been heralded as the most fashion-conscious, trend-setting First Lady since Jackie Bouvier Kennedy and her pillbox hats.  I would like to know what my government plans to do about another drain on the national economy, namely, why I can never find anything to wear. It is extremely disheartening to be squinting into the fluorescent lighting of my closet at half past five in the morning (Yes,that is half past FIVE, not six, people. F-I-V-E five. Five in the morning.  So I can be at work at 7:15.  Think about that.) and realize I have nothing I can put on my body that is comfortable, professional, and flattering.  I realize this may seem contradictory given the heaps of clothing pictured above, but what you can't tell from that rather blurry scene is the fact that almost none of that stuff is mine!  In a typical load of laundry, there are eight million toddler outfits, a couple hundred preschooler outfits, a score or so of my husband's duds, and a paltry handful of socks and underwear that bear my name.  Clearly I need to go shopping - in fact, I actually want to go shopping - but the likelihood of my getting out of the house on the weekend is somewhere between the snowball's chance in hell and none at all.  So clearly we have a golden opportunity here to unleash an underutilized consumer sector on the American economy:  Mothers of small children.  Just think of all the purchasing power that could be exercised if we only had a chance to get the hell out of the house!  Now if I had a government-funded babysitter, one who wouldn't mind working on a weekend day, I could go do my patriotic duty and try to get the American economy moving again.  Throw in a subsidized spa day and I would be glad to extend my efforts to the suffering service industry sector, too.  No sacrifice too great!

Well, I've got loads of other good ideas (like the health initiative that consists of having a private chef make dinners for my family), but I know you're busy and I don't want to overdo it right out of the gate.  If you would like to discuss this with me face to face, I wouldn't mind an invite to one of those fancy state dinners you get to host.  Just be warned that the last formal anything I went to outside my own wedding was my college senior formal in 1989 - the only formal dress I own has an asymmetrical hemline and a very large, very pink bow with rhinestone trim right on the hip (hey, at least it's not on the @ss - small mercies, huh?).  Anyway, if you could see your way clear to helping promote a few of these modest initiatives, the stressed-out mothers of America would sing your praises for years to come.  Your husband would have a lock on a second term because the mom vote would swing 90% his way (can't promise the full 100 - there are always a few cranks out there).  I would even make your profile out of socks and my husband's t-shirts and put it up on Mount Washmore.  With immortality like that guaranteed to you, how can you resist??

Looking forward to my invite!

Some Pig 

An Affair to Forget, As Rapidly As Possible

"Have you heard about this??" my coworker sputtered over lunch in our palatial digs (a cinderblock room about the size of the second-largest bathroom in a McMansion that has to hold eight adults, two tables, a bar fridge, a microwave, various and assorted outdated teaching materials, a computer and printer, a paper shredder and the coffee maker - we live the life of Riley, we professional educators).  He then proceeds to tell us about the radio ads he's been hearing for AshleyMadison.com, a website specifically geared toward married people who want to step out on their spouses.  The site bills itself as a "discreet dating service" under the slogan "Life is short.  Have an affair."  God bless my young idealistic coworker's newlywed heart, but he was seriously irate - irate! - that someone would actually create a business aimed at encouraging people to break their wedding vows. What gall!  So after we laughed at his rose-colored view of the world, we proceeded to discuss whether or not the other "mainstream" online dating services aren't just cover for married folk to go searching for amusement on the wrong side of the sheets, which devolved into who suspected whom in their neighborhood of swinging, which then led to bitching about the kids. (Hey, we're teachers - every conversation we have eventually comes back to bitching about the kids. Listen, YOU try spending your days shut in a room with 20-plus thirteen-year-olds and see if YOU don't bitch all the time!)

But as your intrepid guide to all things au courant, I knew I had to check this Ashley Madison thingie out (purely in the name of research, of course).  So I waited til Warren was home, told him what I was doing (so as to avoid the whole spousal suspicion brouhaha) and let my fingers do the walking.  Well, it is exactly as advertised:  It is a dating site aimed at those who, technically, aren't supposed to be on the dating scene anymore at all.  Not only that, but Ashley Madison PROMISES you poor marrieds suffering from the dread "bed death" syndrome a successful, um, "dating" experience with their "Affair Guarantee."  So you won't have to go look for yourself and risk your spouse looking at your viewing history, let me summarize this program for you:

• You have to give Ashley Madison two hundred and fi'ty of your hard-earned smackers
• You have to keep up your profile full-time for 3 months
• You have to send five "Ashley gifts" (I have no idea what those are, but given the nature of this website, I'd have my shots updated before accepting anything these people had to give me!)
• You have to send at least twenty messages to twenty DIFFERENT fellow members per MONTH

And here's the kicker:

• You have to spend 60 minutes a month texting fellow Ashley Madison members using the Ashley Madison text service (which I'm assuming ain't something they give you for free)

Then, assuming that your profile posting, gift giving, emailing and texting haven't resulted in this guaranteed affair, you THEN have to take more time to fill out a FORM to get your money back!  Suddenly all became clear.  The point of this, um, business venture is to soak as much money out of the participants as possible.  This is capitalism at its finest: A brilliant cross-fertilization of "there's a sucker born every minute" and "find a need and fill it." I'm wondering if Noel Biderman went to B-school, because this has master's thesis project written all over it!

"Who has TIME for all this?" I griped to Warren after reading the fine print.  It seems to me if you have the time to do all the things they list, you'd be better off (literally AND financially) spending it paying attention to your spouse.

"It's perfect!" he said happily, "I can use that to fill the time when I get laid off!"  [My ever-so-slightly neurotic husband is convinced that the Hand of Economic Doom hath writ his name large in the Book of Unemployment, a development that will be discovered in the as-yet-unclear future.  And did I mention he's slightly neurotic?] "I'll need something to do with myself then to get back my mojo.  I'll be full of mojo!"

I fixed him with a cold, hard stare.  "If you think for one New York minute that you're going to be sitting around the house playing with Ashley Madison while I'm out earning a living for both of us, you got another think coming.  Besides, you're not going to be full of mojo, you're going to be full of diseases.  Not to mention divorced, unemployed, and living in your car."  And with that, I put the official kibosh on romantic extracurriculars in the SP marriage - not to mention saved my thousands hundreds tens of readers from having to risk their own unions to satisfy their curiosity about this Ashley Madison fandangle.  Just another public service provided by your favorite mommyblogger!

Letter From A Broad, Pop Icon Edition

Dear Madonna,

We need to talk.

I realize I'm not the most obvious choice to be having this conversation with you.  You probably were expecting my friend Elaine, the woman who plans to make a fortune playing accordion renditions of your greatest hits.  Or my other friend Madge, the woman whose blog name is a play on your British nickname. Or even my friend Michael, the one who went into mourning when you had to cancel one of your Blond Ambition tour dates and whose friends sent flowers and notes of condolence to him because he was so upset.  But really, doesn't it make sense that this would come from someone like me, someone who has liked and admired you ever since your Desperately Seeking Susan, Cheetos-and-jelly-bracelets days, but who never claimed to love you with the blind adoration of the aforementioned fans?  I think their objectivity has been blinded by their adoration, and so that leaves it to me to bring this up.

Madonna, my friend, you've had an outstanding run, but it's time to start thinking about the end game  here. Let's face facts: We're not the spring chickens we once were.  Yeah, I know it's hard to imagine that we're reaching that age the women's mags call "and beyond!", as in, "How to Look Your Best in Your 20's ... 30's ... 40's ... and beyond!"  Hey, I'm still surprised every time I catch sight of the middle-aged lady in the big mirror during Zumba class, and I never got to look the way you did when I was in my 20's and 30's.  You know that fake road sign in the opening of What Not to Wear? The one that says "No Miniskirts After 35"?  It took many reruns before it hit me (like a blow to the stomach) that that message was meant for ME.  I've seen your latest tour photos, and you still look ready to kick ass and take names, but ... well, the inevitable is coming.  50 may be the new 40 and 40 may be the new 30, but there comes a point when it doesn't matter what's the new what anymore. You and I have both had two kids, and honey, I don't care how good your Pilates trainer is, after a couple of pregnancies things that used to live up north start heading south, both literally AND figuratively (figuratively! ha!  body shape pun!).  Let's just say that a couple of years ago, it was hot when you french-kissed the latest pretender to the pop queen throne.  If you were to do that now, however, you'd have to suck face with Miley Cyrus, and the ick factor on that is just exponentially higher than it was when you smooched with La Spears. Face it, we're old enough to be Hannah Montana's mother; you don't really want to be battling her for market share, do you?

So let's get down to brass tacks.  You're quickly advancing to the point in the road where you're going to have to make a choice between two options:  Aging Gracefully and Fighting Desperately.  As the woman who became famous for reinvention, you're going to have to find one more transformation in you: From being "of  the moment" to "timeless". You stopped channeling Marilyn Monroe a long time ago, now it's time to search for your inner Grace Kelly.  And I have to say, I'm worried about you, Madge.  Let's take a gander at this pictorial evidence over here for starters.  The top hat?  The sparkly skull guitar  strap?  I'm not feeling it, especially not the skull motif (which I think is uber-stupid and best left to the 13-year-old skateboarders who started it).  And your face ... oh dear.  Somehow the round face you used to have in your "Like a Virgin" days has been replaced by something that looks like you had half an orange shoved under your skin on either side of your nose. To be brutally honest, Madge, dear, some of your most recent photos have had a bit of an "I'm ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille," air about them. Do I really need to remind you what happens when women desperate to hang onto the illusion of youth go in for indiscriminate plastic surgery?  Okay, here it is:

 

Dear Lord, please don't make me have to go through that again. That's the BEST photo I could find of that woman, too - you should've seen the others!

So now we need to chat about what image is, in fact, suitable for us women "of a certain age" (as the French like to say).  Personally, I think you've fought your last match in the boxing getup.  It's mind-boggling to think that someone older than I am is fit enough to strut around on stage in thigh-high boots and a leotard, but you're reaching the age when you need a little meat on your bones or you start looking like a scalded chicken (viz. Ms. Van Ark and her sternum above).  You don't have to do a double gainer into the HoHos, but how about relaxing a bit on the dietary front?  Have a glass of milk and a cookie once in awhile; I recommend a nice homemade chocolate chip with butter and nuts in it.  Rethink the dress code, too, away from "Lourdes and I raid each other's wardrobes," to "I won't be embarrassed to see pictures of myself in this five years from now." Before you freak out, I'm not telling you to give up being stylish.  Shoot, you and Michelle Obama are almost contemporaries, and I don't see anyone referring to her as frumpy, dowdy, or schlumpadinka-like. Admitting you're not a mere lass of 30 doesn't mean you can't be fashionable and glam and all those good things.  Take a gander at this:

 

That's Eartha Kitt, and she looked smashing, didn't she?  I think she had some work done, but even so, she kept it to a minimum so that she still looked like herself as she aged into her eighties:

 

See?  That's not so bad, is it?  And think of the other women I'd put in the category of "Classy Broads":  Catherine Deneuve!  Sophia Loren!  Diane Keaton!  I'll even put Liza Minelli, despite her failed marriage to that freak show ex-husband of hers, in this category too!  Now look at the flip side:  Zsa Zsa Gabor.  Joan and Jackie Collins.  Pamela Anderson.  Priscilla Presley.  Fighting the clock, every one of them, and look how far that's gotten them.

Okay, I know you don't want to be the Grande Old Dame of anything.  You want to go on being on top of the game and at the top of your form.  But take it from someone who, admittedly, never attained the heights you have and had only a short distance to fall:  It's not that bad down here.  It's not like the fashion police are going to grab you and force you into a pair of mom jeans as soon as you admit you're middle-aged.  Once you finally admit it to yourself you may even find it liberating to be middle-aged!  You can walk around without sucking in your stomach all the time for starters!  You get to pass over clothes that may be trendy but look really stupid and no one expects you to wear them anyway!  You even get to say, "that's stupid - I'm not wearing that" in your out-loud voice!  You can admit that high heeled shoes hurt, thong underwear is uncomfortable, and ultra-low-cut jeans are only meant for girls under the age of 15!  You can wear a bathing suit that covers more than 2.5 square inches of flesh to the beach, which means you can actually walk around or even - gasp - SWIM without violating decency laws!  You can choose your bras based on comfort and support, not sex appeal!  I could go on, but you get the gist. 

Well, I'm glad we had this little chat.  I'll leave you with this one last thought: Do you want to be remembered as, "Madonna, the woman who changed what it meant to be a female pop star forever," or, "Madonna, the once-trendy queen of the pop music scene who became a parody of herself"?  You think that over while I put the milk in the coldest part of the fridge and stir up another batch of those chocolate chip cookies I mentioned earlier. 

Your pal,

Some Pig

No, It's The BOOK That Sucks

After watching nearly every girl in my classes with her head buried in a book the size of a cinderblock since late August, I finally caved and started reading the Twilight series. I wanted to know what all the "Team Edward" paraphernalia meant, first off, and then when my neighbor's daughter (who has never read a book willingly in her life) became totally obsessed, I figured I needed to know just what the hell (ha! doomed soul pun!) was going on.  To give Stephenie Meyer her props, it's a page-turner.  I went to bed at 9 p.m. last night (why yes, I am that boring, thank you) thinking I would breeze through a chapter or two and I finally put it down at 10:40, having lost all track of time (and my shot at an early bedtime, dammit).  Meyers establishes a real sense of place and the action moves along briskly, but not with the head-turning disjointedness of a DaVinci Code.  However, as I've been reading it, I've been haunted (ha!  another doomed soul pun!) by a growing sense that there's something objectionable underlying the whole premise of the book.

Then I realized what had been nagging at my subconscious.  Under all the trendy modern-vampire-slash-teen-ennui facade, this is the oldest plot line in the male-female storyline:  Nice Girl Meets Jerk; Jerk Changes for Better.  When we meet Edward Cullen, he's hostile, withdrawn, arrogant, supercilious, condescending ... you get the point. But then Bella really gets to know him and sees how he's so terribly misunderstood, and once they get to know each other he's really very nice except for that bloodsucking habit and blah blah blah. Worse yet, the relationship between Bella and Edward Cullen falls into the classic, and let me emphasize CLASSIC, pattern of domestic abuse, and yet NO ONE seems to notice!  Let's take a closer look at this, shall we?  Let's see now, our heroine, Bella, refers to herself as "ordinary," "nothing special," "soft," (as in mushy-middled) "a loner," someone who doesn't have any connections to others and has no real friends.  She's bad at gym, hopelessly uncoordinated, accident-prone, the list goes on and on.  This makes her low-hanging fruit for Edward, who then engages in a textbook pattern of go-away-come-back.

He's prone to violent mood swings:
He stared at me again, meeting my eyes with the strangest expression on his face - it was hostile, furious."
I could see his hand on his left leg was clenched into a fist, tendons standing out under his pale skin.
Abruptly, his unpredictable mood shifted again; a mischievous, devastating smile rearranged his features.
"Sometimes I have a problem with my temper, Bella."  He was whispering, too, and as he stared out the window his eyes narrowed into slits.

He engages in risky, frightening behaviors, even when Bella is clearly upset:
"Holy crow!" I shouted. "Slow down! ... You're going a hundred miles an hour!" I was still shouting.
"Relax, Bella." He rolled his eyes, still not slowing. ... "I always drive like this."

He isolates her from her friends:
"Edward Cullen is staring at you again," Jessica said, ... "I wonder why he's sitting alone today." ... I followed her gaze to see Edward, smiling crookedly, staring at me from an empty table across the cafeteria ... he raised one hand and motioned with his index finger for me to join him. ... "Um, I'd better go see what he wants."
"The mention of Jessica brought a hint of his former irritation back to his features."

He monitors her activities:
"It's harder than it should be - keeping track of you.  Usually I can find someone very easily,..."
... outside the door to our Spanish class, leaning against the wall ... Edward was waiting for me. ...His voice was amused and irritated at the same time.  He had been listening, it was obvious.

He tells her repeatedly that she is responsible for his emotional well-being.
"When you walked past me, I could have ruined everything Carlisle has built for us, ... I wouldn't have been able to stop myself."
"You are the most important thing to me now.  The most important thing to me ever."

Put this all together and the picture becomes clear: Edward Cullen is an asshole. This guy is captain of the varsity jerk squad, and Bella's looking to help him earn yet another letter for his jacket.  Why?  Because he's dangerous, that's why!  But even though he tells her he's dangerous and she shouldn't be around him, what's her response?  She should be saying, "Thanks for the advice, Eddie, I think I'll go hang around with those nice boys Tyler and Mike who are always so pleasant to me," but no.  Her reaction?  She feels SAFE with him!  He's the only one who really UNDERSTANDS her!  She TRUSTS him not to make like a slim jim with her neck muscles til she's down for the long dirt nap!  Why???  Because she just KNOWS, that's why!

GAAAAAH!

As a former English teacher, I understand there's a huge difference between a book and real life.  I also know that nice, happy, well-adjusted people make for lousy characters.  Famous literature is crawling with cads and boiling over with bounders.  No one would give a damn about Heathcliff and Cathy if they had talked out their differences with the help of a really good therapist and settled down to raise Welsh corgis.  Romeo Montague was arguably immature and impulsive and had a bit of an anger management issue to boot.  Mr. Darcy was emotionally unavailable, Mr. Rochester wasn't the picture of mental health, Jude the Obscure had delusions of grandeur... I could go on, but the point is, I wish Meyer hadn't gone quite as far as she did to make Edward's negative tendencies look so appealing.  After seeing more iterations of the sweet girl/shithead guy pairing than I care to remember, I can tell you that teenage girls don't need more encouragement to see assholes as their own personal reclamation projects in the making.  That whole mad, bad, and dangerous to know routine looks exciting and romantic from the outside, until you talk to that wonderful senior girl you hadn't seen for most of her junior year because she was hiding from a stalker ex-boyfriend.  Or spend half an hour debriefing one of your sociology students after watching a documentary about teenage alienation because her former so-called "boyfriend" had raped her, given her herpes, and told everyone he knew about it.  Or witness the humiliation of the honors student whose asswipe deadbeat juvenile-delinquent-on-parole boyfriend talked her into doing something in public she didn't want to do, whereupon they were seen doing it by, well, everyone.  Why were these lovely, bright, interesting, attractive girls dating such a rogues' gallery of losers in the first place?  Because "he's the only one who wants me."  "I had nowhere else to go."  "I didn't know what else to do."

I spent my 20's and the early portion of my 30's longing for and/or dating the unattainable and unsuitable, so I feel uniquely qualified to comment on this.  It wasn't until I hit my mid-30's that the light finally dawned:  If you want to get married to a nice man, you have to date nice men.  And, shazam!  I met Warren! - who was straightforward, honest, nice, funny, eager to spend time with me, easy to get along with - in short, everything I had rejected in a dating partner for the first twenty years of my romantic life. Having been such a slow learner myself, I am acutely aware of how ubiquitous and pervasive the bad-boy stereotype is, and how many, many otherwise intelligent young ladies fall for it hook, line, and sinker. So far Twilight looks like just another lure on the line.

An Involved Citizenry Is A Good Thing, Right?

You know may have watched the inaugural festivities just a teensy, weensy smidge too much when your two-year-old bids you goodnight by saying, "I wuv yoo Mommy!" [kisses Mommy]  "I wuv yoo Daddy!" [kisses Daddy] "I wuv yoo Bwack Obama!" [waves at her new commander in chief on television]  After getting no reaction from the new leader of the free world, she yells, "BAWACK BAMA!  I WUV YOO!  I WUV YOO, BAWACK BAMA!"

Baby, It's Cold Outside UPDATED

It is currently eight degrees outside right now, as measured by our digital thermometer.  EIGHT.  DEGREES.  Onetwothreefourfivesixseven EIGHT degrees.  As in, you don't even run out fingers when you're counting it up!  Oh, excuse me - it's eight POINT THREE degrees... like the POINT THREE makes a whole hell of a lot of difference.  No conversation ever runs, "It's eight-point-three degrees!"  "Well! What are you complaining about?  It's not like it's eight-point-one degrees, now, is it?"

How cold is eight degrees?  Let me put it this way:  The temperature could triple and it still wouldn't be above freezing!  Eight degrees is cold enough that even I will go to school wearing my dorky winter hat, even though it makes my head look like a gray fleece Sta-Puft marshmallow and will expose me to the ridicule of my friends and co-workers (They never miss a chance to seize on a perceived weakness and make fun of it.  They're good people.).  It's cold enough that the cat won't sleep near the windows. It might even be cold enough that the doofuses I am trying to educate and enlighten might actually come to school dressed for the weather, instead of sitting stoically hunched over in their short-sleeved Hollister t-shirts (boys) or walking around shrieking, "I'm freezing!  Let me borrow your sweatshirt!" (girls).  [On second thought, naaah.  They'll still come to school dressed stupidly. If there's anything more inexorable than the weather, it's the dunderheadedness of the 13-year-old homo sapiens.] Let me tell you something, eight degrees is friggin' cold, and I'm LUCKY it's as high as eight degrees - if it's this cold down in the balmy southern reaches of the Live Free or Shoot Someone Else State, it must be eleventy-two below in the North Country. I bet their snow machines won't even start!

Eight degrees! Remind me why I live here again?!?!?

UPDATE:  It is now ELEVEN point three degrees, so, hey!  Break out the sunscreen, time to lay out on the deck!

I just shivered my way in from the mailbox.  What do you suppose found its way to my house today?  Why, the Lands' End kids' catalogue, full to overflowing with swimsuits, t-shirts, sandals - you know, all the accoutrements of summer!  Which will be COMPLETELY unnecessary for, oh, the next SIX MONTHS or so. Bah!

Toasty Sent Me

FIVE DAYS TO GO!!!
Damn, but I get the shivers. Every. Single. Time.

Need A Laugh? (GOPers Need Not Apply)

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

P.S. If you don't see that as a link, roll your mouse over to click on it. Or else this post makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Another Post Explaining Why I Do What I Do (This One Sans Clever Title)

Those of you unfamiliar with the inner workings of education may wonder how we figure out what grade to teach.  It is not an exact science, and it varies greatly by individual.  Some of us enter a certain classroom and immediately the clouds part.  Celestial choirs sing a hallelujah and a shaft of light pierces the sky, while a voice from on high intones: "This... is the grade you should teach, now and forevermore, unto the end of days or whenever you become vested in your pension (whichever comes first)."  Such was my friend Tracy's experience (holla, Tracy!) when she walked into her 6th grade Language Arts classroom, and long may she wave.  Others of us are more the journeyman type.  The most extreme example of that is my former AP English teacher (I was her first student ever to earn a 5 on the AP exam, BTW, if you don't mind my bragging).  She taught everything - and I do mean everything - from kindergarten to middle school science to AP English and credit recovery for near-dropouts. I don't think she ever taught Arabic, but she probably could have if given the textbook and a couple of days' head start.

I am more on the journeyman end of the spectrum.  Give me a subject I like and/or an age group I enjoy and everything's aces.  I love 8th graders because they're grown-up enough to deal with themselves, but they're still young enough to be funny and open and eager to participate.  Then they disappear into a fug of hormones and attitude for two years, sucking their teeth and rolling their eyes at the thought of having to share the universe with people as stupid and ignorant and thickheaded as - well, as everyone who isn't them, after which they re-emerge as semi-reasonable juniors and seniors and then I like teaching them again. (P.S. Parents - this process of re-evolving into human beings happens at different times for different kids, but in general, freshman and sophomore year are the worst.  Get through that, and you're almost home free.) I love teaching history because I enjoy the challenge of making it an engaging subject in a culture that doesn't value remembering what happened last week, never mind five centuries ago.  I also like teaching geography, economics, sociology, and British literature (I couldn't go back to teaching English again unless I could teach British literature to upper-level juniors).  

Circumstances being what they are, I have found myself teaching at the middle school level after a decade of high school.  I was relieved to discover that my memories of enjoying 8th grade were accurate.  I have also been forcibly reminded, on a daily basis, that 8th grade is about as young as I can go.  My teaching certificate may read grades 7 to 12, but never will I grace the halls of anything below 8th grade.  My team shares classroom space with a 7th grade team, so I know whereof I speak.  Every time I go into my room during their teaching time, one little fellow or another is gracing the room with my favorite kind of youthful anecdote, the Pointless Personal Story.

What, you may ask, is a Pointless Personal Story?  Well (I reply), a Pointless Personal Story is a specialty of the under-13 set.  Imagine you're teaching geography, say, and are trying to impart an understanding of the Scandinavian countries to your young charges: "Norway is a Scandinavian country, and -" Now, it just so happens that the word "Norway" sets off a bizarre chain reaction of associations in some little guy's head, because one of the colors of the Norwegian flag is red, and his dad happens to have a red winter coat, and the next thing you know, his hand is up in the air. Before you can even acknowledge him, he's off and running:  "This one time?  My dad and I were driving to Manchester to pick up my aunt? (Ed.: you will have to supply the sing-song rise of the voice at the end of every sentence) And this guy was following us real close on our bumper?  And there was this other guy on the side of the road? (Oh yes, and don't expect anything as clarifying as an antecedent to those pronouns, either.  Everything happened to 'some guy' who had 'this thing'.) So we stopped to see what was going on? (winding up for the big delivery) And then we went to my friend Troy's house for pizza."

"Whu-?" I hear you saying on your side of the computer screen, blinking somewhat confusedly, "What was that about?" Which is precisely the point!  There IS no point!  Don't try to find one, either, because it will only make your brain hurt.  And don't try to stop a Pointless Personal Storyteller in mid-anecdote, either, because it doesn't work.  The Pointless Personal Story is as inevitable, and as inexorable, as death and taxes.  Efforts to stanch the flow in mid-telling are roughly as effective as Michael Brown in a national disaster.  I am willing to bet you cash moneys that, should my school happen to be the target of one of those so-called "smart bombs" capable of obliterating the building without disturbing its surroundings, somewhere under the rubble a little voice would be saying, "And then?... there was this guy? ... who had this thing? ... and my mom? ..."

So how, you may be wondering, does this affect SP's choice of teaching assignments?  Well (I reply again), here's the crux of the matter: I hate Pointless Personal Stories.  I HATE them.  Hate, hate, hate them.  When I walk into my classroom and realize one of the little guys is in mid-PPS, it takes every shred of self-control I can muster not to run shrieking from the room.  The endless pauses, the constant upward inflection at the end of every sentence, the story with neither rising action nor climax nor falling action nor resolution, the complete lack of connection to anything I'm trying to accomplish in the classroom, they are all completely painful to witness.  The closest analogy I can draw is to the time when I had a tooth drilled to fill a cavity.  The feel of the drill grinding my teeth and the whine of the motor in my ear made me nearly levitate out of my seat with heebie-jeebies.  So it is with Pointless Personal Stories.  I feel like I'm enduring seven cavities being filled at once.  I just want to kick myself in the head until I'm rendered unconscious, thereby preventing me from having to respond in an even vaguely professional way.  Meanwhile, even as I'm developing an involuntary tic in the corner of my eye, my coworker is taking it all in, totally unfazed.  "Mmm-hmm... mmm-hmm.  Oh, really?  Was your dad there?  I see.  All right, as I was saying about fjords..." God bless the man, but I couldn't do it.

There's some kind of developmental switch that gets flipped between 7th and 8th grade, and the kids generally tend to outgrow the need to share quite so, um, profusely. And this, folks, is the reason why I will never teach lower than 8th grade if I can help it.  I think it's my subconscious, refusing to give up the last vestiges of my high-school-teacher self.  I know my own internal smart-alecky adolescent would emerge and say snarky things like, "Thank you, Captain Random!  I'll take it from here," and, "Do you have a point, aside from the one on the top of your head?"  Eventually I'd say those things in my out-loud voice, and then there would be unpleasantness to follow between me and various parents and administrators.  Since I like my school, and like being employed, I'd prefer that didn't happen.  And so, to make a short story long, that is why I teach 8th grade.  The End.  If you ask really nicely, next time I'll tell you about the time I went to that place? with my sister? and there was this thing. Then we went home and had jello.

In Which I Prove (Yet Again) That I Am No One's Model of Christian Charity UPDATED

Today I realized that I have some New Year's resolving to make, whether I like it or not, mostly around being a better (i.e., less judgmental, more accepting) person. I realized this at church.  [Yeah, I get the irony around the agnostic-leaning-atheist having an epiphany (ha! faith-based wordplay!) at church.  Shut up.  It's the Unitarian church, so it's not, like, religious or anything.] This bolt from the blue came to me based on two recent incidences, to wit:

Incidence #1

We went away over New Year's to a condo resort that had a pool, primarily because we knew that the pool would tire out entertain the kids even if the weather was too cold to go outside for long. Picture this:  I am in the ladies' locker room, trying to keep the wet suits away from the dry towels, prevent the dry clothes from falling onto the wet floor, and apply the dry towels and subsequently the dry clothes to the wet kids.  Just to complete the picture, I am clad solely in my panties, all the better to avoid my getting all wet in the process.  The door opens, and a woman walks into the locker room accompanied by her two kids, one girl and one - omigod - boy.  A boy who is roughly as tall as his mother's shoulder, by the way, I'm not talking about a little kid here by a long shot. And this is a boy who is now getting an eyeful of my not-very-clothed self in all its damp, flabby glory.  The mom is obviously aware of the potential - oh, okay - existing awkwardness of the situation, because she rushes them along to get in the nearest shower-cum-changing stall in double-quick time, but you know what?  I don't care.  I'm p*ssed off.  When I'm in the women's locker room, and I'm naked and my girls are naked and I'm trying to pull everything together, the last thing I want is to worry about what gender of kid is going to come waltzing through that door.  Now, of course I don't mind the little ones coming in.  To them it's all the same anyway.  But can we as a society possibly agree on some kind of sign that demarcates the point at which our sons are not welcome in the ladies' room?  To me, four years old is fine.  Five and six is acceptable.  But when we start looking at seven and eight year old boys sharing space with my naked self, I ain't cool with that.  (That's my best guess for the age of the kid I inadvertently flashed, if that makes a difference to any of you.)  There were individual bathrooms right outside the pool area that this kid could have changed in, or he could have come with his suit under his clothes and avoided half the problem for starters.  If Mom doesn't want her son going alone into the men's locker room to shower, the kid can go straight in the pool without washing down first, use the bathroom to change, and shower at home later.  

Now, I've read about this very issue on other blogs and message boards, and 99.9% of the posters and respondents have been mothers of boys whose basic outlook is that their kids' safety comes first and they will bring their school-aged sons in the ladies' rooms with them as long as they feel they need to.  I'm well aware that I don't have sons and I don't know how I would feel about this situation.  However, let me present the other side:  I have two little girls and I don't want them (OR ME) to be seen, unclothed, in spaces that are specifically intended for women to use, by strange boys who are old enough to know the difference between naked and dressed.  Perhaps this is a good litmus test:  Think about your son's best friend who's his same age. Would you want to be getting dressed somewhere and have that kid walk in on you? 

Now, moving rapidly along to...

Incidence #2

I'm at church, which for me means I am in the playroom with Celeste.  Celeste is both a) wiggly, and b) reluctant to be left with strangers (For which read, cries hysterically and uncontrollably for the entire time she's left.  As in, for HOURS), so one of us has to take her somewhere where she won't disrupt everyone else and then stay with her.  I take her to the nursery, open the door, and see the usual assortment of toddlers, preschoolers...

... and a pair of brothers, aged four 1/2 and six years old.  (Sorry, men.  I realize both these incidences involve bearers of the Y chromosome.  I swear it's just coincidence.  I love men.  Really.  I even married one.)

Now, this room is small.  It is intended for small people.  There's the low-to-the-ground table, the teeny-tiny chairs, the wee toys meant for little hands.  It's called a NURSERY, which to me implies LITTLE kids.  And smack-dab in the middle of the babies and toddlers and young preschoolers are these two boys who are tall and large for their ages and rambunctious.  From what I could see, the babysitters who run the room weren't making the boys aware of the need to be sensitive to the little kids.  For example, they created an elaborate room out of cardboard blocks for their Webkinz, on the floor, right in the middle of the toy area, so every other child was forced to go around it and usually wound up knocking several blocks over.  Then, when they did knock over the blocks, one of the boys would go rushing over to fix the wall, shrieking, "don't touch it!" in the faces of these much younger kids.  Would India do that?  Hell yeah.  But if I were there, she'd immediately be reminded of her role as the older and wiser "big girl" in a room full of little children, and I'd hope any adult responsible for the good of the group as a whole would do the same thing.  (Actually, if I were there, India wouldn't set up a play space the other kids couldn't touch in the middle of the floor to begin with, but that's another issue.)  THEN the younger boy actually physically pushed a 15 month old toddler - PUSHED him down to the floor THREE times - because the toddler had knocked over some of the blocks.

Um, WHAT?!?!

Because the two babysitters and the toddler's mother were there, I didn't do anything.  They all made disapproving "no, no, we don't do that," comments to the boy, the kind grownups make to kids when you don't have any authority over them.  What I wanted to do, but didn't, was grab the kid by the hand and make him look me in the eye.  Then, in my best old-school-teacher voice and using my coldest of cold stares, I would have told him that it is NOT acceptable for a bigger boy to push a littler boy like that EVER, and if he didn't want the little kids touching his blocks he needed to NOT put them right in the middle of the floor, and he would have two minutes to decide if he wanted to set up his blocks somewhere else or have me put them away so the little kids would have room to play.  

But I didn't.  Instead, I sat there and seethed for the rest of the service, in a very poor display of un-forgiving and not-forgetting.  Perhaps I shouldn't let it bother me, but it does.  I'm still going back and forth over whether or not to call the Sunday school director and tell her about it. Maybe my range of what I consider acceptable behavior in little kids is skewed because I work with older kids who don't do those things.  Maybe I'm less tolerant than I should be because I'm a teacher and I get to step in when I see kids misbehaving in my professional life.  Still,  I just can't stand watching kids behave poorly.  It makes my teeth hurt.  In fact, the whole situation pissed me off from the get-go, mostly because I felt it was inappropriate to have older kids in the little kids' classroom, but that is not my call and I need to let that one go.  And, yes, I do appreciate the intense irony of being in church and not feeling very charitable toward my fellow man, or boy in this case.  Perhaps I can reconcile myself to my judgmental nature in a way that will encourage me to be more accepting of my fellow human beings.  Here's what I've come up with so far for ideas:

I will be less judgmental of other people if they will be less stupid. (Hm. Seems to be missing a certain element of humility here.)

God (Buddha, Shiva, Allah - take your pick) grant me the serenity to accept the muffin-headedness I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can without using four-letter words to describe how wrong they are when they don't agree with me, and the wisdom to know the difference. (Better, but still somehow a little self-centered)

Rule #1:  I am right.

Rule #2:  When I am wrong, see rule #1. (Totally moving in the wrong direction)

Caroline, no one outside of your blog readers gives a damn about what you think.  (I think I've got it!)

***

I finally got in touch with the Sunday School director today.  We had one of those politely coded conversations where the speaker's meaning was carefully wrapped in layers of delicate language, all the better to convey unpleasant sentiments in pleasant tones.  For example:

Me:  Some things happened in the nursery on Sunday that I wasn't entirely comfortable with and I have a few concerns I'd like to talk about.  (Translation:  WTF?)

Sunday School director:  Well, we don't have a specific policy about which children are allowed in the nursery, because I have to make sure all the children feel safe and welcome in church.  (Translation: Those kids are going to be in the nursery again. Suck it up and deal.)

She was very open to listening to my concerns, and she did say several times that inappropriate behavior wasn't acceptable and would not be tolerated.  She promised to speak to the child care providers, and more importantly, to the boys' parents.  So either things will be taken care of and nothing more will happen, or I will be posting later about my follow-up call.  Stay tuned!