Some Pig

Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Polaroid

Five years ago last May, I held a squalling bundle of newborn baby in my arms and gawped at the sheer incomprehensibility of it all.  Our photos (yes, we were still kickin' it old skool those days, with photos and negatives and all that nonsense) show what looks like a well-swaddled loaf of bread with two little raisin eyes peering out from under a blue-and-pink knit cap.  Intellectually, I knew that this miniature human would someday walk and talk and go to school, but her actually doing any of those things seemed about as likely as saying that she would spontaneously talk in Sanskrit or flap her arms and fly to the moon. 

Fast-forward five years plus a few months, and I'm preparing India for her first day of kindergarten.  KINDERGARTEN!  Because the first day of school for her was also the first day of school for me, I had to deputize her father to record the momentous event.  I set the digital camera out prominently on the counter and left, issuing a cheery reminder for him to take pictures (for which read: growled a thinly-veiled threat of mayhem should he fail to do so), Mommy was going to want to see them when she got home!

As soon as Warren walked in the door that night, I snatched the case from his grasp and eagerly switched the camera to "display".  And this is what I saw:

Just fyi - both girls are in the picture because India attends a private kindergarten at their preschool.  Our town has only half day kindergarten.  Paying for a half-day of care and arranging transportation to and from school would be basically the same amount of hassle and expense as just paying for the private kindergarten.  Yeah, I'm not exactly thrilled about that, yanno? 

I clicked back and forth several times, but the only pictures I could find were these two.  "Where are the rest of them?"  I asked.

"The rest of what?" my better half innocently responded.

The rest of what?  THE REST OF WHAT??  How about the rest of the photos I was expecting??  Where was the picture of India's cubby with her name on it waiting for her?  Where were the pictures of India finding her name tag and putting her things away?  Where was the photo of India showing the before-school-care lady her backpack, lovingly assembled by her doting mother the night before?  Where were the damn PICTURES???  Holy shamoly, my friend Denise took two pictures of her daughter just standing in the door to her ROOM on the first day of school, never mind the whole rest of the morning, and we have two for a grand TOTAL???

Warren showed me his photographic efforts with the same pride I imagine Margaret Bourke-White felt looking at a career retrospective.  "See!" he said, "I got one picture of them outside, and one picture of them inside!"

Now I need to put this in some perspective for you.  At last count, this computer housed approximately three million, six hundred and seventy-two thousand pictures of CARS and CAR PARTS.  Warren seems to have taken up a side hobby of buying used cars and selling them for less than he paid for them (Long story.  Don't ask.).  As part of the sales process, he has to take pictures of every square inch of the damn thing, close up, from a distance, sideways and in soft focus.  And then he posts said pictures with a description of the car on Craigslist, which results in perfect strangers emailing MY account, because Muggins is too busy to set up his own account and he doesn't want to use his work address.  These perfect strangers always ask for additional information about the vehicle, including MORE PICTURES (usually all in lowercase letters and with frequent misspellings to boot). A typical missive runs something like this:  "is car still avalable if so pls take fotos of left front calipurs and break pades also rear quater panel and entire underbody.  plus is upholstry faded or is that a shadow?"  Since the 7,892 pictures of the rear quarter panel that are already posted CLEARLY don't do it justice, Warren then has to take another three score and ten pictures of the EXACT SAME THING and email them off to parts unknown, whereupon the loser at the other end of the cable line decides he can't be bothered to take it unless Warren will knock another $2k off the price.  Yeah.  No.

Sooooooo, while we have TWO pictures of our eldest daughter taking her first steps on the journey of lifelong learning, we have AN INFINITE NUMBER of pictures of this:

 

And this:

 

Oh, and let's not forget this:

 

I like the expression on this one:

This one usually gets me a little choked up:

 

(Oh wait... that looks exactly like the first car picture I posted.  Huh. Whaddya know.)

All I want to know is, how am I going to explain THIS twenty years from now in the therapist's office, hmmmm?

Things I Do That Drive Warren Out of His Tree

I peel the stickers off fruit and stick them on the side of the sink and then leave them there.  Over the day the sticker welds itself to the enamel sink and then it has to be scrubbed off.  I could put the sticker right into the trash, which would be the logical thing to do, but I continue to stick the stickers on the sink and Warren continues to scrub them off.

I'm lazy and I don't deal with stuff.  I will let the Netflix DVD that we've finished watching sit in the DVD player for days on end even though we have nothing else to watch.  I forget to put reusable shopping bags back in the car because it's all the way downstairs in the garage and then I wind up using a zillion plastic bags.  I will walk by the same mess, or live with something that needs fixing, for weeks because I can't be arsed to take the time to deal with it. 

I don't carry cash with me.  Ever.  If I do have cash on me, I wind up buying stupid stuff like take out coffee and gum and other stupid things I don't need just because, hey!  I have the money right here!  Warren totally can't understand that. "Why don't you just put it in your wallet and not spend it?" he asks.  Because I SPEND IT, that's why!  That means whenever we go somewhere that cash is required, I wind up having to ask him for money the way a kid asks her dad for her allowance.  

I spend way too much time on the interwebs. 

I don't notice when shit goes wrong with the car.  We'll be out on a rainy day and he will say to me, "When did you last change your windshield wipers?" and my answer is usually along the lines of, "Uhhhh...?"  Or he'll be in my car after a lapse of several months and he'll ask me if I noticed that the steering wheel is vibrating like a wind harp in a hurricane. (Answer: No, not really, is there something wrong?)

I get pissed off and yell when the girls pee their pants or spill full cups of milk.  In my defense, I deal with 95% of the spilled milk and urine situations chez Pig.

I complain about stuff I don't control and can't do anything about, like the 40 days and nights of friggin' rain we've had around here since mid-June, and did you know we had only EIGHT days of sunshine in all of JUNE???  WTF am I supposed to do with the kids when we can't go outside and can't go to the playground and - oh, sorry.

Re: The laziness mentioned above - I am totally lazy about what the girls eat.  A lot of their dinners consist of things I can heat up, fry up, or toast up in 25 minutes or less. I'd rather make them some kind of cheese-and-starch combo that I know they'll eat than make a "real" dinner that India and Celeste will pick at only reluctantly.  I feed them peas and baby carrots all the time because peas are easy to heat up and baby carrots come ready to eat. I don't make them try new vegetables because I don't want to listen to them bitch about it, yanno?

I cannot walk past a flat surface without piling crap on it.  I swear, even if I have nothing in my hands as I walk past the kitchen counter, sh*t spontaneously generates and jumps onto the counter!  Every day I come home from work and dump all the day's bumpf on the counter, and every night Warren comes home and asks, "Can we try to keep this counter clean?"  It's a little tradition of ours.  Stacking stuff on a flat surface also encompasses putting folded laundry on top of the girls' dressers instead of putting the laundry in the dresser drawers.

I love trashy reality TV.  I would rather watch Real Housewives of Anywhere than most PBS Frontline shows (and I like Frontline, too!).  Warren only got to watch the second half of each episode of We Shall Remain because I insisted on watching Dancing With The Stars on the good TV. 

I've decided that the secret to a good marriage isn't the stuff you like about each other; it's the stuff that you hate.  If you can look at the things that drive you absolutely batshit crazy about the inconsiderate jerk you married and still feel like you got a decent bargain, that says far more than any lovey-dovey hearts-and-flowers romantic nonsense.  Let's face it, living with a fellow human being 24/7, there's going to be lots of things to dislike.  Years ago I lived with a guy who was a really decent human being, but there were things about him I just couldn't stand and I wound up hating being with him.  If the relationship had been stronger and based more in reality than on our mutual illusions of each other, those issues could have been surmountable.  At the ripe old age of 41, I've come to realize that I'm probably not going to change all that much.  Years from now, I probably will still be lazy, prone to leaving stickers on the sink, and impatient about ridiculous things.  On the other hand, my bad habits don't include lying, gambling, stripping under a pseudonym, spending us into debt, or manufacturing crank in the basement - all of which goes back to my "good bargain" theory.  Personally, I got the much better end of the deal when I married Warren, a fact that I refuse to tell him because I don't want that going to his head (although he does insist on asking me why I didn't pay off my student loans with the signing bonus from my incredibly lucrative first teaching job).  We'll see how long it takes him to realize I said this, because he reads my blog only very infrequently (which miffs me no end, but I deal - see what I mean?).

If You Fail to Plan, You Plan to Fail

We are at my parents' house for the weekend, and their front yard is graced with a number of large lilac bushes that are in the peak of flower.  Admiring the bouquet my girls picked, I told my folks, "Don't tell Warren this, but if he pops off at an inconveniently early age or runs off with some hussy, I'm getting married during lilac season so I can carry lilacs."  My father unsuccessfully tried to stifle a snort of surprise.  "Not that I'm planning it or anything," I hastened to assure him.

"Yeah, you wouldn't want to do that," he responded.

"You should always have a plan B," I said.

"Or C or D," my mother answered.

"You always have to have a contingency plan," Warren hollered from the next room.

"Maybe I should start working on the farm team." I mused.

"Naah.  You don't want a quarterback controversy," he countered.

"You're right!" I exclaimed, "I didn't even think of that!"

I'm so glad I married someone who has my best interests at heart!

What Happens In Vegas, And So Forth and So On

So guess what???  Warren's left to go to a conference!  In Las Vegas!!!  Aaaannnd - drum roll, please - this time, the conference actually takes place during my vacation week!

There's just one eensy, weensy little problem.  I'm not going.  There's not enough money in the exchequer for me and the little ones to go, and there are no relatives nearby who can take two small children for four days and not need hospitalization afterward for exhaustion.  (No, Celeste still doesn't nap, why do you ask?) Also, economic realities being what they are, and so forth and so on, blah blah blah yada yada, now is not the time to go tearing through our disposable income like green corn through the new maid.  So we continue the trend of Warren goes to fun places while my ass stays at home.  (BTW, you may have noticed that sometimes I use euphemisms like "hiney" and sometimes I use other characters like @ss and sometimes I just say the word itself.  I am not sure why I do this, other than there are days when I am all teachered up and feel guilty for sinking to the level of using such coarse language, and besides, what if a member of the School Committee finds this blog? and other times I just don't give a rat's @ss.  But I digress.)

Anyway, Warren was fine with the idea of making this a family vacay, but he did point out that he is going there for a conference and would be occupied for approximately 17 hours out of every 24.  It seemed a little crazy for us to spend upwards of a grand for me to single-mom it when I can do that here for the cost of internet access and take-out pizza.  Adding to the complicating factors, Las Vegas has resolutely turned its back on its prior campaign to be a "family destination," other than actively encouraging the kinds of pursuits that wind up in making a family.  The hotel where Warren is staying does have a pool, but judging from the write-up, the management would look askance at a dumpy middle-aged woman in a skirted swimsuit and her two wriggly offspring yelling, "look at me, Mommy," a hundred million times clogging up the shallow end.  On the other hand, the hotel has bunnies, and what could be more child-centered than cute li'l fuzzy bunnies?  I asked a coworker who is a big Vegas aficionado if I could take the kids and have enough for them to do, and he mentioned walking around some kind of mega-luxury shopping area (this just goes to show you that people with small children should not ask the childless what to do with said children). Long story short (too late!), my efforts to unearth enough family-centric activities to keep the three of us occupied while Daddy talks about PLM/BOM whatever whatever came acropper and so I am home.  By myself.  With these people (View this photo). For seventy-two hours, minus whatever time I can convince my mother's helper to come over.

I was bitching and moaning voicing my disappointment at this turn of events at day care drop-off last week when the handsome young father in the business suit dropping off his toddler overheard me.  "Vegas isn't for wives," he retorted immediately, then looked completely taken aback by the fact that he'd admitted that in his out-loud voice. Sadly, I have to say that I think he's right. Warren better bring me a damn good consolation prize to make up for this, too.

Letter From A Broad, The Defense Rests Edition

Dear Friends and Family Members, most of whom haven't seen us in ages and several of whom have never met us before EVER,

I realize that we are slated for some of the warmest weather yet this year for this weekend.  I also am aware that my offspring have never met most of the extended family members they're going to meet this weekend at my family reunion.  And I am equally aware that you all are going to be looking at how my daughters are outfitted and passing judgment on them AND me based on the cuteness, coordination, and appropriateness of their outfits to the weather.  So I just want you to know, it was Mr. Geniushead's idea to squash his spare car into the little, teeny, tiny amount of space left over in the garage, which not-so-coincidentally happens to be located right in front of the storage closet that contains all the bins of summer clothes.  So if my girls look like they're clothed in odds and ends of things I found by digging through their winter clothing and looking for stuff I missed in the end-of-summer inventory?  It's because they are.  I preferred that to forcing them to wear winter clothes and having them pass out from heatstroke.

Signed,
Some Pig

PS Please try to overlook the fact that India looks like she's bursting out of her clothes, a la the Incredible Hulk in mid-transformation.  She's had a growth spurt recently and all the size 5 hand-me-downs are waiting for me - you guessed it - in the storage closet.  Fortunately for me, Celeste is a peanut and is still wearing the same size she took last summer.

As I Was Going to Saint Ives

This week definitely ended on a bad note.  First the curriculum stuff I ranted about earlier transpired, and then I found out something REALLY demoralizing:

I am low wife on the totem pole.

The back story:  Our school breaks the students up into teams, so that a group of 120-ish students will have the same math, social studies, English and science teachers.  It just so happens on our team that the gender division is three women and one man.  Our male co-worker was feeling seriously under the weather one day and was trying to gut it out for the day, against the express advice of the three female teachers.  The school nurse happened to stop by to fill us in on a student's medical needs when we were all in our team room, and we asked her to prevail upon him to go home.  She then proceeded to do so by telling him how team members have to look out for each other, how school is home away from home, and so forth and so on.  To emphasize the message of solidarity, she concluded her soliloquy with, "This is your family!  You have three wives!"  The statement struck a vibe far more Old-Testament-slash-polygamist-compound-in-Utah than it did the Sister Sledge solidarity the nurse was striving to hit.  It caused us all to give each other the, "my, isn't this uncomfortable?" look, particularly since our relationship is far more fraternal than spousal, if by "fraternal" you mean, "making fun of each other mercilessly at every opportunity."  So ever since then, we female teachers have been dubbed wives 2, 3, and 4. 

On Friday the joke got revived, and out of curiosity I asked where I stood.  Guess which wife *I* am?  I'm fourth!  Last and least on the list!  Wife #3 wondered aloud who got to be wife #1, which earned the answer, "uuuuh... my WIFE," and apparently the legal spouse's status as Wife #1 is supreme and inviolate.  Hey, I'm down with that.  I'm already Wife #1 in my own crib, I don't need to hog the spotlight in every venue.  But FOURTH???  Out of four?  Dude, that's harsh.  I asked Male Coworker if this was based on seniority, since I am the newest member of the team, and he said NO.  Our status is always in flux.  So it's not even like I can blame my relative newcomer status!  Fourth!  Do you know which chores Wife #4 gets to do?  The sucky chores, that's what!  I'm sure everything stinky, inconvenient, grubby, time-consuming and smelly will get passed down the line to yours truly.  And you can imagine what kind of "marital duties" the FOURTH wife gets.  All the unfulfilling ones, at least from my end!  Look, I'm the younger sibling, I know how these things work.  I spent my formative years having to play with the Barbie the dog chewed that one time, or having to be the baby - or worse yet the daddy - every time we played house, or having to share the ice cream with my mom when my sister got a whole bowl to herself.  Yeah, no way am I settling for fourth wife.  I've got to work my way up the power rankings to at least third, or preferably second.  I mean, this is socially awkward!  As Warren said to him, "It's a little weird when my first wife is your fourth wife.  What relation does that make us?" 

I already know Male Coworker likes banana cream pie, and Wife #1 suggested a box of Oreos and a half-gallon of milk.  If the way to this guy's heart is through his stomach, then I'm going Betty friggin' Crocker on his ass. 

PS If you ever need to keep a crowd of 13-year-olds entertained, recite the "As I was going to St. Ives" nursery rhyme to them and challenge them to figure it out.  I had one class counting fingers, scribbling on scrap paper and punching calculators for half an hour, no exaggeration.  They were SO mad when I finally told them the answer - totally worth it on that basis alone.

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!

Last of the Red-Hot Lovers

Warren and I are the last of the diehard romantics.

As in, if you made a list of all the diehard romantics in the world, our names would be last.

We forgot our anniversary.  AGAIN.  As in, we've had seven of them, and we've managed to remember the date on the actual date about, um, once.  Usually what happens is that, days or weeks later, I'm thinking of something totally unrelated, and then - all of sudden! - it occurs to me that, hey, five or twelve or eighteen days ago, holy crap, we got married.  And are still married!  To each other!  Hot damn.  Then I rush to Warren's side, and I say, "Guess what?"

"What?"

"Guess what happened about (five, twelve, eighteen) days ago?"

"It was Tuesday?"

"No.  Guess again.  (in singsong voice guaranteed to be super-annoying) It was something imporrrrr-taaaant!"

(Deep sigh) "Caroline, I really don't know what you want from me here -"

"It was our anniversary!"

"Oh! (brief pause) Well, happy anniversary, dear!  (another pause) Did I get you a nice present?"

"No.  But I didn't get you one, either."

If that doesn't prove that we're a match made in heaven, what does? 

I like to remind Warren how very, very lucky he is that he married a wife as uninvested in Significant Days as I am.  Valentine's Day?  A card is nice.  Who wants to go out to dinner with eight thousand other people all trying to have a romantic time?  Plus I have work tomorrow.  Mothers' Day?  As the kids get older, I fully expect heartfelt handmade offerings consisting of pipecleaners and tissue paper inartfully held together with half a bottle of glue.  That is what Mothers' Day is for.  Until then, letting me sleep in is more than enough, because, again, being in the midst of masses of people stampeding to the restaurants is not fun.  My birthday?  The big numbers should be recognized (and let me just say here that my family did not cover themselves with glory on my 40th).  Otherwise, birthdays are when we can go out to dinner, late August not being rife with dining-out occasions.  And, as it so happens, my birthday is close enough to our anniversary that we can extend a birthday dinner out into a birthday-and-anniversary dinner out.  So a little issue like forgetting the actual date?  Pfft.  That ain't no thang.  Plus I derive extraordinary pleasure from telling my male friends who are in the doghouse for their forgetful ways that I don't care about Significant Days and watching them eat their hearts out.  Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go buy myself some birthday shoes, so I can tell Warren he got me a gift this year.

It's A Hole In One! Or Something.

Guess what, SP fans??  I've got some great news (for me, that is)! 

As further proof that I did far better in the marital sweepstakes than I strictly deserve, my long-suffering better half just got word that he's been invited to be a presenter at a conference this October!  And I get to go!

But wait, it gets better!  Because he's in the for-profit world, his conferences are held in attractive places in season.  Unlike education or social services, both of which I have experienced, the for-profit world doesn't have to watch every farthing and count every sou.  When you suck off the public teat, you have to take what you can get, which means you get to attend conferences in all kinds of visitor-friendly locales -- off season, that is.  Such as the time my friend Joanne was fortunate enough to attend a conference in Arizona - in June.  Or the annual NEA convention in July - in New Orleans.  There was one particularly memorable week earlier in our marriage when Warren got to attend a conference in FRANCE and I got to attend a training at the HOWARD JOHNSON'S off Exit 8.  That would represent the apogee of going from the sublime to the ridiculous, if it weren't for the experience we had last week, wherein Warren flew off to present at a conference in Toulouse, France, and I spent the week attending an educational leadership training in...

...wait for it...

the basement of the old high school here in town.  Nothing says "we value what you do" like convening in a room with exposed piping and stained ceiling tiles!

And just when you think it can't possibly get any better, my friends, it does!  Because this conference, about which I am already excited even though it is four months away, takes place at...

... can you stand the suspense? ...

THE WORLD GOLF HALL OF FAME!!!

I am breathless with anticipation!

At this point, you may be scratching your head in bewilderment.  "Wait," I hear you thinking to yourself, "I cannot recall Caroline, either in word or deed, expressing the slightest interest in golf, either as a participant or as a spectator.  In fact, given her proclivity for sitting on her ass and writing blog posts, I cannot imagine her engaging in an activity that requires devoting several hours of her already scant free time to standing around in loud attire, clapping softly or waiting her turn to swing a narrow club at a ball that is so small as to be almost statistically impossible to hit."

And you, my friends, would be one thousand percent correct.  I think golf is the second-most boring pursuit in the world, the first being contract bridge.  Before you pooh-pooh my opinion as being one uninformed by any experience with golf, let me correct that assumption.  I have played golf, multiple times, sort of.  I spent several months in the springs of 1981 and 1982 participating in an elective golf unit in Phys Ed, wherein my friend Elaine and I hit our bucket of balls as rapidly as we could so we could stand around talking whilst the kid in my class who eventually went on to be a golf pro spent ages practicing his shots and conferring with the PE teacher at great length about "hooks" and "slices" and whatnot.

My second experience with a good walk spoiled came when I worked for the Fraser, Colorado, recreation department for the summer.  As one of the perks of the job, we got a free pass to the town golf course.  Lest the idea of a public course bring to mind dusty fairways and weed-choked water hazards, the town links happened to be the one and only Pole Creek Golf Course, which, if you follow such things, is supposed to be a big fat hairy deal.  Considering I went to the mountains of Colorado to experience the favorable male-to-female ratio (favorable for me, that is), I could not have cared less about the relative merits of the golf course if I tried.  The free season's pass to the course was as nothing to me, a fact that I enjoyed telling people who actually paid actual money to go do something as stupid as whacking a little ball around God's green acres so I could watch them writhe in agony as they calculated how much money they were spending on something I was rejecting for free.

As it turns out, it is a good thing I find golf kinda stupid, because apparently I have absolutely no aptitude for it.  During my orientation at Fraser Rec, we had a teambuilding night wherein we all adjourned to Pole Creek for a round of golf. It is truly a spectacular place, ringed by snow-capped fourteeners and nestled in the high alpine meadows.  (For now, we'll gloss over how environmentally irresponsible it is to maintain a golf course in what is, after all, the high desert.  Because it's a great use of water, which is an increasingly scarce commodity and one that is essential for human existence, to maintain a golf course - almost as good an idea as bottling water for sale to people who have perfectly fine tap water to drink.  But that is a rant for another day.) 

We split up into guys-versus-girls and headed out to the links for an evening of eagles, or bogeys, or whatever it is you're supposed to be shooting for. 

Well.

Let's just say that golf is not something one "picks up" on the fly, as it were.  My extensive Phys Ed experience notwithstanding, I really, really sucked at golf.  Oh, sure, the ball-washing thingie was fun to use, but the actual golfing?  Not so much.  After the first seven at-bats (or whatever it is you call it) failed to move the ball further than two feet away from the whatsit - tee? - we instituted the one-hit, one-throw rule, wherein one picked up the ball wherever it had landed upon being hit with the club, and then threw it as far as one could in an attempt to shorten the interminable time it was taking to play one friggin' hole.  So incompetent were we as a group that the real golfers on the course didn't even bother trying to play through.  "I'll go play the back nine," huffed one red-faced middle-aged specimen in plaid pants, driving off in a snit and a puff of dust.  After playing two holes in two hours, we (thankfully) gave it up in favor of rum and cokes in the clubhouse.  Now I understand the appeal of that pursuit.  My score for two holes was, if memory serves, a 28 - fourteen hits, fourteen throws.  Beat that, Michelle Wie!

So, given my complete lack of a) interest and b) aptitude for the gentleman's pursuit, why, then, am I so excited to go to the home of the World Golf Hall of Fame?  It's simple, people!  Golfers, as a group, tend to be among the better-heeled element of society.  They also are not known for their love of roughing it (rough!  golf pun!).  Where you find golfers, you are going to find nice amenities, like restaurants!  spas!  pools with poolside bar service!  Shoot, I'll dress in plaids AND stripes if it means I can get me some poolside daquiris, yo.  Mmmmm... daquiris.  Don't worry, I'll think of y'all when I'm sipping a cool one after my massage.  'Cause I'm generous like that!

Three Rants in One Week? That's Got To Be Some Sort of Record.

Scratch a Teacher, Find a Closet Reactionary

I read this story about mothers of newborns in Alabama being arrested for having drugs in their system.  I realize that as a card-carrying lover of the US Constitution, I am supposed to be concerned and alarmed about the potential violation of their civil liberties.  As a card-carrying proponent of the right to choice, I'm also supposed to be leery of the drive to give fetuses (fetii?) the same rights as infants, which is the first step toward subjugating the mothers' rights to those of their unborn children.  Yeah, yeah, I know we have a tendency to blame the mothers in these situations when the fathers are long gone, or nonfunctional, or doing the exact same and worse.  We're human.  Mistakes are made. But you know what?  As someone who has to deal with these kids in a professional capacity fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years down the road, I say, GOOD.  I've worked in the classroom a long time now - over a decade - and the one truth that transcends any individual classroom, school, district, or state is that what happens in the home far overwhelms the influence of what happens in the classroom.  As far as I'm concerned, you are free to take drugs, drink yourself silly, and live as irresponsibly as you like UNTIL you bring another person into this world.  Then, I'm sorry, but your ticket to ride has just been cancelled (and yes, the babydaddies should be held to the same standard, but right now they aren't, and that's  a reality that will change only with a lot of time and effort).  I'm a huge fan of doing the greatest good for the greatest number, and if it takes some arrests to dissuade other pregnant women from doing things that permanently render their children far behind the eight-ball neurologically, socially, and academically, well, I'll live with that.

Then I read this story and I felt like a weazened old Grinch.

He must think I AM as dumb as I look...

Check out the long con my so-called "better half" tried to pull this morning:

We alternate early-morning child tending duties on the weekend.  My philosophy is, we each get one morning to sleep in late, ignore the kiddies, monopolize the NY Times and generally pretend we're not married and encumbered by responsibilities and babies.  And if one chooses to pursue activities that require getting up early on one's designated sleep-in day, well, that's tough cookies, Buster.  The usual pattern is that I sleep in on Saturdays and Warren gets Sundays.  However, Warren also likes to go to yoga class on Saturday morning.

"I have an idea," he said at 5:45 this morning, in his best I'm-just-thinking-of-you voice.  "You can sleep in until 8, and then I'll go to yoga."  When I expressed doubt (as in, "HELL, NO,") he was surprised.  "But you get to sleep in!  Until eight o'clock!" he countered. 

Let's just look at this proposition a little more closely:  Say he takes Saturday as his early day AND goes to yoga.  That means the latest I can sleep in is 8 a.m., and, hello?  That barely counts as sleeping in!  I'm just getting started on my third or fourth round of REM sleep at that point!  You're talking to someone who was capable of sleeping til 9, 10, 11 a.m. easily before the ankle biters came along, and you think 8 a.m. counts as late????  I think NOT.  Add to that the fact that should I agree to this travesty and have to stumble out of bed at that ree-donculously early hour, I am then IMMEDIATELY confronted with being on duty for the remainder of the morning whilst Himself toddles merrily along to his own personally enriching and fulfilling pursuits.  Warren then does some grocery shopping after yoga, thus handily extending his family-free time by another hour.  AND, since I have technically already had my morning to myself, Warren THEN gets ANOTHER morning to himself to sleep in late, ignore the kiddies, and so forth and so on.

To summarize:

The Caroline Plan - There are two weekend mornings in play. I get one full morning.  Warren gets one full morning. 

The Warren Plan - There are two weekend mornings in play.  I get about one-third of a morning.  Warren gets two-thirds of one morning and all of another morning.

You know what?  I wouldn't get so worked up about this, except that Warren tries to pull this shit all the time.  Are you reading this, dear?  Here's the bottom line:  YOGA COMES OUT OF YOUR PERSONAL TIME. YOUR.  PERSONAL.  TIME.  IF YOU CHOOSE YOGA OVER SLEEP, THAT'S YOUR ISSUE, DEAR.  NOW GET YOUR MITTS OFF MY MORNINGS.