A humble blog is born

More Daisy dancing

2011-04-04T11:21:00.001-07:00

Starry Plough, Berkeley, 4/3/11--the Gold Diggers

Letter to the Crazy Lady

2010-11-22T20:28:00.000-08:00

At one of the middle schools I've been assigned to work at as a counselor, I was told to work in Room 40--the speech therapist's office. I work there on the day she isn't at school. It is the only room the school has available for me, they have said, and so I have no choice. Because she is A Crazy Lady, I am super careful not to move or touch anything, or when I have to, I put it back exactly the way I found it. I tiptoe around her damned room, but this has not stopped her from sending me Crazy Emails containing accusations such as (among other things) that I have touched her pencil sharpener, allowed students to sharpen their pencils in her sharpener (Eegads!), and used her computer (which is password-locked). She also complains that the thousands of chairs in her room have not been arranged in the exact same way she left them, which includes knowing which exact chairs go where (there are at least three different kinds of chairs and the Crazy Lady has precise ideas about which go where). Here is the response I sent her today, being very fed up.

Hi _________,

I am sorry about any trouble I have caused you. I am truly doing my best. I have never touched the computers or electric pencil sharpeners, and neither have the students. I have never moved or touched the desk.

You are right that I moved the chairs, because I have an eight-student group that comes in and needs to sit around the table. So I put the chairs around the table in the middle of the room. After the students leave, I tried to return the chairs, but because I had not made an exact count of how many chairs were originally around the table, it is possible I was off by one or two chairs. In other words, it's possible that one or two chairs were still around the table in the middle of the room, as opposed to around the table pushed against the right-hand wall.

I will do my best to ensure that the room remains in its original arrangement, but I think it is fair to say that there may be some small sign that I was there (such as one extra chair around the table in the middle of the room). Unless I take a photograph when I walk in, there may be some small discrepancy. Would you like me to bring a camera to work? I would rather not, because it gives me an extra thing to remember and I am lugging so many things with me already, but I will if you would like. Otherwise, these small signs of my presence will probably continue, and I do not want to be in a conflict with you.

The only other possibility is that the school finds another place for me to be, and they have already told me this is not possible. And the final possibility is that we can discontinue my presence at the school, which of course is the most extreme scenario and I would rather we don't come to that--but it is a possibility.

Please let me know what I can do, and again, I apologize for any inconvenience.

Facebook defriend-estation

2009-04-17T18:03:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I got Facebook de-friended by a radical right-wing Republican. I hadn't written anything particularly political on Facebook--just mildly so-- but then a friend of mine wrote in with some stronger opinions, with which I agreed. Then my radical right-wing "friend" (he was a former neighbor of mine) wrote in yelling belligerently in all caps and telling my other (real) friend to move to Cuba. Oh dear, I thought. I don't want it to look like I won't tolerate difference of opinion on my Facebook page (I will, really), but I think I have to de-friend him now because he is being rude and below the belt and going too far. I always hate having to do something that will potentially offend someone, so it was with trembling fingers that I scrolled down my Friends page, looking for his name so I could defriend him. How relieved I was to discover that he had already defriended me! Relieved and a little bit... proud.

The semester is over

2008-12-17T14:48:00.000-08:00

A lot of grading awaits, but classes are over. Final assignments will be turned in today. It's strange to think that this may--possibly--be my second to last college composition class. I certainly had some challenges and hard times this semester, but in general, I am leaving with a warmer and fuzzier feeling than usual. I know you could say it's because I realize this period of my life is ending, and maybe that's true. But I've also been giving a lot of thought to how I got through the semester, particularly with regard to some students I found challenging from day one. Even from the first day of class, they were talking and horsing around and wise-assing a bit, and I remember a feeling of dread as I walked away that day: oh no, this semester is going to be a disaster. I remember telling my husband that when I got home.

But it wasn't a disaster, not at all, and I managed to handle what I saw as a potential discipline problem in a way that never exploded. Of the four students I thought could be a big problem, two are coming back for my class next semester (with my whole-hearted approval) and one just sent me a nice note over email. I keep thinking how badly I would have handled the situation as a rookie teacher, and how proud I am that I managed to let these students know I needed them to behave differently without alienating them or making them turn against me and the class. I stayed in control, I didn't let them hijack the class or ruin it for the other students, but I also didn't ever yell, threaten, bully, try to have them removed, or even make them feel like I didn't want them there (I think). They remained in the class in good standing. I end the semester with a feeling of great fondness for my whole class, for these students as much as the others. I am so proud that I have it within me to handle this sort of thing now. It makes me think that, ironically, I am more suited and qualified to be a teacher than I ever was before in my life, right at the pivotal moment that I may be walking away from it.

Not that I'm thinking I don't want the change. I think I am just a little puzzled.

Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey

2008-10-16T14:26:00.000-07:00

1) In my recent Word Twist game with Melissa, we both found the Big Word. She found SISTER, and I found RESIST. Neither of us found the other one's word. Think about that for awhile.

2) Two nights ago I was telling my mom and Mark about a teacher-student conference I overheard some time back in which I thought the teacher wasn't giving the most useful critique. He was zooming in on a lot of grammar errors, but at the same time saying there were larger, "global" problems with the paper while not giving much guidance as to how to address them. (It's hard; I know.)

Suddenly my mom piped in, "That is exactly like this time when I was a girl and was fired from my job at the library because my boss thought my friend was wearing a clown suit! Really, though, my boss was just anti-Semitic."

But... IS it like that? In any way? This should really make you think. Deeply.

I think we worked something out

2008-10-08T11:21:00.001-07:00

We have talked and come up with some ideas for getting along better. I think it's okay now. My feelings are all bruised, though. Sensitive me.

Ugh

2008-10-07T14:20:00.001-07:00

Well, it looks like I might be taking a break from my family of origin for awhile... my mother is here and things are bad and I don't think I can continue this arrangement anymore (where she comes once a week and we pay her from our child care stipend USF gives us). The comments she made are definitely out of line; she told me she "doesn't understand why people in their thirties are so tired all the time" (that would be Mark and I) and that she feels as if all the hard work she does for us just "isn't paying off"--that she "isn't seeing any progress." Like we are some kind of charity she's invested her money in, but now she needs to reconsider her investment, given how little progress we've made! These criticisms were also embedded in other criticisms of me and the messiness of my house (which also plagues me, but I seem to have a hard time keeping up with it).

All these remarks were made pretty much within ten minutes of walking in the door. She arrived after having been away a week, and during that week all three of us have been sick. Nevertheless, we have still both gone to our jobs, graded papers, prepared classes, taken care of Daisy, cooked meals, done loads of laundry, and averaged 5 or 6 hours of sleep a night. But she can't understand why people in their 30s would be so tired.

I am starting to think that part of the problem (though it doesn't entirely explain the nastiness and ugliness of her remarks) is that we have this arrangment where we pay her. Hence, her role is truly unclear. Is she somehow our employee, so that when she's here we can expect her to take care of Daisy while we do other things? (Not things for pleasure, mind you-- I mean, catch up on laundry and dishes, run errands, and work on my schoolwork.) Or is she here more in the capacity of grandmother, someone who enjoys time with her grandchild and wants to be doing this, rather than doing it for earnings? It is all somewhat blurred and confusing. I think somehow that this confusion of roles might be making her nastiness more possible.

Hmmmm

2008-08-13T22:21:00.000-07:00

I got this quiz from lumenatrix's site. It is here:
http://mindmedia.com/braintest.html
The results make sense to me--kind of. I am not surprised that I would be a lot more auditory than visual, and a lot more left brain than right. However, I guess that also confuses me a little. I am very VERBAL (Scramble, anyone? Pleeeease?), and rather logical, and I like for things to make sense. My high school English teacher used to call me "the voice of reason." But I am certainly not extremely efficient, or logical to the extreme. I have very strong emotions. I am not very structured or well-organized, either. I agree that I am a detail-oriented person and it's probably true that I am understated in thinking of my own abilities (I hope). The thing about tight schedules and enviable organizational skills making me a great team asset-- definitely NOT true. I am not sure how the visual/auditory thing was measured but I would say in a heartbeat that I am pretty unobservant visually and terribly bad at mechanical/spatial relations, and that (on the other hand) music is the most important art form to me (surprise surprise) and that I can't live without it.

Can it be true that I am both reasonable and extremely emotional? Both those things seem true to me, of me. Well, this gives me a chance to spout one of my maxims, which is that in my experience, the most rational people are usually the ones who are the most in touch with their emotions, rather than the ones who believe they are acting purely logically and rationally and without the influence of emotion. I secretly (now, not so secretly) think those people are often the most irrational of all.

Your Brain Usage Profile:
Auditory : 62%
Visual : 37%
Left : 77%
Right : 22%

Sarah, your results indicate a strong left-hemisphere dominance with a mild preference for auditory processing. This blend would suggest that you are an extremely efficient person, logical perhaps to an extreme. You tend to structure your life and learning in very precise ways.
You benefit from experience, seek the rational in situations and feel most comfortable with routine.
You are a detail person. You see each piece of a puzzle or situation with equal clarity and value, and thrive on your ability to fit each piece into a unifying structure.
Your learning style tends toward the auditory, which suggests that you process inputs sequentially and classify each before moving on to the next. You do, however, possess sufficient visualization skills and interest to supplement the auditory tendency and render you more active than a person who is purely auditory.
In all likelihood you will be somewhat reserved in appreciating your own talents and understate your abilities even to yourself. You will organize your time and set schedules for yourself and, in that sense, lose sight of spontaneity and other needs - both of yourself and others. Your enviable organization, structure, and efficiency make you a valuable asset to a team effort.

le top playwear

2008-07-21T16:33:00.000-07:00

le top playwear

The last few days, part 2

2008-07-13T22:14:00.001-07:00

After my first all-day class in psychotherapy as a career option, I took BART from downtown SF to the Lake Merritt station and walked to the Oakland Museum to see Mark's KISS band in the Best of the East Bay celebration. Now I realize this sounds like nothing to those more directionally gifted among you, but I was worried about: getting on the wrong BART train; getting off at the wrong stop; and not being able to find the Oakland Museum. But none of it came true. It was one of the most competent days I've had of taking public transportation around the Bay area, given I also bussed it to the class downtown. I felt environmentally responsible and directionally sophisticated.

Mark and I had the happy experience of getting to hang out for a little while in the outdoor backstage area with Krist Novoselic, the bass player from Nirvana-- now playing bass with the band Flipper, who were the headliners at the East Bay party. He was such a kind, intelligent man, not to mention hilarious. One of the coolest parts of this experience was that rather than us tiptoeing up to him as someone whose work we admired, he approached us in an open, very friendly way to praise Destroyer's performance and tell them how well he'd thought it had gone. Knowing us, even if we'd been able to figure out who he was, we would not have gone over to fawn and swoon, I'm sure (at least I wouldn't have) because of fear of seeming obnoxious. It was very cool that he was so inviting and friendly and wanting to chat. Mark did have an opportunity to mention that it was an honor to meet him, and he was completely gracious in response. We actually had an extended chat with him, so I have to upgrade this from a "meet" or an "encounter" to a "hang out," if I may be so bold.

He had been very amused by the fact that during soundcheck, Mark's band happened to pick "Christine Sixteen" to play, at the same time as a group of prepubescent girls were doing all these acrobatic maneuvers on the lawn right in front of them. Now, don't think he had a dirty mind: the lyrics to "Christine Sixteen" are disgusting and it was impossible to watch the young girls flouncing around without being totally amazed at Destroyer's either A)chutzpah or B)shocking obliviousness. I was thinking the same thing and wondering whose idea it was. Krist Novoselic was apparently a big KISS fan when he was a boy and when we talked with him backstage he enjoyed discussing his favorite humorously filthy lyrics by KISS and also AC/DC. But we also discussed our upcoming hopes for the election of Barack Obama and the scary yet not hopeless conditions of things in our world today, and so don't think the whole conversation was lewd and lascivious.

I enjoyed being out again at night, mostly, I think. Some of the event staff gave me the job of turning women away from the ladies' room while Mark's band changed into costume in there, and that was a bit stressful for me. You can imagine how badly the ladies want to get into the ladies' room at a concert, and while I was saying, "Sorry, a KISS band is changing in there," they had a really hard time accepting their rejection gracefully. One lady demanded to know why the KISS band wasn't changing in the men's room, and my answer--that the mirrors weren't big enough--made her sorely disgruntled. Then Jonathan told me I ought to be saying, "The toilets are broken," instead of making every single woman at the concert angry at the KISS band, and that did seem to be a more effective strategy, despite it being a lie, which makes me uncomfortable in general(being a terrible liar).

I was amused by hearing one of the ladies I had turned away telling her peers in a whisper, when Destroyer took the stage: "You wouldn't believe it, but they're all actually women."

I always feel a little nervous before one of Mark's performances, anyway, and there were some things that went wrong that set the band themselves on edge-- such as Jonathan's last minute wig panic (no wig--a very serious problem when you're supposed to be Paul Stanley). Jonathan ended up having to wear Mike's wig (the drummer), so he was wigless as Peter Criss. Then, it seemed like there were a few technical difficulties at the show, such as Stone's having trouble lighting his fireball and Mark's smoke bombs falling off the gum on his guitar. And because they started late, searching for Jonathan's wig, they were made to stop their set before they got to play "Rock and Roll All Night." BUT, despite these problems, the show went really well and it was fun for me to observe, from the audience, how thoroughly the band won the crowd over, so that by the end they were screaming for one more song and audibly disappointed when it didn't happen. This band is just so much FUN, truly (not just because I'm biased).

There were a few minutes when I felt tired, and old, and not up to being a band wife anymore. But what a day I had! I was out all day at my class, from 10:30 to 5:30, then I went straight to Mark's show and didn't get home till after Daisy was in bed. (And did I mention that I hung out with Krist Novoselic backstage? Eh? EHHH?) This must be a first, I think, since Daisy's birth. I missed her, but it was exhilarating to have had such a day.

How strange to think that only a few short years ago, pre-Daisy, I used to stay out all night on a regular basis, sometimes till 5 AM. Things sure do change. Huh.

Some exciting days, part I

2008-07-13T14:40:00.000-07:00

I am feeling more upbeat about my future than I have in years, and this makes me a little apprehensive to write about it. I worry that trying to pin down exactly why I am more hopeful will fix the feeling down in mundane language and kill it, somehow. Nevertheless, I really do feel like saying something about the last couple days. I am two days into my three-day class on psychotherapy as a career option, and even though the class has been a flawed one from my perspective, I just feel re-energized, somehow, by the experience of being back in there in the flow and exchange of ideas, and re-awakened by the fear and anticipation of possibly going back to school and starting a new career. All my worst fears came true: we DID have to hold hands, and we chanted sayings at each other, and drew with our left hands, and meditated, and stood in a circle making spontaneous sounds and movements. Our teacher told us she has clients try to remember their own births. On the theory that we might not have been welcomed properly into the world, hence our psychological problems, we all held hands and welcomed each other. It was kind of nice, or it would have been, if I weren't so lame and always using irony to distance myself from heartfelt emotions. I can see that there's a big following for this kind of "right brain" activating exercise, and I honestly don't mean to denigrate it, but it's just not me. I have to believe there is room in the psychotherapy world for me and my more "left brain" ways--though I also think I can learn and improve my spectrum of responses by opening up to some of these new ways.

Despite the activities that just didn't fit me, I feel, overall, more hopeful about this career path than I did before. I met a few students in the class who are more like me, and even whose stories about how they got to this class are quite startlingly similar to mine. We went around the room telling our stories, and after I told mine, one woman spoke up, saying she really felt she should go next because hers was so uncannily like mine: she had gotten a history Ph.D., had a father who was a history Ph.D. who had had a great influence on her choices, had discovered that the academic life wasn't very comfortable for her, and now has a one-and-a-half-year-old daughter and is interested in possibly embarking on a career as a therapist... and this daughter has a flower name like mine. AND: we ordered the same lunch, two days in a row, without consulting one another.

The whole experience of going to the class has been so... re-orienting for me, so bringing of new energy. I have loved getting up in the morning and going downtown on the Geary bus to the building where my class is held, and mixing and milling with all the people downtown-- so different from my usual days out here in a quiet, less populated part of the city. I have loved listening to other people, and taking notes, and thinking and feeling unexpected things-- even the uncomfortable or critical thoughts I've had have been welcome, as getting my brain moving again. I've enjoyed the lunch breaks and imagining myself part of this energetic downtown workforce, as such a different kind of life than any I've experienced. I missed Daisy, but I've also greatly enjoyed the bus ride home at the end of the day to see her again.

This experience has convinced me that whatever I end up doing, I need to do SOMEthing different. I was vaguely aware of being a little depressed, even though I do adore my time with Daisy, but I now feel much more certain that I need time devoted to cultivating my own self, as separate from Daisy. It has just brought me so much energy and hopeful feeling, and I'm sure it will make me a better mother, too-- because when she's had a hard time, I haven't felt as frustrated with her or as despondent, because there's something else going on for me that lifts me up, instead of feeling like however Daisy's feeling on a particular day completely makes me or breaks me (if she has a crabby day, then I usually feel crabby because my entire sense of self-worth is invested in how I'm doing as a mother). When she was crabby these last few days, I didn't feel so entirely cast down by it, and although I wanted to help her feel better (of course), I still felt happy because of other things that are going on in my life right now. I wasn't crabby, in other words, just because she was crabby.

And now only one burning question remains to be resolved: what should I do with my left-handed pastel drawing? I will never be able to throw it out, since it is the emblem of my "rebirth." Maybe I'll hang it on the wall next to Daisy's fingerpaintings.

Trying something

2008-07-01T14:00:00.000-07:00

Well, after talking about it for many months (years?), I finally signed up for a course-- a 3-day workshop through Berkeley Extension on career options in counseling and psychotherapy. Have no idea what to expect. Am terrified by the thought of day-long sessions in which I will probably have to do major soul-searching and talk to strangers intimately. Want to recoil within myself just describing it to you. I hope we don't have to hold hands. Mine are just way too sweaty.

Students

2008-05-21T19:34:00.000-07:00

I am constantly thinking of changing careers. I could write many paragraphs about this, but since I have a ton of grading to do tonight (final grading) I'll try to sum it up briefly: I care very much about my students, but I struggle with a lot of feelings of inadequacy and just plain discomfort in my role as a teacher, particularly as it relates to the performative aspects... getting up in front of them day after day to try to be brilliantly illuminating while simultaneously hilarious and captivating, and all on the subjective, elusive subject of "good college writing."

Anyway. I am always thinking of changing careers. And then the end of the semester comes, and no matter how many times it's happened before, I am surprised and touched by the reactions of my students. Several of them wanted to take a picture with me, many of them told me they'd miss me and the class, and I got quite a few sweet and moving emails from them. And today I found out one of my students won an honorable mention in USF's student writing contest, for a paper she wrote for my class-- not a small feat, considering she's a freshman in a required writing class and the contest is open to all students at USF, including seniors writing for classes in their majors.

So I am currently feeling warmly disposed, both toward my individual students and toward the profession. It's just that I know I can't keep going the way I have been, can I? As a perpetual adjunct? It's worked for me so far, because for a time I was working on my dissertation and teaching part-time, and now I am being a mother and teaching part-time; so part-time seems okay, at the moment. But I always feel like I need to show my commitment to the career by applying for full-time work, or else move on to something else...and I just don't know what to do, for all kinds of reasons.

One thing you can say for motherhood

2008-05-19T12:44:00.001-07:00

Whether it's currently more joyful or more frustrating, more ecstatically wonderful or more teeth-knashingly difficult, it never feels unimportant.

Crazy, crazy man

2008-04-27T12:20:00.000-07:00

Our former manager, who was removed from his post, has been doing little acts of vandalism around the building to try to make life harder for the new manager. He is a crazy, crazy man. Last week he broke the doorknob off the elevator door and left it sitting on the bench outside. Was I there to see him do it? Well, no. But I do believe it was him. Why? Well--the backing to the doorknob was missing, so whoever removed it took one of the parts away with him. Also, it had been removed by force, the new manager told me. And the person who removed it did not call to report the damage to the new manager (if anyone else had done it, accidentally, they would have called to tell him, I AM SURE).

Our new manager (who is nice, sane, and reliable) told us that there have been other acts of vandalism around the building, always occurring in the wee hours of the night/early morning. I do believe it is he, the crazy man, who is doing it. He has also been tearing down any notice the new manager posts in the lobby, so that the new manager has taken to printing out individual copies for every unit and slipping them under our doors, instead.

I never see him anymore-- not even standing up in his window, staring at the women in the street with his binoculars, the way I used to. In fact, I have only seen him once since he was deposed, but it was in a sort of creepy way. I saw him come RUNNING out of the front door, in a crazy and agitated sort of way. I don't know if this sort of thing translates verbally; maybe you have to see it to understand why it is creepy. Most people don't come running aggressively out of the front door. It really struck me, in that instantaneous kind of way you can detect sometimes when there's something wrong with someone by their nonverbal cues, something about the way they're moving or carrying themselves that is just... off, or wrong for the context, or something. After I saw him come running out, I hid in my car till I thought he might be gone. Then I went into the lobby. But, I was unlucky; he came back in, with the same air of being in an enormous, aggressive hurry, walked past me and the friend I was talking to, and smacked her four-year-old son in the side of the head as he walked by (the boy was wearing a plastic fireman's helmet, so it probably didn't hurt, but was still totally inappropriate, as this is the woman he was previously harrassing, who has since filed a police report against him). He didn't say one word to us.

Other people have had brief sightings of him. He ran into one of the other tenants and told him he planned to buy the building and evict us all. Fat chance, but still creepy.

Creepier still, our new manager told us of a recent incident in which he and his girlfriend were waiting for the elevator, which is an old-fashioned sort of elevator, a "lift," in which you can see through the chain-link fence around it the outline of the person who is coming down in it, as it comes. So they were standing, waiting, and down it comes, with The Crazy Man in it. When he lands, instead of opening the door normally, he KICKS it open. Violently. With his foot. So it narrowly misses the head of the new manager's girlfriend. If she had been standing a centimeter closer it would have given her a concussion. Or possibly injured a little kid, badly.

In case I haven't mentioned it before, The Crazy Man is tall and big and strong. And angry.

The good news is that everything he's doing is being reported to the owners, and apparently he's got one chance left and then they're going to try eviction; at least, this is what our new manager told me. Eviction is hard, and especially in this case, when, as I've been told, the Crazy Man is a Vietnam vet receiving government money to live in the building, which would make eviction harder.

So, we'll see.

Sad

2008-03-25T15:45:00.000-07:00

It was hard going back to work today, and as I dragged myself into Lone Mountain (the building where my class takes place--a really gorgeous building, actually, with a great view of San Francisco), I had a sobering realization: I know the exact bathroom habits of all the other ladies who teach on Lone Mountain on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Every Tuesday and Thursday morning, I visit the same bathroom and see the same ladies. I have never spoken to them, and we don't know each other's names, but there they are.

I even know which STALLS they like to use. I am not kidding.

On the other hand

2008-03-24T20:25:00.000-07:00

Daisy was literally a pain in the butt today. We were walking in Sutro Heights Park with my neighbor Robyn and her very cute son Eli. I was standing and talking to Robyn at one point, and Daisy was playing near a stone deer she particularly likes. I noticed she seemed to be getting kind of irritated by not having my undivided attention, but it was nothing too awful so I ignored her. Suddenly I felt a sharp pain in my upper thigh and turned around expecting--I don't know what. A small dog, maybe. I honestly don't think I would have connected it with Daisy if Robyn hadn't said, "She just bit you in the butt!"

So, there it is: my verbally precocious daughter bit me in the butt today, instead of using her language skills to express herself to me. I reprimanded her, but I was kind of shocked, as well as embarrassed, so I didn't have a clear disciplinary tactic in mind. I'm going to have to come up with one, though, because I want to send a very clear message if something like this happens again. This is the first terribly naughty thing she has done, and I was unprepared! It hurt, too. Really a lot.

Another annoying habit she's developed is not liking foods she previously liked (such as PIZZA), spitting out the food we give her, and handing it to us, saying superciliously, "THANK you." I wish I could better describe the tone... it's so prim and haughty, exactly like the tone an adult would use if she wanted to thank someone insincerely, being polite on the surface but fully conveying the sarcasm at the same time. "THANK you!"

Obnoxiously braggy post

2008-03-24T14:54:00.001-07:00

I read in a child development newsletter today that you can expect most two-year-olds to be able to put two words together, and that at three they start to put three and more words together. This CANNOT be true. My girl has been putting more than three words together since 18 months. I know she is on the precocious side verbally (just as she was slow to develop some of the gross motor skills), but she can't be that far ahead. Today I recorded her (finally, on camcorder), reciting "Baa baa Black Sheep"--every single word, with no prompting from me. Okay, I had more obnoxioius bragging, but I have to go change a diaper.

How I know I'm out of touch with the younger generation

2008-03-22T20:58:00.001-07:00

Today on the radio I heard Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend," and, just like the other times I've heard it, I felt shocked and embarrassed.

Philadelphia speech

2008-03-18T20:51:00.001-07:00

I wanted to write to my blog today that I thought Barack Obama's speech today, in which he addressed the concerns people have over his association with Jeremiah Wright, was a great speech. I was wondering how he would deal with this potential obstacle to his campaign, and I was truly and deeply impressed by how he did. In fact, I think it may be the best speech I've heard him give yet. I admire the way he took the issue head on, trying to actually explain his reasoning for continuing to be in the church and for why he can't completely disavow Wright, instead of trying in a fake way to distance himself entirely from Wright or put some facile political spin on the whole thing. I thought it was brave. He spoke to his audience in a way that respected their intelligence--that assumed they could try to grapple with this difficult point in a real way, instead of needing some little bumpersticker answer to the whole thing, some simplified catch phrase to make the whole thing go away. He actually talked to us about what was going through his mind and how complex the issue is for him. As I was listening, I realized that I almost never feel this way listening to a mainstream political speech. He was saying yes, this is hard to understand, and not completely pretty on the surface, but let's look deeper and try to understand.

The speech was substantive and felt genuine to me. What he said about the contradictions and painful divisions within communities we're part of made sense to me. The things that make us up are not always comfortably unified, and sometimes the people most intimate to us say things that make us "cringe," as he put it, but it would be dishonest to say that they are not still a part of who we are, to pretend a total distance. I also liked the way he tried to show the context from which Wright's anger arises, instead of trying to write him off entirely as a nut case. He showed that that anger has reasons and justifications, even if he also needed to say he didn't agree with all the specific manifestations of it in Wright's sermons. The speech (the parts in which he remembered the struggles and injustices black people have faced in this country) was also an indirect answer to Geraldine Ferraro's insane comments about how lucky he is to be a black man in this campaign, or he wouldn't be where he is.

I wanted this post to be a lot better, but I am too tired now after my long day to do better, so I will leave it at that. I just wanted to record how surprised, in a good way, I felt listening to this speech-- that it wasn't what I had been expecting. I think I'd been expecting something less honest, more like a superficially indignant, politically necessary, total rejection of Wright (what most candidates would do). What actually happened, what Obama decided to do, was so much better than that. It was the kind of speech that asks that its listeners be nuanced thinkers whose minds can grasp complexities and make sometimes unexpected connections, and I am soooo not used to that after years of listening to dull, trite, talking-points oriented speeches that flatten and dilute issues and talk down to us like children.

Tagged

2008-03-17T20:23:00.000-07:00

I am not handy with technology so I'm not sure how to create a neat little link. I was tagged by the lovely friend who owns this blog:
http://waitingforatrain-linda.blogspot.com/

What were you doing 10 yrs ago?
Uhhh... let's see. I was in graduate school in Eugene at the University of Oregon, the program where I went on to get my Master's and PhD in English. I had been married to Mark for almost one year. I was so immature that it almost boggles the mind. I'm at a loss to capture said immaturity in a succinct way for this pithy meme entry, so please take my word for it.

Snacks I enjoy
Pickles
Olives
Yogurt
Japanese rice crackers
Green tea frappuccinos (are those a "snack," technically?)

Five things on my to-do list today
Go grocery shopping
Go running at the YMCA
Print out newly taken pictures of my daughter
Grade a few papers
Bore my reader(s) senseless with this particular meme entry. Sorry. I wish my day had been more exciting. Because this was so boring, I will share the possibly scintillating detail that I am a COMPULSIVE list-maker so this question was easy for me. I constantly make lists to stave off anxiety, but then the sheer length of the lists causes me more anxiety, plus the fear that there is some old list floating around that I never finished checking off, so then I end up writing lists that say things like, "Find old list and make sure you finished everything on it."

Things I would do if I became a billionaire
This is hard for me, because I don't really think about it. I have never felt like thinking about it, because it won't happen and all that. So I feel kind of sad and cheesy answering it. Here goes, anyway. I would immediately put away a big chunk for my daughter, into some kind of safe, secure account that would grow and grow and help her go to whatever college she wants to, someday. I would distribute money to my family and friends so that they could lead better lives and have safer futures. I would pay off my debts. I would probably buy a not obscenely big but still comfortably sized house; I might have to argue with Mark about where it would be. He would want it to be in San Francisco, I predict, but I would probably choose to live somewhere in Sonoma County, nearer to my parents, and where I could have a nice yard for my daughter to play in. I would put away some money for travel, because I have never traveled outside of the U.S., except to Canada a few times. (Okay, that sounds like I am disparaging Canada, but I don't mean to; I am just illustrating the extreme limitations of my traveling experience, though I have been in almost every state in the U.S. on road trips my family took since I was two years old.)

I would definitely donate a good portion of it to charitable causes, but I don't want to speak hastily about which ones because I'd have to sit and think very carefully about that first. There would be so many candidates; it wouldn't be an easy decision. I guess if I'm really a billionaire, though, I could have the option of giving a ton of money to a few specific causes, or spreading it out very widely across many causes! What a shame we'll never find out what my philanthropy would have done for the world... since I can't remember the last time an adjunct college writing teacher became a billionaire.

I would buy Mark whatever electronic/musical equipment he's always dreamed of having. I would buy myself some new clothes and shoes, because I desperately need them and it's really pathetic. I would buy myself a bed frame and a new couch, because we still have the one we bought in EUGENE for SIX DOLLARS.

3 bad habits
Procrastinating
Obsessing over things I can't control
Going to bed too late
I have many, many, many other bad habits, but I am limited to three so I'll stop now.

5 places I have lived
Northport, NY (ages 0-18)
Claremont, CA (ages 18-21)
Eugene, OR (ages 21-27)
San Francisco, CA (ages 27 to the present)
There you have it. I have not lived in five places--just four. Unless you count the town I was born in: Syosset, NY. I guess I lived there for a day or two.

Jobs I have had
Babysitter
Candy striper/delivered food and fed people/waitress at hospital coffee shop
Landscapers' assistant (I did very little; I remember posing decoratively on a rich person's lawn with a hose, aiming it at a tree. I think, in retrospect, the boss was trying to sleep with me and that was why he hired me)
Library page
Server of food to big alumni events at college
Computer lab consultant in college
Annoying person who calls you on the phone to raise $ for her college annual fund
Writing Center consultant at 3 colleges
Graduate teaching assistant of various courses at several colleges
Copy editor
College writing teacher

I must have had other jobs but those are the ones I can think of right now.

Things people don’t know about me
My family owned a wolf when I was a child
I always wanted to play the bad guy in childhood games
I am afraid of flying (some people probably know that)
I feel very insecure about my ability to use a lot of technology, even, like, the SLIDE projector at school, so I still write everything on the chalkboard
I got a 5 on the AP Calculus exam in high school (that will shock people!) but I consider myself very weak in math
I was a spelling bee champion
I have to work very hard not to let sad thoughts get me down, because I tend to be sad and sort of negative about things generally (I think that will surprise some people)
As a child I had an obsessive fear of vampires (some people probably know that)
I really like miniature things and, oh, if I come into millions of dollars, as the previous question mentioned, I will buy a beautiful Victorian dollhouse and fill it with wonderful miniature things
I have a terrible anxiety about being made to tag people by memes.

That leads beautifully into my final comment: I think I am supposed to tag people, but I am going to have to let people be self-tagged, if they so desire!

My manager has been removed from his post

2008-03-15T17:13:00.000-07:00

I am so very, very grateful to my fellow tenant who took it upon himself to organize everyone, gather up their various accounts of this man's behavior, and pursue our elusive owners doggedly until he finally got a result. Being a leader is not my forte. I am very glad it is the forte of others.

I'll just say one thing for myself, non-leader though I am: once I learned how much worse this manager had been to others than he had been to me, I knew I would never back down until he was removed.

I guess there are some people reading this blog?

2008-03-15T17:02:00.001-07:00

Okay; I need to apologize. I honestly thought I was writing to a void. I hope recent posts of mine haven't offended anyone. Please know that I would never write something potentially hurtful about anyone if there was even the remotest chance they were reading this blog. (I.e., my post about feeling hurt by a friend; I would never post something like that about anyone I gave this silly blog's address to. But the point of that post was not to bash the friend, but to explain that I felt stymied by my inability to express a feeling of hurt to her in a way that wouldn't lead to melodramas.) The truth is, a big part of why I started this blog is that I need to feel less like I am censoring myself. I want to be a little more open. I want to feel a little less inhibited by my pathological tendency to try to please everyone in the world. I think I need to, rather badly. Perhaps then I should be writing in a completely private form; I am not sure there's any argument for not doing so. I haven't entirely figured out what this blog is. If you actually want to read it, I appreciate that, I really do. I hope the Me that emerges won't be too off-putting. There, you see? I'm doing it again!

Try again

2008-03-12T19:36:00.001-07:00

Well, I have to admit, it's a bit annoying: if you do something Daisy finds entertaining, she yells, "Try again! Try again!" It amuses us that she uses this particular phrase-- like you didn't do it right the first time and you need to try again.

Did I mention she does a British accent?

My baby gets postmodern

2008-03-12T16:32:00.001-07:00

Daisy's Peter Rabbit book features a little image of Peter reading the book named after him, on the title page, along with other little images, of Squirrel Nutkin and other Beatrix Potter characters.

Just now Daisy pointed to the picture of Peter reading and said, "Peter Rabbit's reading about... Peter Rabbit." That must really expand her mind.

Ya know what's scary?

2008-03-11T21:48:00.001-07:00

Let me tell you. It's when--after telling yourself for weeks, "Stop being so paranoid! You probably don't need to change the lock on your apartment door. You probably don't need to shove a chair under the doorknob every night. Your manager isn't coming to kill you in a hail of psychotic bullets--that's a paranoid fantasy scenario"--you talk to two other perfectly sane, well-adjusted, normal tenants in your building, whom you've never shared any information with whatsoever, and they independently tell you that this is what THEY ARE THINKING, TOO. Down to every last detail: the chained door, the desire for new locks, even the HAIL OF BULLETS.

As it turns out, I am one of the people with the LEAST cause for complaint against our scary, scary, scary manager.

2008-03-11T14:25:00.000-07:00

As I was taking a bath today, I heard a persistent knocking on the door.

Me: Who's there.

Long pause. More knocking.

Me: WHO'S THERE?

Wee voice: Gompy.

Me: No, seriously. Who is there?

Pause.

Wee voice: It's Rumpelstilts.

*******************

Today, I am also reporting that Daisy said with perfect clarity, "No more monkeys jumping on the bed." She is talking so much it's out of control. And she does a BRITISH ACCENT. I am not kidding. Yes, she is imitating Teletubbies; but if anything, isn't that an argument for more TV watching among the young? I mean, the kid can do accents!

Whoa

2008-03-09T22:42:00.001-07:00

I concealed my identity so well in this blog that I almost just successfully concealed it from mySELF. Just took me half an hour to sign in to this blog because I couldn't remember my username (though I remembered my password, uselessly enough).

I feel strangely liberated in this blog because I don't think anyone is reading it. Therefore, if anyone happens to be reading this, be aware of that scintillating fact--I am more uncensored than usual. Whoooopeee! Actually, it is kind of a big deal, because I can't help censoring myself habitually and pathologically, and when I think anyone is reading what I write, the self-consciousness kicks in big time. I have a really deep longing to be less censored, which is part of the reason I created this blog. Anyway, two things are on my mind tonight.

1) There is a rebellion going on in this building against our manager, who has treated me really terribly. It's been a very interesting and different experience for me. When all this crappy stuff started happening, Mark wanted right away to talk to other tenants, gather their experiences, and see if anyone else felt the way we did.

I didn't want to.

Why not, you ask? Because that sort of thing has always burned me in the past. When, in the past, I (or Mark and I and a friend of ours, in the case that springs to mind most readily) was treated in a truly abominable and unacceptable way, I found that friends weren't willing to support me, by and large. Or, they offered support of a very limited, staying-neutral-and-protecting-themselves sort of way. At the time I was surprised, disappointed, sad, pissed off, in varying degrees depending on the specific people. After awhile, though, I accepted it. It started to seem natural and inevitable: people don't want to get involved in other people's messes. They want to stay out of it. Makes sense. Even if they care about you, they don't care enough to mess up their own lives, potentially, over it. If I sound bitter, I really don't intend to. It does make sense to me, and who knows if I'd be any different, in their shoes? The only thing that sort of gnawed away at me was the fear that I wasn't believed. I wanted to be believed, when I was telling the truth. I think people have a tendency not to want to believe things that are really, really bad and unfair. They want to say, "There must be two sides to this story"--but sometimes, SOMEtimes, there are not. Anyway, in my past: Bad Things happened--Very Bad Things; told friends; asked for support; was told by quite a few people I trusted that it couldn't be, just as I said it was, and that they didn't want to be involved (basically). Over time, I have pretty much accepted this and, again, don't mean to sound bitter about it, because with time, I have come to understand a bit more where those people were coming from, and have learned to adjust my expectations of other people.

The point is, though, I didn't want to reach out to other tenants because I was sure the same thing was going to happen all over again and I didn't want to go through it again. But we HAVE ended up talking to people, and something very different came about. Others felt the same way. Some felt even more strongly than we did. We gained wonderful allies. We felt less alone. And now we are part of a process of trying to get this awful man removed as our manager. That is a good thing. He is not the sort of person you want having the keys to your apartment: a bigoted, volatile, mentally unstable, angry, angry man. I am not alone; other people are helping me, and I am helping them. We are in this together. No one I've told my story to has made me feel like I am insane. They all seem completely non-shocked and then share stories of their own. Although this is, of course, a totally unpleasant experience to go through, it is so much better to go through it WITH other people.

#2) A friend hurt me recently with some remarks, and this is something I'd like to write more about in a later post, but can't right now because I have too much work to do. That's not exactly what this Number Two is about. What it's about is that I have tried to write a letter to her, and I can't. I mean, I HAVE; I've written several drafts of letters to her. At least three drafts. None of them can be sent. I keep thinking I need to walk away, take a deep breath, come back, and try the letter again. But I've been doing that for a month, and now, at last, I finally believe this letter can't be written. Which means, unfortunately, that I have to let her get away with what she said to me. It's pissing me off, but I feel trapped. I can't seem to write a letter to her that could actually be sent. It's a very frustrating thing to experience, especially for someone who has always wanted to believe that words are her friends and that if she tries hard enough, she can express anything she needs to express, somehow, some way.

Well, I've got more thoughts on both the numbered items on my list, but I have to go for now. It's kind of fun being this uncensored me... fun may not be the right word, but it's something good.

Rough days

2008-01-20T20:46:00.000-08:00

Thank you for the last comments, on Daisy's sleeping problems, everyone! They were very much appreciated and helpful, too. We put a mattress down next to Daisy's crib and we've had some luck with that, and moving her crib into our room seems like a possibility, too.

Well, we've had different troubles lately. Daisy came down with an itchy and uncomfortable rash that turned out to be Gianotti Crosti syndrome. She had hive-like red bumps on her knees and feet, especially, but also all over her legs, some in her diaper area and on her face, and big clusters on the backs of her hands. It took three trips to the doctor to get a secure diagnosis and treatment plan. Just when the discomforts and disruptions caused by the Gianotti Crosti illness seemed to be subsiding, she's gotten sick again, and just a few days before the start of school for us. She is extremely congested and has coughing fits every time we put her down in her crib. Last night she vomited everywhere, and she's thrown up three times today already-- twice in smaller amounts, and one huge one. We've had to buy more crib sheets because we can't keep up with the laundry. And the poor girl has not napped or slept well for days. I think I have the same sickness, but it's not hitting me as hard.

I am feeling worried.

Well, it's been so long since I posted

2007-12-30T20:27:00.001-08:00

that I really doubt anyone will ever read this post but me. But that's all right. Frankly, I am feeling pretty down in the dumps. Or in the "Humpy Dumpy," as Daisy would say.

Husband and I are absolutely at the end of our clever ideas for how to get the child to sleep through the night. Her going-to-bed ritual is the most brilliant thing ever. It takes five minutes, swear to God. She sometimes even asks for "bed." She nurses very briefly, she drinks a bottle briefly, she gives us each a goodnight hug, she snuggles on to her monkey, and then she cheerfully accepts going into her crib.

Then midnight arrives. Or 1:30, as it was last night. And the inconsolable crying starts. We were up between 1:30 and 4:45 trying to get her back to sleep. Here's what does not work: rocking her, giving her a bottle, or nursing. We've tried a sort of variation on "cry it out," going in at intervals, but it is so terribly painful and doesn't seem to work, either. She can easily stay up all night doing it, and last time we tried it seriously, she barfed voluminously.

Last night I managed to get her to go to sleep at 4:30 AM by lying down next to her crib. Every now and then she said, "Mamas?" (I am "da Mamas" and Mark is "Da Dadas"). And I said, "I'm here!" And she finally went to sleep. This kind of convinces me that what we're dealing with here is separation anxiety.

But I don't know. I feel pretty sure I don't know anything. Hardcore crying it out seems the only option left, and I don't think we can do it, nor do we feel confident it would work.

Oh, but we are trying something else now; I am going to go in and lie down next to the crib when she gets upset. I am not sure this will work, either, but since it was the only thing that eventually worked last time, it's worth trying.

Things are hard

2007-12-08T23:15:00.000-08:00

I am tired. I am frustrated. Daze had another screaming fit when we put her to bed tonight, though she did go to sleep after awhile. But... I don't know. Things don't feel right. I don't feel confident about my mothering. I want to wean, but instead, she seems to be nursing more than ever. Today I know I nursed once in the morning, three times during the day, and once at night--because she demanded it and then started throwing a tantrum when I resisted. I want to wean her, at this point. But it just isn't happening "organically," the way I know it's happened for other people. It's a problem, because I can't get her to sleep anymore with nursing, and she won't accept a bottle from me. She screams, "Nurse! Nurse!" and writhes till she can get into the nursing position. So other people can get her to sleep more easily than I can, because she'll accept a bottle from them (from Mark or from my mother). Oh yes--and I'm supposed to be weaning her from the bottle, too. Ha.

This is not a good time of my life.

Daisy at 16 months

2007-11-27T13:01:00.001-08:00

Daisy had a doctor's checkup yesterday. She weighs 20 pounds, 9 oz (up to the 10th percentile) and is 30.5 inches tall (37th percentile). I had to say she was not yet walking very steadily, but the funny thing is that after the appointment (whilst waiting to get called back for her shots) she started tearing around the waiting room, walking more than I've ever seen her do and getting farther away from me than she's ever gone out in a public place. So--she is close. Very close.

The funny thing was that the Kaiser pamphlet said that our child "may be ready to say 3-10 words" and "express desires by grunting." I told the doctor that she speaks at least 300 words (and it may be more), puts together phrases and sentences of 2-3 words, and counts (to nine, although she usually leaves a few numbers out). I forgot to mention that she can say a few words of three syllables, such as "animals." And she doesn't do too much grunting to express her desires. She says, "Read, help, snack, nurse, baba, bath, nap," and a whole bunch of other words that let us know what she wants, including an emphatic "No!" which is very charming. Our doctor, who is very nice, said that was very impressive but I'm not sure she believed me. She seemed to think this would be very unusual if it were true. But it is true. And it's a good thing, since she's been so late in developing gross motor skills! The doctor asked if she knew any body parts and I said she knows all of them. I felt like a smart-ass student kissing up to the teacher by pretending to know all the answers. Oh well.

Her sleeping has been all altered terribly since our Thanksgiving trip. She woke up twice last night screaming and just now had a nap of the glorious duration of 30 minutes. I am tired. Now I have to go prevent her from re-programming my cell phone. Bye!

No!!!!

2007-11-16T12:30:00.001-08:00

This is going to make me look bad, but I don't care. It's my blog and I'll look bad on it. I just found out that all part-time faculty have to complete the same "sexual harassment training" that full-time faculty do. I am so annoyed I can barely stand it. I know what all the arguments are for why we should have to do it; I know, I know, I know. And I have personally experienced sexual harassment, so I know it's a serious issue and that it sucks to have it happen to you. But I am STILL annoyed. More than annoyed. I am not going to sexually harass anyone. And I am BUSY. I don't want to do this. I want to do other things with my time. I don't need sexual harassment training. I don't need to be talked down to and "educated" in sensitivity by authority figures who don't know any more about this subject than I do and very likely know less. I went to the many hours long diversity training day a few years ago and really didn't learn a thing (except that, apparently, almost everything you do can potentially count as sexual harassment if you are unfortunate enough to get a student who really doesn't like you). I probably would never have written a post like this ten years ago, when I was more fully in the flush of moral outrage at the things that had happened to me, but, well, times have changed. MY times have changed. And-- my time is limited!

I guess I am just venting.

Crazy parenthood thing? (I'm so articulate today)

2007-11-10T11:48:00.000-08:00

I was just reading the Kahlil Gibran poem "On Children" that Haddayr posted on her blog, http://haddayr.livejournal.com/352990.html, and it brought tears to my eyes. But it made me think of how differently everyone experiences this crazy parenthood thing. Some people I know wonder where in the world their child's disposition came from, and find the personality and interests of their child a fascinating mystery. For me, so far, it has been just the other way around. Everything about Daisy seems familiar, and sometimes in a way that makes me sad. Yesterday I was watching her scope out a plastic house in the waiting room of Pediatrics, clearly wanting to go over and play with it (she loves opening and shutting doors these days). But other, more assertive children were playing in it, and I couldn't get her to go over. Even when I went with her, she stopped short a few feet away from it and I couldn't get her to budge another inch, even though her eyes were fixed on it with desire. It brought back memories of me in kindergarten, desperate to play with a dollhouse that was always surrounded by other girls, never working up the courage to go over to it. The teacher though I was snotty or something, always sitting in a corner reading my book, but I was just painfully shy and unable to act.

But I think it would be a mistake to assume she's going to be just like us, and I'm glad that the Gibran poem reminds me of that. She is not going to be me. Or Mark. I can't wait to see her start going off in her own directions, or doing things that genuinely seem surprising to me.

So far... that's not happened. She reminds me of my real self, or sometimes the things I fear are lurking underneath my surface. I know it took me a long time to figure out how to get along in the world, to relate to people (I always wanted to relate to them, but for the longest time was trapped by shyness and insecurity). Now I tell myself it all comes naturally to me, but when I see Daisy, it brings back the fact that this was actually a long process. I hope she has connections with other people and that it's not as much of a struggle for her as it was for me. I hope she doesn't always retreat to a book because it's safer or easier. And at the same time, I love it that she loves books and gets extremely attached to them (she gives her favorite books hugs, as though they are characters in her life). And I like it that she's into words, and music, and sits and listens for hours sometimes to her favorite songs without getting bored. All those things resonate with me and remind me of our mother-daughter connection.

But it's good to be reminded that she is not me. I honestly forget sometimes. Now I am starting to see, from the other side finally, why mothers can have such a hard time distinguishing... why they get themselves all mixed up with their daughters. It must be painful to lose the symbiosis. I've already lost some of it, I know-- she is more independent, certainly, than she was during the first year of her life. But because she's still nursing, and because she's been so late to crawl and walk, it doesn't strike me all the time that she is not me, that she's trying to get away from me, that she WILL get away from me. I hope I can accept it and respect her as a separate person when the time comes to fully realize it.

Daisy as Icarus

2007-11-08T13:38:00.000-08:00

Today, Daisy tried to fly too close to the sun on waxen wings. She came up to me with her incredibly annoying "Wheels on the Bus" book clutched in her hand, extending it and saying, "Read!" as we've taught her to do (she used to push books at me while making a loud whiny sound, so I find the "Read!" command infinitely more bearable). I took the book, getting ready to oblige her, and lifted her onto my lap. She said, "Nurse!" Ohhhh-kay, I thought, and went to put the book down. She clung to it tenaciously. "Read!" she commanded. I noticed she was trying to get into the nursing position.

That little devil! She had had the thought that there was no reason why she couldn't have her two greatest pleasures in life at the same time: reading and nursing. I swear to God, her plan was to nurse while having me read (sing) that book to her. As Mark pointed out, she was pulling a George Costanza, from the "Seinfeld" episode where he tries to combine eating a pastrami sandwich with having intercourse.

Hmmmmm. I have to say this is where I draw the line.

I finally parted her from the book, though she did much carrying on. She was very much in need of a nap, anyway. I took her into her bedroom for nursing. Then, I had her most of the way asleep when the phone rang. Her eyes popped open and she immediately said, "Phone! Ho? [holding her hand to her ear like a phone]. Dada! Dada!"

I was about to despair, but she went to sleep about five minutes later. I just love this new thing where she holds up a pretend phone and says, "Ho?"

Game-playing strategy

2007-10-30T08:50:00.000-07:00

I have become hooked on "Scrabulous" on Facebook. It is a really fun game, and I love playing it. It is a nice distraction during the day. Having said that, it is a little disturbing to me what I've discovered to be the winning strategy at this game. I like forming beautiful, or interesting, or unexpected words; I just want to take the letters and form the best word possible. This is what I was doing when I first started playing, not paying much if any attention to whether the point-laden letters fell on triple-letter scores. I soon noticed, though, that this is not the way to win (duhhhhh). I guess this is why Scrabble has never been my favorite game. It bothers me that you can get 40 points for a dumb little word like "hub" if you land it on the right squares, and make sure it's forming other dumb little words next to adjacent words, like "uh" and "be," whereas you can form a lovely word like "pixie" and get 7 points.

Even more disturbing, you get rewarded for coming up with totally bizarre words that you probably never even heard of, which for some reason the Scrabulous dictionary recognizes as legitimate, like "kane" and "vaw"-- both of which I played recently. Now if this were REGULAR Scrabble, you couldn't pull it off, because you'd have to take a chance playing the word, and if someone checked you with the dictionary after you played the word and didn't find it, you'd lose your turn. But with Scrabulous, you just type "vaw" into the Scrabulous dictionary and see if it, for some bizarre reason, comes back a "valid" word. If it's judged "invalid," no harm done--you can just keep typing in other random assemblages of letters till you strike the jackpot.

It is just so ridiculous. I mean, what is "vaw"? What it makes me think of, as I told my Scrabulous partner Deb, is a hideous combination of "maw" and "vagina," which immediately makes me think of Grendel's mother or that huge evil spider in _Lord of the Rings_ or some other terrible misogynistic she-beast creation in literature, "opening her giant vaw and devouring our hero."

I just shouldn't have been able to score with "vaw." It makes me sad, but I have sold out my Scrabble purity. Ah well, I'll always have Boggle.

My boss is a genius!

2007-10-26T14:57:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I really didn't think this could be done, but my boss has, I think, done it. The situation is this: some of my colleagues have been wanting to call it to another colleague's attention that he has a body odor problem. Now, before you say this is too heartless and cruel, I have to say that it really is true and it's a bit of an issue, because there are 21 or so of us assigned to one office (not that we'd all be in there at one time, but sometimes there's a crowd in there), and it gets pretty close and muggy. Although I wasn't thinking of saying anything myself, there have certainly been times when I've been uncomfortable with the odor, and also embarrassed when conferencing with students for fear they might think the odor was coming from me.

Anyway, when I heard that someone might say something to him, my first thought was that there was no way it could be done. What could you possibly say to someone? It was just too horrific a task for words. I took an informal poll and nobody's answer impressed me. Mark said he would approach the colleague and frame the whole thing as if it were happening to him-- "You know, people have sometimes told me I need to wear deodorant," something along those lines--hoping the person would then internalize the lesson and apply it to himself. I know this is meant to be kind and cushion the blow, but I think one of two results would ensue: either the person wouldn't connect the anecdote with himself, or, if he did, when he figured out what the other person had been doing, he'd be more mortified than if it had been done directly. My mom's response was that such horrible tasks should be the responsibility of highly paid, important people at the college (she actually said the university president should have to do it. Should have to tell an adjunct he has B.O.).

Well, just now my boss (and friend) at work told me how she would have handled it if the task had been left to her. It's not perfect, of course, but I really think it's by far the best idea I've heard so far. She said she would begin by telling him how difficult this was for her, and then say something like, "A couple people have commented to me that it sometimes seems to them as if you've come to the office straight from the gym." Now again, I know--not perfect. But we have to start from the premise that there is not going to be any completely ideal way to tell another person he has B.O. But if you have to perform such an odious (haha) task, isn't this just the most ingenious way to do it? I mean, a COMPLIMENT is embedded in the insult-- that people have perceived him to be a gym-goer, possibly connoting that he is in good shape or has almost a muskily attractive scent, albeit one that needs to be masked by deodorant while at a place of work.

I am just so wowed right now by her finesse. What a boss!

Rectifying the past

2007-10-25T20:22:00.001-07:00

Today, I again passed my mom at the same intersection on her way back to Healdsburg, but this time, she was not eating a sandwich, and she DID see me, and we waved enthusiastically at each other! We both commented on the slim odds that this would happen. We both had to be taking the same street, for one thing, and she always takes Lake (I learned after the fact) but I usually take California. Also, if I had been one second later, I would have missed her, because she was just about to make the turn that takes her to the Golden Gate Bridge. It was the same intersection I saw her at before, the same one where she was eating the sandwich and didn't see me. It is just so RIGHT and so fateful that we would get another chance and see each other and get to wave so lovingly and enthusiastically! The past was remedied, entirely.

Also, I walked to a playground with Dena, and on the way there, Daisy's handmade pumpkin hat fell off. It was a windy day, and I thought it was lost forever. We spent several hours at the playground, so the chances seemed slim, but for the sake of it, I walked back the same way with Dena, retracing our steps to see if the hat would still be there. And we FOUND it! Some kind person had hung it from a post so the person who lost it could see it easily if she looked.

Oh yes, and for a third thing: I had to do a desperation parking job today at a meter, even though I only had enough money for half an hour and I knew I'd be there for an hour. When I got back to my car, no ticket.

Some days are not my days, and I guess others are. Already I'm dreading the bad luck day that will surely follow this one... three crappy things to happen to me, to make it all even?

Oh well. I will enjoy the end of my good luck day for now.

Sunday

2007-10-21T09:12:00.000-07:00

This morning the Nike Women's Marathon is running past our living room window. I had no idea this was such a big race. The waves just keep coming and coming. There are groups stationed on the corner, cheering them on as they make the turn; as they pass our house, they turn right and head down the Great Highway, I assume past the Cliff House and then along Ocean Beach. I took Daisy outside to watch a few minutes ago and she stood there and shouted, "Walk! Walk!" Inspiring words for the runners to hear. I tried to get her to say "Run," a word she also knows, but for some reason she wasn't into saying it very much. We stood for awhile with a father and three little girls who had signs for their mother; one said "My mom rocks." They never saw their wife and mother run by, though, and finally they left. It made me feel sad. I hope she's okay, whoever she might be. The loudest yelling and carrying on is coming from a contingency from Brooklyn, NY.

A talent for stress

2007-10-12T21:13:00.000-07:00

I had a massage yesterday that I desperately needed. My neck was hurting so badly that I couldn't turn my head to the left. My usual levels of stress and tension had been exacerbated by several nights of Daisy sleeping in our bed, forcing me into increasingly uncomfortable positions curled in the little area of the bed that was still left for me. Anyway, I think I impressed my masseuse with my level of stress. She told me I was a "more-than-one-massage" case and that I should return within a week so she could get more of the stress out of me. She worked on the knots of tension so hard that it was all I could do not to cry out in pain, and I kept moving involuntarily (I was doing my Lamaze breathing from when I was in labor). But it was GOOD pain, because I knew she was getting rid of the knots. She is the greatest masseuse. She thought I would be sore today, and kept warning me what to do, but I was so greatly relieved to have some of the stress out that I don't at all mind a little soreness today. I feel so much better.

And now I need to work on not clenching my jaw all day long. I know it's wearing on my teeth, as well as giving me terrible headaches and stress in my neck. I am kind of a mess. I think I need to work on being less cerebral and more in tune with what's going on in my body (but see how I began this sentence-- "I think." That's all I do). I have a hard time with any part of my body that is not my brain. I need to work on this somehow.

Mundane poignancy

2007-10-12T12:54:00.001-07:00

The other day, I had such a mundanely poignant experience. The background of it is that my mother, whatwouldIdowithouther, comes for a couple nights, usually, each week to stay with us and help with Daisy so I can get things done that tend to fall by the wayside (like, uh, grading papers). She always leaves Thursday morning. This last Thursday morning, as I was driving home from a morning appointment, I saw her car passing me in the other direction--leaving me. I always have such a strong feeling of sadness and abandonment (unfair, I know) when she leaves, and for some reason it was especially hard to see her this way, her car passing mine, and no ability to communicate and say goodbye. I turned, waving frantically, and shouting (futilely), "Mama, mama!" --as if she could hear me. Of course, she couldn't hear me. But what made it worse was that she didn't see me, either, and she was in the process of taking a big bite out of a sandwich.

The whole thing was inordinately heartbreaking: seeing her car, leaving me; having her not see me; and, oddly, the sandwich. I found out later that it was a really good sandwich, too, from Angelina's gourmet deli, where she had stopped on her way out of San Francisco. She totally, totally deserved the sandwich. She works so hard to help us when she's here. But for some reason, I was almost in tears as our cars passed. I scrambled for my cell phone, thinking I'd call her, and then I thought I might accidentally cause her car to crash, since she'd be juggling driving, the sandwich, and her cell phone. Or else she wouldn't answer, which would augment the heartbreak. My hand went back and forth three times, to my purse to grab the phone, then back to the steering wheel, then back to the purse... till I decided not to call.

Was it that I wanted a sandwich, too? I have to admit, I thought maybe she'd made the sandwiches at home before she left, and as a surprise for me, when I got home, there'd be a big yummy mother-made sandwich waiting for me. (That was before I knew she'd stopped at Angelina's on her way out of town.) Or was I jealous of the sandwich, because it was taking my mother's attention away from me? It was bad enough that she was leaving me, after all.

My mother won't be so happy that I shared this anecdote, but it is not meant to reflect poorly on her at all, and I'm sure no one will think that it does. And the only reason to have a new blog is so that I can be more open about things on it. So I hope she forgives me for sharing this woeful little tale.

My baby does not like me to be on the computer

2007-09-20T16:13:00.000-07:00

Maybe this belongs on my other blog, but anyway: this post will be short because the second my baby saw me turn on my computer, she crawled over and began hitting the keys. I tried to bribe her with cheese but she spat it out. Oh, wait... she is distracted by something. I'd better make this quick.

Today I accidentally parked in street cleaning, and when I got back to my car there was NO TICKET. Either the gods are making it up to me for some other time I had bad luck, or I am ABOUT to have some streak of bad stuff happen to me. This latter thought is what's been on my mind today. See how I ruin good news?

Yesterday when I came in to class, my students were full of questions about Mark, whom they'd met the other day when he subbed for me. They wanted to know ALL ABOUT our marriage and our life together. I was so amused. Now, I was not born yesterday and I realized that part of what they were doing was trying to take up class time so they wouldn't have to spend it learning. But I think at least partly they were interested in hearing about our relationship. This cracks me up because the only reason someone like me would be of any interest to them is that three times a week I happen to be stationed in front of them for an hour and five minutes. Ordinarily, a person like me would be of less than no interest to them. But by virtue of the fact that I am deposited in front of them in a position of assumed authority, they start getting interested in the minutiae of my life and questioning me about it as though I were a deeply fascinating object of interest. Of course, I also enjoyed hearing little salacious details about my professors when I was a student... but now, I am not quite sure why.

I amused myself by describing our marriage thusly: "It's kind of like when Hollywood celebrities marry each other. Only one Rhetoric and Composition teacher can truly understand what another Rhetoric and Composition teacher is going through."

I also enjoyed this: they told me we had very different teaching styles. When I asked them to be more specific, the answer was, "He used an overhead projector and you always use the chalkboard."

I also note that today's students are a whole lot more... savvy and grown-up, somehow, than I remember being at 18. For example, this part of the conversation: after letting the questioning go on a bit, I teasingly asked them why they were so interested in personal revelations from their teacher. One student said she really liked knowing her teachers and even getting to be friends with them.

Me: That may be, but what happens when your friend the teacher has to give you a grade?
My student: Well, of course, there's a fine line that teachers have to figure out. They definitely need to maintain their boundaries with their students.

That just makes me smile.

Trying to enjoy life

2007-09-17T13:08:00.001-07:00

One of the problems with blogs is that every post you create seems to stand for some big, dramatic statement about your life, possibly The Truth about you, instead of just being whatever mood you were in that day. So I feel like I should first say, "Don't worry about me, these are just some thoughts that floated through my brain, not an irrevocable and unchanging comment about my state of mind."

Anyway, though, I have been thinking today about the fact that I often tell myself (frequently while sitting on the bus, giving myself a little pep talk on the way to work), "Just relax about that! Stop stressing yourself out so much. Just try to enjoy your life." But, if you are trying to enjoy life, how much can you possibly be enjoying it? Then you just start worrying about whether your trying is effective, if you are trying hard enough, should you be trying harder or in some different, more effective way.... It's like lying in bed telling yourself, "Fall asleep! You need rest! You're running out of time! The baby will be awake in four hours, and then you'll be sorry!" Which I also do. Of course.

Sadly, I really do want to enjoy my life. Unlike when I was in my teens and twenties, I now feel fairly sure that I am not immortal and that one day I'll regret not having enjoyed it more, when it's close to being over.

I was thinking today how totally revealing of me and my neuroses the title of the blog is. I couldn't think of a title, so I slapped this one on it, and then started to worry that it sounded show-offy, because obviously it calls to mind "A Star is Born." I didn't want to imply that this blog was a star, so I shoved the word "humble" in to rectify any possible misunderstanding.

I am probably the sort of person who should learn to meditate, since one of the problems with me is that I over-think everything. That was another thing I HATED in my teens and twenties: people who told me I was over-thinking things. I just knew they were soulless, conscience-less twits living an epicurean, grossly physical life, putting their heads down on their pillows every night blissfully free of any awareness of the suffering of others in the world.

Now do think that maybe I think too much-- as Becky Peacock once told me, senior year of college, in her comments on a chapter of my senior thesis. She wrote in her neat, feminine, Becky Peacock-like handwriting: "Sarah has too many ideas. She needs to pick one and go with it." At the time, I was full of contempt for Becky Peacock--perky Becky and her best friend, Lolly, who were among the many reasons why I didn't enjoy going to Scripps very much. I probably thought, deep down, that I was better than they were because I was suffering more (though I have to say that Lolly suffered very greatly one day in our senior seminar when the professor went through her chapter and proved that she had misread and hence misused every single quotation in the whole chapter--every single one. I am not exaggerating. Lolly was quite hurt, and I felt bad for her). But back to Becky: now I'm not so sure that she might not have been on to something.

A first post is born

2007-09-14T20:21:00.000-07:00

It's so strange, the titles that kept going through my mind for this blog. I just couldn't think of anything good. I kept thinking, "This blog is your blog, this blog is my blog," and "Blog, Blog, Bloggity Blog" (as in "Spam, spam, spammity spam"), and "Bloggin' in the USA," and "To Blog or not to Blog? That is the question." I am just not meant to put titles on things. It is not my calling. At least I didn't call it "This little blog of mine, I'm gonna let it shine" or "Inna Gadda Da Blogga, Baby." I'm telling you, my brain could come up with nothing, just nothing.

So, I have created another blog. The reason is mostly mundane. When I started teaching again this semester, I realized that my students were going to google me. I don't say that in order to be insanely self-important: I am sure they have many more important and fascinating things to do. It's just, well, it's only natural to google your professors these days. But picturing my students reading my blog put me in a state of complete, paralyzed silence. So I've done everything I can, in my technologically unsavvy way, to have nothing on this blog that will lead to me if someone googles me. I hope I succeeded. I would like to feel somewhat less inhibited about things. I couldn't think of a very good username so I called myself "Lola" after a song my friend Jenny and I wrote when we were girls together... a very, very amazing song, if I do say so myself. I don't know if our musical virtuosity ever reached a greater height, so I settled on that name as the pinnacle of our artistic achievement.

So what can I say for myself today? Well, today I was so tired that I repeatedly said the seventh coordinating conjunction was "since," and my students repeatedly corrected me, howling, "So! So! Not since!" I guess I should be proud of them. Also, a gas station attendant hit on me. I could hardly believe it. It was an unreal situation. I was feeling completely exhausted and unattractive and just wanting to get home. He leaned in my window and told me I had a beautiful complexion, which is certainly not true, especially since the pregnancy. Then he said if I wore more makeup (as it is, I don't wear ANY), he thought I could get close to the point of looking like a model. It went on and on, far too long. I had to ask him several times to run my card through the machine so I could proceed with my business. I thought he was never going to let me get away. I can't believe this sort of thing would happen to me at this point in my life. It was honestly unflattering and just tiresome and dumb, and almost made me want to cry because I was so eager to get home and he was getting in my way and bugging me and bugging me.

Well, I must go for now.