I just realized why my entries about marriage, parenting, and even teaching fit. One can be "green" at things one cannot do well, but at which will one eventually get to a place of maturity.... like green, punky wood that you do not want for your woodstove, but which can be stacked and set aside for a winter in future.
The house we're looking at first has a woodstove, which is a cool feature. It also is old--built in 1870, so probably build with old growth wood, and there's no negative eco karma attached: by now, its surely neurtralized, at least, and old houses are much like vintage clothing. A thing which lets you have a thing that's decadent and beautiful without feeling guilty because it isn't using any new resources. That's a thing that makes me keep looking at 1850-1900 or max 1915 or so Colonial houses. Crazy-beautiful wood paneled walls, and in-built detailing. Always more risk of structural problems from hell with houses like that. And I may look at tons more than the one we see tomorrow.
I keep avoiding pools. Why the hell anyone looks at a yard that could take a least four ginormous raised beds with which they could feed their family and decides to put in a chemical money pit on their property is beyond me. The place we're looking at has a ton of mulch instead of lawn, something we are actually pleased by. Lawn chemicals are not the best thing to try to have to suck up in your organic garden anyway. See? I'm still starry-eyed and green at this house hunting thing too, and it's pretty sweet that I can still go to that high and hopeful place over something. I do know how long this may take, but so many things feel promising about this. And, in the end, it's going to be something I take for an adventure.
National Board candidacy feels similar: daunting, but do-able, if I make myself take it in steps. We'll see.
And I interview for Green Team advisory on Monday morning.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
My Daughter at 9.5 Months: A Prose Poem
My daughter is shaping up to be a cool little person. She has a tough edge: bumps her head and keeps on going, bites like a piranha. And she yells for attention. Not cries, yells. She has an angry baby that kicks in when you are not fast enough, not clever enough with the anticipation of needs, or simply, not enough. In short, there is a lot of the stubborn people she comes from. A lot of me.
I think she's also clever. She's incredibly curious about everything, especially what's dangerous. She also loves anything with which we regularly engage: remote, phone, computer mouse. Batterie'd things are probably not good chew toys, nor wires, I'd imagine, but with ninja speed, she finds these before you remember they were there to hide.
I am often tired, but in damn good shape. I bounce, and bend and twist and climb. It's pretty freaking fun, and the fact that there's that mutual benfit is pretty awesome. I'd hardly ever find the energy to get this much exercise on my own.
Sometimes I wish I didn't believe in zero population growth. I clearly make wonderful humans. And, if I don't fuck this up, because the force is strong in this one, this could be a soldier on the side of the light. I should make more and more of those. It's only right.... if only.
I make myself laugh sometimes, and I often talk to myself. I sound like a raving person at times. I will surely say things I don't mean, particularly when that little piranha in you is anything with a teen in the end, probably even sooner. I hope you'll be able to deal with this. In exchange, I offer family meals that sometimes get to be ice cream... or whatever else we have that you decide you want for a meal (one vegetable must also be eaten, and it can be anything: even a crap ton of Halloween candy). To help you with your homework, and bring you to and attend whatever thing it is you need to do, and to be proud of you when you do well. You will love to learn-- whatever it is you love to learn-- and will know that your job is to grow. For that, I will ask the right to be disappointed when you do the opposite, and to do what it takes to make you see the difference. I only get to make so many soldiers.
I think she's also clever. She's incredibly curious about everything, especially what's dangerous. She also loves anything with which we regularly engage: remote, phone, computer mouse. Batterie'd things are probably not good chew toys, nor wires, I'd imagine, but with ninja speed, she finds these before you remember they were there to hide.
I am often tired, but in damn good shape. I bounce, and bend and twist and climb. It's pretty freaking fun, and the fact that there's that mutual benfit is pretty awesome. I'd hardly ever find the energy to get this much exercise on my own.
Sometimes I wish I didn't believe in zero population growth. I clearly make wonderful humans. And, if I don't fuck this up, because the force is strong in this one, this could be a soldier on the side of the light. I should make more and more of those. It's only right.... if only.
I make myself laugh sometimes, and I often talk to myself. I sound like a raving person at times. I will surely say things I don't mean, particularly when that little piranha in you is anything with a teen in the end, probably even sooner. I hope you'll be able to deal with this. In exchange, I offer family meals that sometimes get to be ice cream... or whatever else we have that you decide you want for a meal (one vegetable must also be eaten, and it can be anything: even a crap ton of Halloween candy). To help you with your homework, and bring you to and attend whatever thing it is you need to do, and to be proud of you when you do well. You will love to learn-- whatever it is you love to learn-- and will know that your job is to grow. For that, I will ask the right to be disappointed when you do the opposite, and to do what it takes to make you see the difference. I only get to make so many soldiers.
Monday, September 26, 2011
People Think I'm a Grown-Up When I Call Them
And are impressed by our mutual credit,
Our debt to income ratio
And we are looking at
Houses in the town I grew up in
But my kid like music....
Our debt to income ratio
And we are looking at
Houses in the town I grew up in
But my kid like music....
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Winter Squash Fungus and Invasive Club Advisory Take-Over
I'm really sad and disappointed. The rainy season this year has led to some fungus, whose name I can't remember how to spell, and surely can't pronounce, making it so that winter squash, despite that name, will not be something I can store. I've had seasons where the vernal equinox has been celebrated in my house by the making of a huge batch of pumpkin/winter squash lasagna-- one of the few dishes I can claim to have designed from my own little culinary brain alone, no recipes involved. The fungus will make it impossible to keep and store squash, killing that tradition that would have been in its third year. The only silver lining is in the fact that this year, we had the option to extend our CSA shares into December, and should continue getting fresh squash until then.
The rainy summer has made for exceptionally tall ragweed too, so as soon as I healed (the scabs are still visible, so by healed, I mean stopped itching) from the poison ivy I picked up on my birthday in August, I've been suffering bitterly from allergies. They've gone right into my lungs, too, so I hack and cough, and sound like patient zero in some deep contagion. I keep going to work like this, even though I've had days without a voice. And, teaching without a voice in classes approaching 30 students has been interesting, to put it mildly.
But, I'm excited to be in the midst of trying to steal away a club advisory. Every year, they have to take applications and conduct interviews for the few extracurricular clubs that still exist, probably because of the supremely awesome $2500/year pay -out (there's sarcasm there, if you can't sense it.... doing the math, if you advise a club properly, you get compensated at pennies an hour, no exaggeration, since post-tax that works out to something like $1900, something I learned from my one year advising a middle school yearbook). So, I'm trying to steal the advisory of the Green Team. The only "green" thing this team does is collect the classroom recycling bins weekly. The rest of their time is spent in fundraising-- for non-green school events, like prom, etc. I kid you not. They do nothing else. I intend to give them an actual curriculum, teaching them about how to meaningfully live in a green way, and in the letter I've written, and will reread one more time before submitting on Monday (deadline is actually Wednesday, so it's good and ready within the required timeline), I propose to use the underutilized (read, not used at all) quad area to teach the kids how to grow their own veggies, and I've suggested they should be involved in local environmental actions, such as the attempt to rescue a very polluted marsh right next to the high school grounds, and travel to elementary schools to teach appreciation of the natural world to kids at a young age, where it's likely to stick with them for good. Imagine proposing that a Green Team should to actual green stuff? I hope I get the position: I can't even tell you how much I dislike the team's current advisor, and not just because he takes the yearly stipend without knowing his ass from his elbow where environmentalism is concerned (for example, he's clearly oblivious to the fact that just about all of the school's recycling isn't getting recycled at all, because no one has taught the kids that plastic drink bottles need to be sent with caps removed. The caps are a different plastic, and because there's no time to remove these caps at the recycling center, all bottles with caps attached go right to the landfill.... In other words, the only "green" thing he has them doing isn't even happening! I also know he got permission to use the quad for what I propose-- he was just given it, without solitcitation-- but did nothing because it means showing up at school a couple of days a week in the summer, and perhaps spending about $200 on supplies and/or working to get then donated), but also because he royally sucks as an English teacher, and if the kids even read or write in his class, I'd be desperately surprised. He's also a douchey driver, something I learned on a day when we were together in pulling over for an ambulance, and he took it upon himself to cut me off getting back into the road (he was behind me when we pulled over: did he think I planned to just sit there pulled over and masturbate when it was clear to go?). In short, it may be only $2500, but that money should be given to someone who intends to take a club and make it legitimate, not just someone who advises a club solely to have (some of the) money to go snowboarding every other weekend. I will be pissed if they (the administration) can't see that I'm clearly the better candidate for the position, and I intend to mildly and diplomatically point out how poorly the club has achieved the goals it ought to have for the years it has existed when interviewed. Here's hoping reason and sensiblity prevail!
The rainy summer has made for exceptionally tall ragweed too, so as soon as I healed (the scabs are still visible, so by healed, I mean stopped itching) from the poison ivy I picked up on my birthday in August, I've been suffering bitterly from allergies. They've gone right into my lungs, too, so I hack and cough, and sound like patient zero in some deep contagion. I keep going to work like this, even though I've had days without a voice. And, teaching without a voice in classes approaching 30 students has been interesting, to put it mildly.
But, I'm excited to be in the midst of trying to steal away a club advisory. Every year, they have to take applications and conduct interviews for the few extracurricular clubs that still exist, probably because of the supremely awesome $2500/year pay -out (there's sarcasm there, if you can't sense it.... doing the math, if you advise a club properly, you get compensated at pennies an hour, no exaggeration, since post-tax that works out to something like $1900, something I learned from my one year advising a middle school yearbook). So, I'm trying to steal the advisory of the Green Team. The only "green" thing this team does is collect the classroom recycling bins weekly. The rest of their time is spent in fundraising-- for non-green school events, like prom, etc. I kid you not. They do nothing else. I intend to give them an actual curriculum, teaching them about how to meaningfully live in a green way, and in the letter I've written, and will reread one more time before submitting on Monday (deadline is actually Wednesday, so it's good and ready within the required timeline), I propose to use the underutilized (read, not used at all) quad area to teach the kids how to grow their own veggies, and I've suggested they should be involved in local environmental actions, such as the attempt to rescue a very polluted marsh right next to the high school grounds, and travel to elementary schools to teach appreciation of the natural world to kids at a young age, where it's likely to stick with them for good. Imagine proposing that a Green Team should to actual green stuff? I hope I get the position: I can't even tell you how much I dislike the team's current advisor, and not just because he takes the yearly stipend without knowing his ass from his elbow where environmentalism is concerned (for example, he's clearly oblivious to the fact that just about all of the school's recycling isn't getting recycled at all, because no one has taught the kids that plastic drink bottles need to be sent with caps removed. The caps are a different plastic, and because there's no time to remove these caps at the recycling center, all bottles with caps attached go right to the landfill.... In other words, the only "green" thing he has them doing isn't even happening! I also know he got permission to use the quad for what I propose-- he was just given it, without solitcitation-- but did nothing because it means showing up at school a couple of days a week in the summer, and perhaps spending about $200 on supplies and/or working to get then donated), but also because he royally sucks as an English teacher, and if the kids even read or write in his class, I'd be desperately surprised. He's also a douchey driver, something I learned on a day when we were together in pulling over for an ambulance, and he took it upon himself to cut me off getting back into the road (he was behind me when we pulled over: did he think I planned to just sit there pulled over and masturbate when it was clear to go?). In short, it may be only $2500, but that money should be given to someone who intends to take a club and make it legitimate, not just someone who advises a club solely to have (some of the) money to go snowboarding every other weekend. I will be pissed if they (the administration) can't see that I'm clearly the better candidate for the position, and I intend to mildly and diplomatically point out how poorly the club has achieved the goals it ought to have for the years it has existed when interviewed. Here's hoping reason and sensiblity prevail!
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Teaching Creative Writing--Finally
I'm starting to really, truly love aspects of my job this year--which is something new. I detest the politics behind education, both in terms of the euphmistically named "No Child Left Behind" Act, and just the politics of the city or town you live in, compiled with building politics. As a brief aside on that other, other, other steaming heap of turd George Bush the second left us with, NCLB is a big disaster. My supe posted a blog on his page that said it perfectly, though I can only paraphrase. Though the act is a disaster, and as big an equity as separate but equal, its name forced us-- those of us in education, with unions and huge voting power behind us--to roll over and take it like prison bitches. I assure the soap on a rope reference is purely my own contribution to the apt statement. I will say nothing further, because I don't intend to often blog about the nature of public education in this country, but I could... for quite a while. I love to elaborate on why I use that word "inequity," for instance, but I won't.
Anyway, I'm teaching a course in creative writing. In creative lyrical writing, no less. Yes, that's right: poetry. So, I've discovered that it was complete bullshit that I am another Verlain, destined to have poetically peaked somewhere between age seventeen and nineteen, with nothing but a handful of poems a year if I was lucky thereafter, fully half of them being a bag of suck. Most days when I give my students an assignment, I complete it as well. Here are the results I don't hate-- proof that forcing myself to write does exactly what it always did under the man I still admire more than I've ever been able to say to him with a keyboard: it makes good stuff happen sometimes, when I just write even when I feel like I can't.
This piece is a "found" poem: You get another text, often in prose, often something like expository non-fiction, and you force yourself to use lines from it verbatim.
Shadow Walkers
Only a person full of fears already,
Full of shadows,
is drawn towards
A life only in the night
But, immortality
Fear of death so common,
living forever seems like the ultimate fantasy
But, submitting to that awful bite
Holds the promise of a ghoulish paradise
Perpetual youth, perhaps, but such a cost
Draining others; living in obscura
Lurking, listening
Loving no one--
or loving, without fulfilment, without completion
Are we all vampires anyway?
Another found poem: this time I made them (us) turn to page 100 of an almost randomly pulled novel off the bookshelves of my classroom, and use sentence 5.
O.C.D.
"As always, she watched me complete this task as if I were the most mystifying creature she had ever seen--and quite possibly mad"--Dean Koontz, Relentless.
The piles must move dozens of times in a day
Dozens-- no need to exaggerate and
claim hundred, but certainly dozens.
Piles of pencils, of scrap paper, of neatly
arranged photocopy.
Moved as if a corner out of place
would topple the entire Jenga game
Moving what can be seen in an attempt
To arrange that which cannot--
the chaos of a life with so many variables,
So much to balance and keep aright
Fear sometimes soothed as the piles
Are made to march in order.
Inadequacies allayed as the
Uncontrollable dangers are contained
Within the ritual.
I am sorry, but that is it so far. I edited both of them-- only very slightly-- as I posted them. A third one is nearly ready.
Anyway, I'm teaching a course in creative writing. In creative lyrical writing, no less. Yes, that's right: poetry. So, I've discovered that it was complete bullshit that I am another Verlain, destined to have poetically peaked somewhere between age seventeen and nineteen, with nothing but a handful of poems a year if I was lucky thereafter, fully half of them being a bag of suck. Most days when I give my students an assignment, I complete it as well. Here are the results I don't hate-- proof that forcing myself to write does exactly what it always did under the man I still admire more than I've ever been able to say to him with a keyboard: it makes good stuff happen sometimes, when I just write even when I feel like I can't.
This piece is a "found" poem: You get another text, often in prose, often something like expository non-fiction, and you force yourself to use lines from it verbatim.
Shadow Walkers
Only a person full of fears already,
Full of shadows,
is drawn towards
A life only in the night
But, immortality
Fear of death so common,
living forever seems like the ultimate fantasy
But, submitting to that awful bite
Holds the promise of a ghoulish paradise
Perpetual youth, perhaps, but such a cost
Draining others; living in obscura
Lurking, listening
Loving no one--
or loving, without fulfilment, without completion
Are we all vampires anyway?
Another found poem: this time I made them (us) turn to page 100 of an almost randomly pulled novel off the bookshelves of my classroom, and use sentence 5.
O.C.D.
"As always, she watched me complete this task as if I were the most mystifying creature she had ever seen--and quite possibly mad"--Dean Koontz, Relentless.
The piles must move dozens of times in a day
Dozens-- no need to exaggerate and
claim hundred, but certainly dozens.
Piles of pencils, of scrap paper, of neatly
arranged photocopy.
Moved as if a corner out of place
would topple the entire Jenga game
Moving what can be seen in an attempt
To arrange that which cannot--
the chaos of a life with so many variables,
So much to balance and keep aright
Fear sometimes soothed as the piles
Are made to march in order.
Inadequacies allayed as the
Uncontrollable dangers are contained
Within the ritual.
I am sorry, but that is it so far. I edited both of them-- only very slightly-- as I posted them. A third one is nearly ready.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Why I Don't Write Much
I suppose everything I wrote last time is already an answer in itself. But, it's a complicated place, my little world.
I switched my farm share pick up to Saturdays, hoping that makes my work week a little easier. Today will be my first Saturday pick up. I'm pretty sure they have some local fisherman selling through their farmstand on Saturdays too, which is a cool bonus. I'm the only fish eater in the house, but honestly, I'm the only food eater in the house. This is the list (to the best of my recollection) of what my daughter's father won't eat: seafood, steak, hamburgers, pork, any chicken not breaded and fried, onions, garlic, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, most leafy greens, random fruits, like peaches, nectarines, and plums.... In short, I do all that cooking and running around to feed myself and the baby, then get to go to the store for his organic junk food (we have this uneven split, where when he began to carry our health insurance when mine lapsed while I took a leave to be home with the baby, I took on our entire food budget-- generally somewhere between 6 and 800/month: insurance costs just under 500, and is of course, from his pre-tax income. He does not acknowledge this inequity... but it's just one of many, like how I cough up 150 extra per month for my "half" of the rent and utilities. And, given my thriftiness in relying on that farm share, most of the food budget is to satisfy his stunted palate). He loves pizza, mac and cheese, toaster pastries, granola bars, and peanut butter. You can get him to eat apples, and an occasional salad (if you want to call lettuce with cucumbers a salad).
Yep, this is a time when I need to vent about the man I've spent the last ten years with. I've spent that decade becoming a better and better cook, at least according to me, and everyone of our friends and family I've fed, and I've spent that same ten years swallowing my frustration over his digust at just about everything I make.
I swallow disgust over a lot. The biggest issue is his lack of ability to set goals or try to improve his life-- and since his life is tied to mine, this means the only one of us who is really trying to advance our family, healthwise, financially, whatever, has been me.
During our relationship, I managed to earn first one graduate degree, land a teaching job, then land another graduate degree, in the name of increasing my salary. I managed to get us health benefits for the first time since we'd been cut off from being on our parents' policies. Even now, I'm contemplating taking on the challenge of becoming National Board Ceritified-- again, to increase my salary (and also my option: National certification would mean being able to teach in any state, not just MA). During all this time, I've had the same disproportionate commute, and I've had to put up with being treated to contempt every summer because he's jealous that after a year of 60+ hour weeks, I get nine weeks off to try to put my brain back together so I can start over again every late August. I've had to put up with him whining about how he's more tired because his job is "physical." In short, I get to bear his misplaced frustrations with himself.
I don't know how to fix this. He works for a college, and until about a year ago, when something changed due to tax laws, he could have taken any damn class he wanted for free. He could have had a bachelor's degree, easily, in those six years before the change. I repeatedly offered to do something very unscrupulous, and write all his papers for him, because, and I'm not trying to be mean here, he fails tests a lot, mostly through anxiety, and, I believe he may be functionally illiterate. I get that those are huge impediments, and it must be hard to overcome that crap. But to not even try?
I'm not sure where I stand these days. After all this swallowing of my pride and the things that frustrate me, I'm in a place where I live with a person who points out every flaw with viscious severity. Last night's blow-out was about the fact that I hadn't checked in to make sure my Netflix account hadn't started charging me more. It's coming, it's true: Netflix is trying to get out of the DVD business and go to all streaming, and the way they'll manage that is by progressively charging so much for DVD subscriptions that they either alienate their DVD clientele, or cajole them into switching to streaming only plans. It's a valid thing to expect me to be on top of my monthly bills, but he can be so patriarchal, acting like without him, I'd fall off some deep end. I pointed out to him, as well as I could with my laryngitis strangled voice, that they send me emails. All changes in billing are something they give a one month warning on. I don't need to check: they update me. And, he'd made me testy by the fact that his greeting, after coming home at 7, after coming home at 8 the night before, was to harrass me about how his Father's Day gift, a blue ray box set of the six Star Wars movies wasn't here yet, even though it's in the stores finally. I bought my own Mother's Day gift--something I already mentioned here-- and I'm still waiting to be given the money I was promised, and which I already spent, on my birthday present, and I'm supposed to part the Red Sea to make sure he gets his present from me?
It's stupid, but it's a symptom of my relationship, which I'm coming to believe is irreperably broken. He's an emotional infant, and yet I get to be patronized daily, despite the fact that I've accomplished so much in our time together, grown so much, and let's face it, am by far the more fiscally responsible. I'm beginning to wonder if one of the obstacles to becoming debt free is the very person who bullies me about ever spending on myself.
I switched my farm share pick up to Saturdays, hoping that makes my work week a little easier. Today will be my first Saturday pick up. I'm pretty sure they have some local fisherman selling through their farmstand on Saturdays too, which is a cool bonus. I'm the only fish eater in the house, but honestly, I'm the only food eater in the house. This is the list (to the best of my recollection) of what my daughter's father won't eat: seafood, steak, hamburgers, pork, any chicken not breaded and fried, onions, garlic, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, most leafy greens, random fruits, like peaches, nectarines, and plums.... In short, I do all that cooking and running around to feed myself and the baby, then get to go to the store for his organic junk food (we have this uneven split, where when he began to carry our health insurance when mine lapsed while I took a leave to be home with the baby, I took on our entire food budget-- generally somewhere between 6 and 800/month: insurance costs just under 500, and is of course, from his pre-tax income. He does not acknowledge this inequity... but it's just one of many, like how I cough up 150 extra per month for my "half" of the rent and utilities. And, given my thriftiness in relying on that farm share, most of the food budget is to satisfy his stunted palate). He loves pizza, mac and cheese, toaster pastries, granola bars, and peanut butter. You can get him to eat apples, and an occasional salad (if you want to call lettuce with cucumbers a salad).
Yep, this is a time when I need to vent about the man I've spent the last ten years with. I've spent that decade becoming a better and better cook, at least according to me, and everyone of our friends and family I've fed, and I've spent that same ten years swallowing my frustration over his digust at just about everything I make.
I swallow disgust over a lot. The biggest issue is his lack of ability to set goals or try to improve his life-- and since his life is tied to mine, this means the only one of us who is really trying to advance our family, healthwise, financially, whatever, has been me.
During our relationship, I managed to earn first one graduate degree, land a teaching job, then land another graduate degree, in the name of increasing my salary. I managed to get us health benefits for the first time since we'd been cut off from being on our parents' policies. Even now, I'm contemplating taking on the challenge of becoming National Board Ceritified-- again, to increase my salary (and also my option: National certification would mean being able to teach in any state, not just MA). During all this time, I've had the same disproportionate commute, and I've had to put up with being treated to contempt every summer because he's jealous that after a year of 60+ hour weeks, I get nine weeks off to try to put my brain back together so I can start over again every late August. I've had to put up with him whining about how he's more tired because his job is "physical." In short, I get to bear his misplaced frustrations with himself.
I don't know how to fix this. He works for a college, and until about a year ago, when something changed due to tax laws, he could have taken any damn class he wanted for free. He could have had a bachelor's degree, easily, in those six years before the change. I repeatedly offered to do something very unscrupulous, and write all his papers for him, because, and I'm not trying to be mean here, he fails tests a lot, mostly through anxiety, and, I believe he may be functionally illiterate. I get that those are huge impediments, and it must be hard to overcome that crap. But to not even try?
I'm not sure where I stand these days. After all this swallowing of my pride and the things that frustrate me, I'm in a place where I live with a person who points out every flaw with viscious severity. Last night's blow-out was about the fact that I hadn't checked in to make sure my Netflix account hadn't started charging me more. It's coming, it's true: Netflix is trying to get out of the DVD business and go to all streaming, and the way they'll manage that is by progressively charging so much for DVD subscriptions that they either alienate their DVD clientele, or cajole them into switching to streaming only plans. It's a valid thing to expect me to be on top of my monthly bills, but he can be so patriarchal, acting like without him, I'd fall off some deep end. I pointed out to him, as well as I could with my laryngitis strangled voice, that they send me emails. All changes in billing are something they give a one month warning on. I don't need to check: they update me. And, he'd made me testy by the fact that his greeting, after coming home at 7, after coming home at 8 the night before, was to harrass me about how his Father's Day gift, a blue ray box set of the six Star Wars movies wasn't here yet, even though it's in the stores finally. I bought my own Mother's Day gift--something I already mentioned here-- and I'm still waiting to be given the money I was promised, and which I already spent, on my birthday present, and I'm supposed to part the Red Sea to make sure he gets his present from me?
It's stupid, but it's a symptom of my relationship, which I'm coming to believe is irreperably broken. He's an emotional infant, and yet I get to be patronized daily, despite the fact that I've accomplished so much in our time together, grown so much, and let's face it, am by far the more fiscally responsible. I'm beginning to wonder if one of the obstacles to becoming debt free is the very person who bullies me about ever spending on myself.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Why There Need to Be Drive-Throughs that Sell Real Meals, Made with Actual Food, in Compostable Packages
I get emails from the Slow Food movement all the time. "Slow" food, or to be a slow foodie, is a synonym, sort of, for being a locavore Their most recent email was all about finding ways to creatively squeeze slow food into your busy life. Big surprise; it's what I already do-- cook in huge batches and then microwave and freeze my cooking for later dates. What's sad, is that they didn't ever right anywhere about what that means. It means that you never get to just pick up a meal on the way home and veg; it means giving up half your weekend to prep meals for the week.
But, I digress, and I'll be doing a lot of it today... The Slow Food goals, from what I've gathered: getting kids to eat real food at school (my kid will NEVER eat caf food, never ever. I'd feed her connective tissue and eyeballs first.... except I'm pretty sure that's exactly what Sloppy Joe's are... plus some sugary sauce that might also contain something that once was a tomato, albeit a heavily scientifically "enhanced" one), and getting people to eat locally, which, of course, means making more things from scratch-- slow food, he he. Hence, my days of marathon cooking. After working all day on Tuesday, I went to the farm (baby was with her father), picked my green beans and blueberries, bagged the part of the share they pick for us, then came home and made baby peaches again, plus got those green beans in the freezer, and cooked up my tomatoes. This is my "slow" life. I picked up the baby and held her only twice that day, somewhere around 5 am, and then again at nearly 8 pm. She was sleeping for half the time I held her, so I got about 30 minutes of her awake time that day.
But, and here I'm writing mostly just to get thoughts that are evil out of my head... I hate being told how much of a good role model it makes me to my daughter that I do all of this running (the studies say this is true, that having a mom with a career is especially important for daughters). Right now, I feel like telling her exactly what I shouldn't-- that she can't have it all, not a career and a family, and a healthy body and marriage, and she especially can't try to live according to principles-- like my green thing-- at the same time. Right now I have the feeling that I'm only holding about half of each of those things in my hands, and just watching the rest of it, well, run. So, shouldn't I tell her not to try? That she should just pick one or two, because trying to do all these things well will only leave her feeling frazzled, inadequate and full of fear and regret? I had no perspective on what it would mean to be a "working" mom (they all work, so I'm trying to be p.c. with those quotes). I didn't have a "working" mom, and the only friend I have who's a mom has twins.. . and so has to stay home because day care would cancel her salary, and though I'd never say it to her, I envy her, and always want to slam her when she posts about the challenges of her life, even though I know it's unfair, and not just because she posts about these challenges with such grace and humor, rather than ill will. But, I do want to slam her, because deep down, I truly don't think she gets how much worse it would be if she didn't stay home, and instead, got stuck with the feelings I so often have. But, most importantly, I know how wrong it is to look and think someone else has it greener than you.
So, to update on my resolutions, I've run once. In sneakers, that is. But, running--that is, my crazy, fast paced life-- is getting old. I'm still lamenting that I didn't go to the beach that Friday. I absolutely should have. It would have been only my second trip for the whole dang season. But, more than that, I should have gone because it's been like it always is when I'm back at work ever since. I get up at five, leave by 6:15, get to work by 7, if I'm lucky. When I get in, I put on my makeup (because I can dress, and pack, and whatever else while holding a baby at home, but I can't do up my face), sign in in the office, then I run around in my classroom, writing on the board, straightening desks. I check emails, file papers, turn in forms, make sure everything I need for the kids (the stuff to support my lessons, that is) is photocopied and ready, hook up to the breast pump for fifteen minutes or so, then begin my teaching day. I teach a 30 minute advisory group, then an 80 minute class, then have 80 minutes to continue to file and turn in forms and hook up to a breast pump again, and then, if I remember, to eat, before I teach another 80 minute class, then file and turn in forms, then drive, this time in much thicker traffic, to pick up the baby. (If you noticed, I never mentioned a bathroom trip. I occasionally sprint for one of those between bells, but I've become the sort of person who has a steel bladder. Basic occupational hazard, I guess-- that and I'm draining out fluids elsewhere). We go home, and I wash all the crap from my lunch, the baby's bottles, the pieces of that torturous pump, and every other day, it's at least two loads of laundry so we have diapers. Baby eats dinner, and by nine o'clock, I start to think about what might be microwaveable, or whether I'm okay with skipping my second meal of the day, so I can get us all, baby too, to sleep so we can get seven--interupted-- hours or so when we're lucky. Yes, I skip meals a ton. But as for not eating, it's not really something I notice (I might be hungry now, come to think of it, but I'm truly not sure). The tummy gnawing feeling goes away. You'll get headaches, and feel dizzy, but you stop having that feeling your stomach acid has begun to eat away at your spine, now that its finished with all of the various viscera in between, and settle into a numb that can carry you a solid six or eight hours, at minimum, on nothing but coffee and water.
It's quite seriously the best diet I've ever been on. I ended my pregnancy weighing in at 186 lbs, having gone into it at a bloated 155 partly due to the fact that I had been twelve weeks pregnant, then got pregnant again eight or ten weeks after losing that baby. The last time I weighed myself, a day before my birthday, I was back at 135, so that means I've lost 51 lbs since December (okay, reasonably, I can only claim to have lost 40... 11 was my kid, and other associated.... stuff)... I was on Weight Watchers, very unfaithfully, for about three months, starting right after Christmas. The rest was trying, but usually failing, to get exercise (other than all that baby bouncing and chasing, and going up and down flights of stairs to get to my classroom and to do laundry that I never factor in), and just plain old not having time to eat. It's easy to have a sarcastic thought that people who keep their baby weight must have a secret strength or support network I don't. How do they find time to eat enough to sustain it, I wonder? How do they not burn off whatever they do get time to eat just through frenetic energy expenditure alone? But, I know this isn't fair. Their struggle is the same as mine, but manifests differently. They don't even attempt slow food, and what they end up with for choices out of desperate necessity instead, isn't going to help them get back to their fighting weights. I know it isn't green on the other side. I do.
Don't get me wrong: I'm happier than I think is healthy (psychologically, speaking) that I'm this thin again. Things I refused to buy again, out of some stubborn belief I'd get back there, do fit me once again, like suits, and it's making it easier to stick to my resolutions about not spending.
It's pretty amazing that I still keep at it. I guess I need to let myself recognize that. I still keep at it. And maybe that's what the daughters in those studies were picking up on-- the fact that those moms they hardly ever saw were persistent, determined bitches.
But, I digress, and I'll be doing a lot of it today... The Slow Food goals, from what I've gathered: getting kids to eat real food at school (my kid will NEVER eat caf food, never ever. I'd feed her connective tissue and eyeballs first.... except I'm pretty sure that's exactly what Sloppy Joe's are... plus some sugary sauce that might also contain something that once was a tomato, albeit a heavily scientifically "enhanced" one), and getting people to eat locally, which, of course, means making more things from scratch-- slow food, he he. Hence, my days of marathon cooking. After working all day on Tuesday, I went to the farm (baby was with her father), picked my green beans and blueberries, bagged the part of the share they pick for us, then came home and made baby peaches again, plus got those green beans in the freezer, and cooked up my tomatoes. This is my "slow" life. I picked up the baby and held her only twice that day, somewhere around 5 am, and then again at nearly 8 pm. She was sleeping for half the time I held her, so I got about 30 minutes of her awake time that day.
But, and here I'm writing mostly just to get thoughts that are evil out of my head... I hate being told how much of a good role model it makes me to my daughter that I do all of this running (the studies say this is true, that having a mom with a career is especially important for daughters). Right now, I feel like telling her exactly what I shouldn't-- that she can't have it all, not a career and a family, and a healthy body and marriage, and she especially can't try to live according to principles-- like my green thing-- at the same time. Right now I have the feeling that I'm only holding about half of each of those things in my hands, and just watching the rest of it, well, run. So, shouldn't I tell her not to try? That she should just pick one or two, because trying to do all these things well will only leave her feeling frazzled, inadequate and full of fear and regret? I had no perspective on what it would mean to be a "working" mom (they all work, so I'm trying to be p.c. with those quotes). I didn't have a "working" mom, and the only friend I have who's a mom has twins.. . and so has to stay home because day care would cancel her salary, and though I'd never say it to her, I envy her, and always want to slam her when she posts about the challenges of her life, even though I know it's unfair, and not just because she posts about these challenges with such grace and humor, rather than ill will. But, I do want to slam her, because deep down, I truly don't think she gets how much worse it would be if she didn't stay home, and instead, got stuck with the feelings I so often have. But, most importantly, I know how wrong it is to look and think someone else has it greener than you.
So, to update on my resolutions, I've run once. In sneakers, that is. But, running--that is, my crazy, fast paced life-- is getting old. I'm still lamenting that I didn't go to the beach that Friday. I absolutely should have. It would have been only my second trip for the whole dang season. But, more than that, I should have gone because it's been like it always is when I'm back at work ever since. I get up at five, leave by 6:15, get to work by 7, if I'm lucky. When I get in, I put on my makeup (because I can dress, and pack, and whatever else while holding a baby at home, but I can't do up my face), sign in in the office, then I run around in my classroom, writing on the board, straightening desks. I check emails, file papers, turn in forms, make sure everything I need for the kids (the stuff to support my lessons, that is) is photocopied and ready, hook up to the breast pump for fifteen minutes or so, then begin my teaching day. I teach a 30 minute advisory group, then an 80 minute class, then have 80 minutes to continue to file and turn in forms and hook up to a breast pump again, and then, if I remember, to eat, before I teach another 80 minute class, then file and turn in forms, then drive, this time in much thicker traffic, to pick up the baby. (If you noticed, I never mentioned a bathroom trip. I occasionally sprint for one of those between bells, but I've become the sort of person who has a steel bladder. Basic occupational hazard, I guess-- that and I'm draining out fluids elsewhere). We go home, and I wash all the crap from my lunch, the baby's bottles, the pieces of that torturous pump, and every other day, it's at least two loads of laundry so we have diapers. Baby eats dinner, and by nine o'clock, I start to think about what might be microwaveable, or whether I'm okay with skipping my second meal of the day, so I can get us all, baby too, to sleep so we can get seven--interupted-- hours or so when we're lucky. Yes, I skip meals a ton. But as for not eating, it's not really something I notice (I might be hungry now, come to think of it, but I'm truly not sure). The tummy gnawing feeling goes away. You'll get headaches, and feel dizzy, but you stop having that feeling your stomach acid has begun to eat away at your spine, now that its finished with all of the various viscera in between, and settle into a numb that can carry you a solid six or eight hours, at minimum, on nothing but coffee and water.
It's quite seriously the best diet I've ever been on. I ended my pregnancy weighing in at 186 lbs, having gone into it at a bloated 155 partly due to the fact that I had been twelve weeks pregnant, then got pregnant again eight or ten weeks after losing that baby. The last time I weighed myself, a day before my birthday, I was back at 135, so that means I've lost 51 lbs since December (okay, reasonably, I can only claim to have lost 40... 11 was my kid, and other associated.... stuff)... I was on Weight Watchers, very unfaithfully, for about three months, starting right after Christmas. The rest was trying, but usually failing, to get exercise (other than all that baby bouncing and chasing, and going up and down flights of stairs to get to my classroom and to do laundry that I never factor in), and just plain old not having time to eat. It's easy to have a sarcastic thought that people who keep their baby weight must have a secret strength or support network I don't. How do they find time to eat enough to sustain it, I wonder? How do they not burn off whatever they do get time to eat just through frenetic energy expenditure alone? But, I know this isn't fair. Their struggle is the same as mine, but manifests differently. They don't even attempt slow food, and what they end up with for choices out of desperate necessity instead, isn't going to help them get back to their fighting weights. I know it isn't green on the other side. I do.
Don't get me wrong: I'm happier than I think is healthy (psychologically, speaking) that I'm this thin again. Things I refused to buy again, out of some stubborn belief I'd get back there, do fit me once again, like suits, and it's making it easier to stick to my resolutions about not spending.
It's pretty amazing that I still keep at it. I guess I need to let myself recognize that. I still keep at it. And maybe that's what the daughters in those studies were picking up on-- the fact that those moms they hardly ever saw were persistent, determined bitches.
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