Miz S

Not Too Many Degrees of Separation

What an odd weekend. There has been rather a lot of activity, but not the kind of activity that makes me feel centered and ready for the work week. I didn't manage my time well. Plus, I didn't feel on top of my game.

Sasha came up from college unexpectedly on Friday night because she wasn't feeling well. Seeing her play with the cats and fuss over the dogs was definitely the best part of the weekend.  On Saturday night she went with us to dinner at Mark and Trish's house. I know! We just spent the weekend with them! What the hell? Mark's mom was visiting from out of town and I think that we were invited to provide a buffer zone. I didn't feel as if I overindulged in food or alcohol, and yet, in the wee hours of the morning I woke up with SEVERE HEARTBURN. Gross! Heartburn is for old people and pregnant women! It was insanely painful. I lay around for a long time just hoping it would go away, but finally I got up around 5am and went downstairs to rummage through all of Josh's medications (he has stomach issues) and find some freaking MAALOX. I fell back asleep around 6am and didn't wake up again until 9am. I don't know about you all, but I really hate sleeping late on the weekend. It annoys me to use up my precious weekend time by SLEEPING. So that really fucked up my Sunday. And I felt like shit.

BUT. Check this out.

We went over to Josh's parents' house for lunch to see his cousin Sara, who had just returned from a trip to Belarus. She's all into her Jewish roots and learning Yiddish. She went to this little town called Pinsk, which is where Josh's grandparents emigrated from in the early 1900's. And it's a damn good thing they did, because all the Jews in Pinsk  (20,000 to 30,000) were murdered by the Nazis in 1941-1942. Sara hired a guide to take her to the old Jewish shtetl, and to the small synagogue which still exists there, and to look at the old census records and stuff. It was just exactly like that movie Everything is Illuminated.

Which, if you've never seen it, is incredibly funny, moving, and quirky.

Anyway, we were very interested because when we go to Russia next spring, we were thinking that maybe we could make a stop in Belarus and see where Josh's grandparents came from. (That's not going to work out, though, because it's too far and we won't have enough time.)

But this is the weird part to me. When we got back home, I was googling Pinsk and the Holocaust and stuff, and I clicked on a link which turned out to be written by Sasha's academic adviser, Dr. K, who is also the woman who inspired Sasha to major in Religious Studies. Dr. K is originally from Germany, and she has done a lot of research on Jewish-Christian relations and the Holocaust. She is currently on sabbatical investigating the failure of post-war Germany to prosecute and convict the perpetrators of Nazi atrocities. She became interested in this topic because her own great-uncle was a Nazi who was never prosecuted for his war crimes.  He was the Vice Commissioner of Pinsk, and he was personally in charge of the murder of the 20 - 30,000 Jewish inhabitants of the town.

So. The woman who has been a mentor to Sasha is related to the man who killed the friends and relatives of Sasha's great-grandfather lo those many years ago.

Is that bizarre, or what?

Teasing Mr. Alligator Can't Catch Me.

Oh, there's so much to tell you. I hardly know where to start.

First of all, I like my job again, and can hardly tear myself away at the end of the day.  Right on schedule. Remember a few weeks ago I was all moan-y and whiny? Josh ignored it, for the most part, except for reminding me that I always hate the first 6 weeks of school.

"Noooooo!" I whined. "This is different! I can't do this job anymore! I want to work at Barnes & Noble!"

I told my friend Ellen that I probably wouldn't be teaching much longer, and that I DEFINITELY POSITIVELY would NOT be buying any more stuff for my classroom. (She mocked me today when I said I might be going to Staples after work to buy some stuff. Damn her.)

The reason I feel better is that I have bonded with my class. It sort of creeps up on you. For the first few weeks they are just a bunch of annoying six-year-olds. Oh, don't be shocked. It's true. There are always a few that are sweet and cute, but as a group they tend to be aggravating in the beginning of the year. They're rolling around on the floor, or they're pushing and hitting, or they want to go play in the bathroom. They're SIX, for crying out loud.

Little by little they come around. They begin to want to please you, which improves their behavior and makes you feel less put upon. You start getting I-love-you notes from the girls.  The boys find pictures of snakes and sharks in books and babble excitedly to you about danger and poison and BLOOD! You get to know them a little better as individuals. You find out that Deon is a love bug, and that in the afternoon at dismissal time he has to hug Caleb and Berhan and Pablo. Hieu is a budding stand-up comedian and cannot stop entertaining the masses. Gisselle understands how other people feel. Stephanie, the one with the hard eyes, has dropped her defenses and turns out to be an angel. She was the first one who started writing me notes. Cassia, who is painfully shy, will dance with abandon when I put on music. I could go on and on, but I won't. The point is simply this: as hard and frustrating as this job can be, and as helpless as we feel sometimes in the face of all that we cannot change (inappropriate curricular demands, stupid parents, bad press), our reward is the relationship that we forge with these small, squirmy children. Which is good, because HAVE I MENTIONED THAT THEY DON'T PAY ME ENOUGH?

Obviously this doesn't mean that I won't still complain about my job. But I think you can safely ignore at least 50% of my angst.

*   *   *

Have I mentioned that Josh and I will be going to Russia in 6 months? Evangeline will be spending the spring semester there, and we will go to see her during my spring break. Planning a trip to Russia seems way more daunting than a trip to Italy. It is so much farther, and there will be so many, well, Russians. Signs will be in Cyrillic. We will have to depend on the kindness of strangers. Russian strangers.

Remember when I went to Italy, I was supposed to learn Italian before we left but you guys totally slacked and didn't remind me so I forgot? HMMMM? Well, for this trip I have decided to re-learn French. I figure there is no way in hell that I am going to learn Russian, except for maybe a few phrases, but I have many years of French in my brain so I think it makes sense to focus on that. Lots of Russians speak French. (I'm making that up. I have no idea. But I will feel better if I speak something besides just English.) So, don't forget to remind me to study. I bought a French language learning program at Staples last night when I was supposed to be just making a quick run to the grocery store picking up green peppers, milk, eggs, cereal, and cat food. I wandered home, very late, to find Josh drumming his fingers impatiently (he needed the green peppers for the stir-fry he was making for dinner).

And I forgot the green peppers, but he was very understanding and didn't beat me with a large stick.  He made do with frozen peas.

It Happened A Long Time Ago.

I promised you a bear story, and a bear story you shall have.

The summer before they were married, my little sister Sarah and her boyfriend, Robert, went on a cross-country camping trip. They are very outdoorsy, those two. One of their destinations was Glacier National Park in Montana, and they knew they would be hiking and camping in the less-traveled areas of the park.

"Ha-ha! Watch out for bears!" we all said.

They tied bells to their backpacks, and they read all the tips about how to avoid bears and what to do if you see one.

Lo and behold, they were attacked by a bear. Robert was hiking in front of Sarah because she was creeped out by all the snakes on the path (I am not lying--doesn't that sound like a FUN vacation?). A grizzly bear came out of nowhere and charged him. Robert remained calm, dropped face down to the ground, and pulled his backpack up as high as he could over his neck. The bear bit his shoulder, clawed him up a bit, and bit his ankle. It also began to drag him away by the ankle. (It is at this point in the story that Josh always asks, "When exactly do you decide that the playing dead thing isn't working and it's time to try something different?)

Because my sister was hiking behind Robert, she had enough time to seek shelter under a fallen log. Sarah could hear all the noise but couldn't see anything, and she said later that all she could think about was how to get the pieces back to the ranger station.

Eventually the bear lost interest and wandered off. Sarah and Robert made their way to the ranger station to report the incident and seek first-aid for Robert. He was taken to the hospital and treated and released.

The rangers went out to look for the bear, and one of them was attacked and hurt seriously. The bear was shot and killed. Which is unfortunate, but I suppose they have to do something with an aggressive bear in a public park. And no, I don't want to debate the ethics of humans invading bear country and then shooting bears that act like bears.

Oh, and the way we found out about it? They didn't call home to tell anyone.The story was picked up on the AP newswire and The Washington Post carried a little news article about Sarah My Last Name, age 22, and her companion, Robert His Last Name, both residents of the DC area, who had been attacked by a bear in Montana. I seriously went weak in my knees and sobbed hysterically when Josh called me to relay the news. Stupid asses!

Anyways.

Sarah and Robert lived to tell the tale. They went on to get married and birth three wonderful children and buy a vacation home in the Adirondacks, and we never saw them again.

Well, we see them now and then.

Also? My sister Sarah became a teacher in her middle-aged years, just like me.

I can't think of a clever way to end this tale.

Josh just asked me if I was writing about how wonderful he is.

We Went Away. Then We Came Back.

We went away for the weekend. Our friends, Mark and Trish, have been itching to take us to Mark's brother's vacation house in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. 'Cause we are so much fun!!! I was a little leery about it, because, you know, 48 hours of socializing and being polite takes its toll.

Somebody had the bright idea that we should all drive down together in the same car. I will admit that when I first heard this idea I said, "That sounds like fun!" But their 3 kids, whom we love with all our hearts and souls, were in fightin' mode, causing Trish to have to yell at them 40 or 50 times, and that was a little awkward. Plus, the drive was 4 hours, and, I don't know, I was tired I guess.  I wished I had my own car.

The weekend was fun, though. It was all about the hiking on treacherously steep trails and the eating and the watching of movies at night. And then more of the hiking. Occasionally I had to go hide in my room for a little while because you know how I am. I NEED ALONE TIME. Plus, I missed the dogs and I had to call my mother-in-law to check on them.

The drive home today was not quite as bad as Friday night's drive,  because I took one for the team and volunteered to sit in the way-back with the two youngest, so that the 15 year old could sit in the middle seats with Josh, thereby separating the two biggest fighters.

I missed my precious being-home-on-the-weekend-time, but I'm glad we went. My only regret is that we didn't see any bears.

Hey, remind me to tell you sometime about when my sister Sarah and her then-boyfriend now-husband, Robert, were attacked by a grizzly bear in Glacier National Park. Hoo-boy, that was exciting!

I Am Gigantic.

Back to School Night went swimmingly. I have some very sweet parents. About half of them showed up, which is not too bad. If I had made phone calls the day before I would have gotten more, but I was too busy to do that, what with my heavy blogging schedule. 

After I had finished singing and dancing for the parents, I walked them downstairs to the cafeteria so they could meet the specialists (art, music, PE, resource, speech, etc.--we really put these poor parents through the wringer). Just then, the father of one of my students showed up, hurrying, asking for directions to my classroom. I was really glad to see him because I have some concerns about his child and I need to document a conversation with one of her parents before I can submit the paperwork for a meeting with the school's educational management team.

He was an older dad, with a lovely weathered, crinkly face. And tiny. I TOWERED over the man, big gangly American woman that I am. He spoke only Spanish, so my translator came back upstairs with me to help out.  It became apparent when I asked him to fill out a couple of papers that he cannot read or write, aside from his own name. Every year that I have taught at this school I have had at least 1 parent like this. And don't be thinking this is just an immigrant issue, because the illiteracy statistics for US citizens are shockingly high. Oh, right. Teachers suck. I forgot.

Anyway, we talked with the dad and told him that there would be a meeting soon about his daughter and that he and his wife should both come. I assured him that his daughter is muy intelligente, but I can only understand about half of what she says HELLO SPEECH ISSUES.

At the end, the little tiny man stood on his tiptoes to shake the hand of me, the Giantess Teacher, and said, in Spanish, that there were no words to express his gratitude. This melted my heart of stone, and I am all re-inspired about teaching again.

And so, the pendulum that is my mood swings again.

Do NOT roll your eyes at me, young lady.   

I'll Tell You Whut.

Tonight is Back to School Night at my school. Or "BTSN" as we call it in the biz. We don't really call it that. I just wanted to say "the biz."

BTSN usually fills me with excitement and dread and earnest anticipation. This year? Not so much.

I have finally realized (from reading your blogs-ahem) that most parents really don't want to come and that our pathetic attempts to present information about our school districts' programs are met with derisive eye-rolling.

Actually, the parents at our school, being mainly HARD-WORKING, APPRECIATIVE, DIRT-POOR immigrants are not nearly as hard to please as y'all annoying middle-class parents with computers and high-speed internet connections.

I notice this year that I am not nearly as driven to work my ass off making everything perfect for BTSN as I have been in the past. This is either a symptom of teacher burnout or me finally being a little sensible.

To tell you the truth, our BTSNs are kind of fun. There are always about a million little kids and babies in attendance, which lends a certain high-decibel element to the evening. And I enjoy seeing the little siblings and the grandmas. What I don't like is standing up in front of the parents and doing the spiel.

Have I mentioned recently how much I adore my friend E. at work? She is funny, smart, creative, and has just a little bit of a bad attitude. You know how much I like a bad attitude.  Oh, and she is a freak about fonts. I'll tell you all about her font fetish someday. Last night I sent her the following email:

Hey.

Are you going to do snacks tomorrow night?

I am so unmotivated.

Remember last year I had pictures of the kids up on
the wall, and that little slide show? This year, I'm
not doing anything like that.

WHY, E. ? WHY AM I SO UNMOTIVATED?

This morning I found this reply from her:

MARY!!!!!

 

Snacks?  Aren't they all watching their weight?  I can't recall snacks at any of the 3 Back to School Nights I've recently (as in tonight was the latest one) attended.  Get'um in and get'um out.  It's a freakin public school and you're free babysitting.  Get over it!!!!

This makes her sound like a hard-ass who doesn't care, which she isn't at all. She really wrote it for her own benefit. She is the kind of teacher who stays up late at night creating amazing things and then makes copies for her lame friend (me).

How great is it to have a co-worker like that? Pretty fucking great, I'll tell you whut.

I must go make myself beautiful now. Oh, check this out: Josh had a little accident on his scooter last night. He was scooting to his after-work softball game with a co-worker on the back of the scooter, which lends it a certain amount of instability (it being a small scooter and a large co-worker). He came in with bloody, bruised legs but I didn't get too excited because he played softball anyway so how bad could it be?  I'm amazed at how calm I am sometimes.  I am not posting a picture of his legs because it's actually kind of gross. You're welcome.

Brought To You By A Sprawling High Pressure System.

I am ecstatically happy for no reason in particular. Maybe because of the weather? It is so beautiful that it makes me catch my breath. Here is a question for you.  Is there a place in the continental United States where this type of weather is typical: nighttime lows in the 40's or 50's, daytime highs in the 70's, a crystalline blue sky,  and sunlight slanting softly through trees? Is there a place where it is like that all the time? Because I want to move there. And I want to have a lot of money and not have to work, and just take my dogs on walks and do yard work and read books.

You know, like I was able to do all summer. When I was bored and whined that I needed more structure.

God, I'm such a jerk.

Hey, guess what? I'm not bringing teacher work home anymore. I have noticed that I am equally busy at work whether or not I have also worked at home the previous evening. So why torment myself?

In other news, I crave poetry in my life right now. And ice cream. Poetry and ice cream. That's not too much to ask for, is it?

No, I have not been drinking.

Old People Are Deaf And They Shuffle.

Let's talk about my parents.

Have I ever told you that my parents are the funniest old people ever?  They still live in the big five-bedroom house that I used to sneak out of at night when I was a bad teenager. They stay mostly on the main floor, moving between the bedroom, the bathroom, the kitchen, and the dining room. A small, messy kingdom that smells faintly of cat pee. They move more and more uncertainly. They shuffle.

My parents used to have an antique business. What didn't sell, or what my mother couldn't bear to part with, is in the house, usually with the tag still attached. "Amish milking stool with original red paint, $35,"  in my mother's crabbed handwriting.

This is hilarious to me.

Little pieces of paper with our phone numbers are taped up all over the kitchen. At least once a month, my mother asks me for my cell phone number, which she writes on yet another little piece of paper and carefully tapes up on the kitchen wall. Her absent-mindedness and her refusal to use anything so simple as, say, a Rolodex, used to annoy me, but I now accept it with an amused sigh. Her constant re-telling of anecdotes from my childhood is a little harder to put up with, but I am working on that.

My father is brilliant and funny in an understated, modest way. He is also possessed of more patience than anyone I know. He does the grocery shopping and tries to keep my mother grounded in the present. He goes to his chemotherapy appointments quietly, without fanfare. He is more stooped every week, I swear.

Josh's mother is the same age as my parents, but she is incredibly vigorous and busy and has never shuffled a day in her life. His dad is older, (87 this year) and as deaf as a post, but also seems way stronger than my parents. It's that Russian peasant stock, I assume.

(My prediction for the future: Josh will live to a ripe old age, strong and able, while I will have a precipitous decline after about age 75 and he will end up having to change my diapers. HA! In your FACE, sturdy Russian peasant stock!)

There was a day in July, the week before my surgery, when I offered to help my parents with a book-purging operation at their house. Their former antique enterprise included collecting and selling old books, which led to an over-abundance of books in a house that already had too many of them. A fellow book-dealer had offered to buy them, so my parents were all busy trying to get them packed up.

I arrived at their house at the agreed-upon time. No one answered the door. I used my key to let myself in, and announced myself cheerily in a loud voice. Because, you know, old deaf people. No one answered. The house was eerily silent. I checked out in the backyard to see if they were on the patio. Nope.

Could they be napping?

I peeked around the corner into their bedroom. They were lying in their bed, facing each other, my father in his boxers and a t-shirt, my mother in her short nightie (AUGGH!), talking quietly to each other, my mother's leg resting casually on top of my father's leg. It was a moment of such quiet intimacy, such communion, that for a second or two I just watched, captivated, but at the same time a little horrified, as if I had walked in on them having sex.

I drew back so they couldn't see me, and re-announced my self REALLY LOUDLY.

They had forgotten that I was coming over.

My father and I spent a couple of hours putting books in boxes, while my mother went along behind us taking various books out saying, "Well, no, we can't get rid of this one!"

Again with the hilarious.

My glimpse of that private vignette has stayed with me, and I have turned it over and over in my mind.

It has made me both sad and happy. 

I am Ironman.

The post title has nothing to do with the post. It's the Black Sabbath song that Josh has been singing, OVER AND OVER AGAIN, for the last 15 minutes, since he saw a commercial for the movie.

In the past, on 9/11 I have written something heartfelt about the blue sky and the confusing, sad day. But I have nothing different to say this year. So, let's discuss more prosaic matters, shall we?

Hey, isn't it great that there is a word, "prosaic" that rhymes with "mosaic", in case you are writing a limerick? About retiling your bathroom?

Which reminds me. Once, Evangeline mused thoughtfully that limerick writers everywhere must be thankful for the words lusty, busty, and thrusty.

Yes, I drank wine with dinner. Why do you ask?

Speaking of dinner, goddammit, I cooked a good dinner tonight. It's my week, you know.  Y'all keep track, right?  I'm trying to convert Josh to vegetarianism, so all my dinners this week are fucking awesome vegetarian dinners. Tonight it was Penne Pasta with Swiss Chard, and roasted butternut squash on the side. The words do not BEGIN to convey how incredibly delicious this meal  was.

Oh, wait? You didn't know I was a vegetarian? I'm not, really. But I'm always threatening to become one. You KNOW how I am about the animals. The thing is, I have no problem with the basic concept of eating animals, and I would happily eat a nice flank steak from a cow that I knew had lived a happy life in a field of clover and then died very suddenly and painlessly. But the whole meat market scenario makes me very, very unhappy.

So, hooray for roasted squash! And entire bottles of red wine on a Tuesday night!

Dinner-making was punctuated with a lot of conversation about next summer. You know how Josh's parents take us to the beach every summer for the past 18 years?  Because they are nice?  God knows we are ungrateful little shits (and I am including Josh's sister here) who complain from time to time about the lack of amenities at the Fenwick Island beach house that we have rented for the past 5 summers, or the amount of time that we must spend rubbing elbows with all our relatives (hi! that's me!), when in fact we should be embracing togetherness and thanking God for our good fortune.

So, we are looking for a new beach house to rent this year, and the family consensus is that we should go to the Outer Banks which is where we USED to go until I became paranoid about the unguarded beaches and refused to ever go there again after the summer when 6 or 8 people drowned in one month. The extended family has implied that I am overly worried about drowning, but you and I know that I am right. I have told Josh that I will consent to a house at an unguarded beach, but I reserve the right to say, "I told you so" if anyone drowns. Unless I am the one who drowns, in which case I am missing the best "I told you so" ever.

So, if any of you guys have a good line on an Outer Banks beach house that allows pets, let me know.

The Amanda Update: It's Not Pretty.

Remember my friend Amanda? Crappy life, fucked-up disease, etc? Click here, here, or here if you need background. She has continued to languish in the intensive care unit of a local hospital. I have visited her, somewhat infrequently, what with my busy life, tra la, tra la.

On the down side, she still can't move her arms or legs and the doctors are not optimistic that she ever will use them again. On the up side, she  was finally  weaned off the ventilator.  Unfortunately,  that turned out to be a bad thing, in a way, because as soon as they were certain that she could breathe on her own they transferred her indigent, Medicaid ass to a different facility.

She is now in a "Nursing and Rehabilitation Center". I had pictured some state-of-the-art, Discovery Health channel type place. You know, where brave young men learn to walk again, urged on by brilliant physical therapists and a dedicated nursing staff.

Evidently, I exist in some sort of fantasy world. It turns out to be just a crappy little nursing home, somewhat dilapidated from the outside, filled with sad, sad people.

Her mother called me yesterday to let me know that she had been moved. She sounded very upset, and I tried to soothe her by  saying, "Oh, but now she'll get the physical therapy she needs!  Yay!"

I didn't really say "yay."

Then I went there to see her and I just about fucking lost it. What a grim place to spend the bulk of your remaining life. Because, let's be honest, her chances for a full recovery are almost non-existent. Her chances of contracting pneumonia or some other infection are huge. The doctors have told her mother that Amanda should have a living will in place with instructions about whether or not to resuscitate.

Amanda's roommate, oh God. She is sort of young-ish, (30's?) and her hands were encased in these gigantic sort of mitten bandages, as big as boxing gloves. Because, you see, she chews on herself. I watched her gnawing in a determined fashion on the bandages and saw her make quite a bit of progress. It was hard to ignore.

Amanda, who still can't talk, mouthed to me in an excited way that someone tried to kill her roommate by putting a pillow over her face yesterday! Amanda's grip on reality being slightly tenuous, you see.

At least, one hopes that this is the case.

I stayed for as long as I could stand it, then went home and ate about a thousand tootsie rolls. There being, you see, a mathematical relationship between level of grief and amount of chocolate that must be consumed.

Sorry. This isn't exactly cheerful fare for a Monday morning. And I feel as if I should have something wise to say here, but I don't, so I'm going to hit the publish button and go get ready for work.