thank god for coffee

It is 11:00 am and here is what I have done already today:

1.  Changed 6 diapers.

2.  Made waffles for T, oatmeal for L, nursed L, morning snack for T (bread and cheese and DHA supplements), fed the dogs, fed the cat.

3. Washed a load of cloth diapers and put out to sun.

4. Hand washed the tye dye dress I bought for T at Earth Fest and hung out to dry (did not want dye bleeding on other clothes).

5. Folded a load of towels and put away; folded a load of kids clothes and put away.

6.  Pulled out too small for L (this is breaking my heart) clothes/winter stuff and put in a storage box.

7. Vacuumed the living area.

8. Cleaned paints out of T’s hair and then helped her finish her project.

9. Made 2 beds.

10. Put out the recycling for pick up.

11. Paid 4 bills (finding enough stamps!).

12. Emailed 6 students about their extra credit projects that are due at noon and they have known about since the first day of class.

13. Emailed my boss about subbing for her and then potentially teaching a summer lab (uggh) and also talked to my mom and the handyman about the dates so have childcare.

14.  Made bacon and eggs for me (I will not bore you with my need for protein versus carbs morning routine).

15. Took a quick bath and brushed my hair (this is a hassle and I have to look ‘normal’ for work; if I ever again have tenure I’m getting dreds).

16.  Sat down to look at facebook for my mom (long saga involving trying to explain how FB works to someone who uses but does not understand emails and involves my 75 year old playboy Greek uncle).

17.  Put on Oswald so T would be quiet and let L nap.

18. Organized my work bag and found my work shoes (have to be closed toe/back to be in the lab and I have exactly one pair).

19.  Made a lunch date with a friend for tomorrow that I have been trying to plan for her birthday which was in February.

20. Wrote this boring post!

And it is only Tuesday.  Oh, and I forgot the most important things: 2 cups of delicious Sumatra, nectar of the gods.

why i love fiction

I just got finished reading a Doc Ford novel (Randy Wayne White Black Widow) which is a series about a biologist ex-secret operative who I really, really like (maybe am sort of crushed on) even if he, well, likes to kill people (they are bad people usually).  And even though sometimes the plots get on my nerves RWW has some great lines and he always includes some marine biology stuff so I love that.  In this book, when Doc Ford is rescued by some other ex-secret operative type guy who is an old Englishman from the ‘cave’ which is the basement of some crazed hermaphrodite that runs a health spa on St. Lucia for super rich people and drugs them with MDA and then films them having sex with locals and then blackmails them (yes you read that right, see what I mean about the plots), the Englishman brings him a change of clothes telling him that it isn’t acceptable everywhere to be wearing cut off khaki shorts and no shirt after 7. This totally made me realize that exactly what I want is to be living in a marina in Florida in a stilt house pretending I’m a biologist and hanging out with people that wear cut off khaki shorts and no shirt all the time.   I really like the Florida Keys, too.

a good day

There are days when I feel really disappointed about where things have sort of ended up for me career wise.  I enjoy teaching but I actually would also like to pay off our house and have money to travel and enjoy my life post child rearing (it is  too scary to type out the word ‘retirement’).  I often reflect that I wish I wasn’t such a dumbass and had done my masters in environmental science instead of biology (or at least at some point during the process would have bothered to ask someone, anyone, ‘what does one do with a masters in biology?’) or gone to med school or applied to a better program and grunted out a PhD.  So, for now I’m back to being a lowly adjunct and wondering if I will have it in me to start over at the bottom of the barrel when the girls start school as a high school teacher.  But, I need a retirement of my own.  That is the reality of my situation and at least I have a couple of years more to try and figure it out.    And there are days like today when I love that I’m a teacher.  I went down to Breaking the Silence rally downtown this evening with the family (it is an event coordinated with the Day of Silence which ‘brings attention to the bullying, harrassment,  and downright homophobia Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and their Allies face’ ; sponsored  by the LBGT youth coalition).  Anyway, I went because a friend had posted about it on facebook and then one of my very, very favorite students was talking about how he coordinated it along with 3 friends in class on Thursday.  It was great being there and feeling all the positive energy for a change (positive in terms of social activism in general in my conservative Southern city) and my student was very excited to see me (he screamed and gave me a hug and then said “I’m breaking the silence” and held up his fist).  It was awesome.  And, then afterward me and the girls and the handyman walked around the dogwood arts festival downtown and listened to some hippie bluegrass and ran into some old friends who also have a VW van so we got to gripe about the lack of mechanics and the lights not always working (and no AC) and why we all really should probably just sell the damn things.  Anyway,  all in all it was a good day and it made me feel like I’m a part of something positive in our community, even if just a small part.

I’m pretty sure there is no one left reading this blog but I just really felt like writing about it.

a day in the life

Well, the whole debate over the babysitter is a moot point since she has already found a job  (the play studio I went to closed which is awful for us but it is where I met her).  The good thing is that I couldn’t really afford having her anyway but the bad thing is that I have so much work to do I am swimming in it and it would have been really helpful for her to be here next week.  By Tuesday I need to grade 70 research papers (I really need to think of an alternative assignment to this that is easier to grade), write a test, grade lab papers, find my bills to pay them (in a mad rush to get the house ready for T’s birthday party I had this brilliant idea of cleaning my desk off by throwing everything into a couple of boxes and putting them downstairs in the closet) on top of all the other domestic chores that have piled up this week.

But here T is enjoying her cake.  The party was a lot of fun and doesn’t she look like a little girl now?

well…

Work and facebook are derailing the blog.  I’m still reading yours though.

must be a full moon

I’m wide awake and it must be the full moon.  Pearl had the surgery and I felt bad for her being a cone head so I took it off for her to eat and then L got fussy and I forgot to put it back on and luckily the handyman wandered into the kitchen before she licked the damn thing open.  And then since it is such a beautiful night we wandered down to Uncle Beer Can’s and as we were strolling back saw this crazed dog with a cone running towards us.  Apparently, she busted through the kid gate which we use to keep the dogs in and the girls out of the dining room/kitchen, ran down two flights of stairs and out the garage door (which we must have left open oops!).  Hopefully, she didn’t do any major damage.  I think the fact that she can’t use it at all is good news.  But oh boy is it going to be a long month for her (and me).

Had an awesome day outside though.  It is gorgeous weather here and the plague has almost left our house.  Happy Monday!

happy birthday T

I can’t believe that she is already two years old.  I get sad thinking how the time is flying but then I get excited thinking about how I’ll be able to teach her to SCUBA dive and we can go hiking together in the desert.

I so love this girl. And yes, she thinks she is a princess.

just bear with me

Okay, so before the semester started I had some concerns about my 78 year old mom and 74 year old father (who is not very mobile) caring for my two children two afternoons a week while I worked.  My dad also seemed nervous and said to both me and the handyman on several different occasions “it would be really nice if we had someone to help out if something came up.”  So, I hired a babysitter to help for $10 an hour 8 hours a week.  I know this may not seem like much money to some but it actually turns into a pretty good chunk of change at the end of the month considering I am only working part-time and the state still has a freeze on the handyman’s salary increase (which a lot of our planning financially had been based on as he was working on his promotion–which he got without the pay raise because of the freeze–for 3 years).   We can swing it but of course would rather have the extra cash in our account as would anyone, right?   Anyway, she couldn’t start until this week (today) so my parents had the girls solo for the past two weeks and things have gone very, very well.  Basically, my dad likes to hold babies so if L is fussy he will rock her to sleep and hold her for two, three hours if she’ll let him.  And they seem genuinely thrilled to have this time with the girls, too.  Yesterday my mom was lamenting about my hiring Khaley (the cost, plus just having someone around all the time will make her uncomfortable as she is kind of a loner in general) which I can totally relate to/understand.  I mentioned the reason I did so was because of dad saying he really thought we needed back up and he got totally pissed at me and said “I only meant in case of an emergency like if someone dies or something” to which I explained that of course the handyman could take the afternoon off or I could get a sub if that occurred.  They both seemed kind of mad at me that I hired Khaley, somehow implying that I thought they were not competent (which is somewhat true).  I talked it over with the handyman and called Khaley this morning to see if we could adjust her hours so that she could come over here in the morning and help me and then help with naps and the transition to my mom’s house (like one of my concerns was if one of the girls was asleep over here what would I have to do, wake her up?).  This is money well spent because it will improve the quality of my life immensely and I had already planned our budget around this expense.  I would really like to spend some one on one time with T as she just turned 2 and she really seems to do a lot better with her jealousy issues and behavior if we can spend time just the two of us.  Plus, it would be great to have scheduled time where I could go to the basement or the coffee shop with my laptop and work on my online class if needed or write a test or whatever.  Or I could go work out which my body needs.  Or I could simply nurse L to sleep and relax for an hour or so.    I am pretty excited about this and although an expense like I said it will improve the quality of my life especially since my folks are doing fine and the handyman is always available if needed.   I call my mom this morning to tell her thinking she will be excited about this since she was so unhappy yesterday about Khaley coming over today.  Suddenly, they are back to ‘what will be do if something comes up’ and I finally figure out that what they want is to have someone at their beck and call in terms of convenience.  In other words, if my dad feels like working on Tuesday afternoon he would have that option with the ‘back up.’  I tried to explain that it was damn near impossible to have someone in the wings for a $10 babysitting gig (I was really lucky to find Khaley actually).  And what makes me angry is my dad works very, very part-time so there is no reason his appointments could not be scheduled for the morning on those days or in the late afternoon (4:30 or 5:00) if it was a rush emergency.

They are simply making.me.crazy.  I get that it is my responsibility to find childcare for my children if I choose to work.  Which I did by hiring a babysitter.  But then don’t get all upset about that by saying that you want to be the ones to take care of my children because you love doing so.  Just commit people either way I am cool with it.  And, I think underneath this all lies the attitude that I am just working for ‘extras’ because growing up that is what my mother’s salary provided our family.    My mom has made sort of off-handed comments about our ‘gym membership at the Y’ and our ‘expensive cable’ (both of which are totally an extravagance but they equal a whopping $100 or so total of our bills a month which of course we could eliminate if necessary).  I don’t feel like I should have to defend myself or explain that yes my salary pays for the pimping Y membership and Flight of the Conchords On Demand but it also pays for our student loans, and those pesky utility bills, car insurance or conversely it pays for the mortgage and food.

But I am keeping Khaley’s morning schedule for now.  She is looking for a job since the play studio closed (but trying to keep her options open as we are all hoping it will open back up if the owner can find another partner which is why it closed).    I need a break honestly and I need to start enjoying my life more and this will help with both of those things.  We will eat out less as I’ll be more inclined to cook on the days I work if she comes so that will save us money and I won’t feel this constant pressure that I need to be grading or answering emails as my children watch more PBS than I would like them to.  I just wish there were more alternatives in general for working women.  I think about that ginormous government bail out to the banks which has done nothing in general for the economy (and I just read an interesting article about the banks that were solvent during all of this and didn’t need a bail out so it was just fucking corporate greed after all).  But that is a rant for another day as both my children are asleep and I need to take a shower.

Here is hoping you never experience the joys of the RSV virus as well.  This has been a hard week for the babies.

raining pouring old man snoring

Started working.  Ear infection and now RSV kicking our collective family ass (T may even have to get an IV for fluids tomorrow since she was moderately dehydrated today and she will drink NOTHING and believe me we have tried everything including trying to administer with a syringe).  L has it too and had to use a nebulizer which breaks my heart.  I am hoping she doesn’t get worse before she gets better.  Add that I took our almost 9 year old brittney spaniel Pearl in and she has a blown knee.  I spent $400 on the diagnosis and now we have decided to do the surgery for a grand.  Yes, you read that right.  We are going to pay $1,000 to repair her knee.  The thing is that when we first thought this was the case (a couple of weeks ago she wasn’t walking on it and her regular vet thought torn ACL) we decided there was no way we could swing the surgery.  My beloved Scout had both hers done but this was pre-kids and double plus income.  But, ultimately Pearl is my girl and I can’t just throw her under the bus.  I like the vet (he was recommended by a science teacher friend who worked for years in the clinic) and if we don’t repair it she will be in pain and her body will just degenerate until finally I guess we have to put her down.  The vet thinks this will give her the same quality of life she has now (she is a crazy run through the woods off leash dog) for at least 4-5 more years.  So, I am doing something I haven’t done in a really, really long time which is putting the surgery on my credit card.  I haven’t carried a balance in so long I don’t even remember what my the APR (is that even what it is called, you know they % interest they charge??) is anymore.  And there goes the major back yard overhaul I had earmarked some money to work on this Spring.  Still, it is the right thing to do I think.

On a positive note, I have this totally adorable vegan student named TJ who is my first student ever to petition to not do the dissections based on his personal philosophy.  Go TJ!  It is quite an arduous process and I am impressed with his convictions.

Here is to an RSV house by Monday.

testy

Maybe it is the third week of my only sleeping about 2 hours in a row before being wakened by a toddler with an ear infection or a baby who I now think might have a cold but I am already feeling a bit irritated by my college students.  Because of last Spring’s problems I decided to go the tough love route with my classes in terms of tardiness.  I told them the first day of class how rude it is to be consistently tardy, how it is disruptive to both the teacher and student (door opening, climbing over the rows of backpacks strewn out on the floor, ruffling through the bag) so if tardies became an issue then I would simply start locking the door at the start of class.  Most students took it kind of well but this one woman started flipping out on me and saying how it would not right if she was a couple of minutes late to be locked out, etc., etc.  I told her to talk to me after class at which she explained that she wasn’t the type of person that was consistently tardy and I reassured her that I would not start the door locking as long as tardy students did not become a disruption to learning.  And of course she was tardy yesterday.  I also gave them the lecture on the fact that there was no need to bring a bag of McDonald’s into class and enjoy lunch during lecture (yes this happens, more often than you could fathom).  That the point is that it is fast food so they should be able to scarf it down before class begins.  That believe it or not the constant tapping on cell phones and the opening up and rustling of multiple bags of snacks actually is a (gasp!) disruption.   I explain that the first couple of weeks of lecture this semester are brutal because we are doing a review of all the different groups of living things so it is a lot of factoids and not much ‘process’ which I understand can be tiring.  Plus the class is a T/R lecture which means an hour and twenty minutes straight which is a long time to listen to the natural history of plasmodial slime molds and the different ways zooflagellates move.   But, there is just so much content that is covered in the second semester of biology that there simply is no way around it but to jump right in and get to it the first day.  And I almost had to laugh at the 20 year old guy who wanted me to email my power point because ‘his hand cramped from writing’ (there are lots of breaks when we look at pretty pictures trust me) and the young woman who told me her biology teacher last semester provided them an ‘outline so we would not have to write as much” to which she added “I learn much better this way” which of course is implying that she isn’t learning from me.  I actually used to do both of these things (email power points and provide outlines) but then realized that most students learn by writing stuff down so the outlines were scrapped and I was tired of doing all the work for my students as they would sleep or text in class knowing they could review my power point at their leisure.  My reply to both of them was that they could shorthand the notes (i.e. create their own outline during class which could be filled in by actually (again gasp!) reading the text book.  I also asked both of them if they had read the chapter as I suggested last Thursday before coming to class but this was met with as you imagine the typical response (uh, no).   I was nice about all this but ultimately I am sorry that high school’s simply spoon feed students for 4 years so that when they are expected to actually take ownership of their learning it is much easier to blame the messenger (and that they all assume they should make an A with minimal effort).    Okay, rant over.  Happy Wednesday!