Not Shake and Bake

For the first ever time in our marriage, Big A and I have equal school duty with the kids. I teach a MWF at 9, so Big A drops them off MWF, I pick them up MWF. TTH, I teach an afternoon class till 4, so I drop them off, Big A picks them up.

Equal. I'm launching into an aria of "At Last..."

But not so quick. He asks, "When I drop them off, I can do a Wake and Take, right?"
(Translation: They'll be ready to go, right? All I have to do is wake up and take them?)
(Explanation: He hates morning 'cos he works the late shift and is home around 2/3/4/5/ a.m. so yeah, I can do this.)
(Addendum: For the first time ever, the family schedule is being moulded by my schedule. Yay?)
(Addendum 2: Nope. It's being moulded by kid school schedules.)

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(Once)

They say the sky is on our side
greeting the pain uncomfortably.

I think the snow shoulders souls
snapping twigs and keepsakes

Into a flatter season of longing
springing and then re-learning.

Snowdrops by the handful are
already, guiltily offering hope

On our first view of this house
someone else's youth and life.

In a warm corner, like a flare
a picture of Gandhi and the
name "Michael Schwerner"
speak, then flower into trees.

______________
(Remembering the first time we looked at this house in the snow and found snowdrops and Michael Schwerner's posthumous Gandhi award from CORE sitting in the garage. Friend S has always said that--that's when the house spoke to us.)

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Spin

Yesterday, after I'd dropped the kids off at school and was driving home to work at syllabi and class prep, I ran over a squirrel. I've braked-swerved-stopped for the suicidal little creatures before and would have this time, except that this one leapt out of the undergrowth before I could harness a reaction. Serves me right. I should have biked/walked the kids. I felt the thunk of its body under the wheel and could see its inert form lying an inch or so from the edge of the road. I felt miserable.

I called my mother.

She was horrified. And suggested that to make up for taking a life, I should scatter grain in the garden for other squirrels to eat.

I'm such a bad person, that all I could think of was--but I'm not the one who eats meat! 

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Gone

Dreams
of apocalypse
of apology

turn this sheet:
winds are witchy
twitch in tantrum

these sorries--base
and bloodless
  yet seduce

to always elsewhere
arrivals; hearts
apart from here

December--lucent and lost
is patterned frosts
and year's finish

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Done

PreOCCUPY

It was a weekend of extended socializing--dinner and drinks and friends, and a pub crawl, and a movie and a gallery opening.

It's true that the only money I spent yesterday was on UNICEF, and the only money I may spend today will be on utilitarian Indie art. Yet through it all, there's the outrage of knowing that students were being brutally beaten and terrorized on a variety of campuses for non violent protests. Of seeing the howling courage of untenured assistant professor Nathan Brown's letter demanding the resignation Chancellor Katehi.

So earlier this morning there were some hasty FB exchanges with a colleague at Antioch College. And now, there's one more thing to put on the calendar. A post-kid-bedtime meeting across the kitchen table to draft a teach-in on the #occupy movement across campuses.

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At a Tangent

We're driving from dinner with friends and towards drinks with friends.

We're supposed to meet at "Sidebar," which makes me giggle like a middle-schooler inwardly because it sounds like "sideboob." I tell Big A, anticipating having to explain what sideboob might mean, but he works it out for himself. I'm disappointed.

So. How did you know?

I see a lot of boobs, Puppy.

: / 

I also see a lot of dicks and balls and buttholes. I've had to stick my finger in a lot more buttholes than you ever will.

One of the many reasons I shouldn't be a doctor.

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(Un) Break

Almost everyday that I didn't write here, I felt terrible, as though I was breaking a promise I had made to myself. Other days, I felt terrible anyway, because there was just so much to do that I couldn't spare the time to feel bad about not writing. And although some other deadlines were being met (dinners, grading, family time, job searches), things have felt wrong, off-center, subject to a constant tension resulting from getting things done *just* in the nick of time.

So today, another jab at the restart button.

I'm surprised it's just a week to Thanksgiving. But that's nothing like the shock I got the morning of Oct 28th when I discovered that it was Baby A's Halloween parade in two hours. Both kids had to manufacture their own Halloween costumes--so unlike the years when we decorated, hosted huge Halloween parties, and had costumes picked out a month in advance.  It's a good thing Baby A had her heart set on wearing a sheet to be a ghost (Shades of E.T., plus the book about Corduroy's Best Halloween Ever!) and Li'l A wanted to be Lemonhead Zombie--the fact that I know nothing about what that means is a good indication that the kid's about to be a teenager. (I'm getting old--when I tried to link to my favorite movie of all time, Google gave me a Katy Perry song? Sacrilege!) 

On to pictures! 

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Fall Fun (The Great Pumpkin)

Fall Fun (The Leaf Fight)

Happy Birthday, Baby A!

Sometimes the kids add their own decorative touches...

I don't mind the book-mess at all. Kind of love it. Don't even mind so much that the housecleaner left the elephant on the table facing forwards instead of in profile like the elephants on the frieze on the vase (I did say I have a problem :). The dingy guitar-socks, however...

New Bike Summer

Project

All morning, the kids and I walked around town putting up posters for Ubuntu Canteen.

A day perfect in so many ways.

A Taste of the Future

Today at 7:30, I was nearly the first one at the Farmers' Market and it looked completely different from when I typically show up with the kids a good three hours later after breakfast and dilly-dallying around. I must try to do this more often, although the only reason I was there instead of under covers was because I had to drop Li'L A off so he could take the school bus to a cross country meet. The hours vary, but he's usually gone most of Saturday.

We putter around, Baby A and I, doing Saturday toddler stuff, Big A not back from work yet, and it was a reminder that soon, this will be us: Big A at work as usual and Li'l A away at college, making a life. If those are the worst separations fate has in store for us, I won't complain--although they sound chillingly lonely.

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Race, Class, and Gender

There's a lot of yammering about race, class, and gender in most of my classes, but that didn't stop me from being surprised by stuff people I really like have said lately. Friend X and I were talking about some other random stuff when he said:

Your parents must respect you because you married a white guy. 

It bugged me immediately that he would think that
(a) Race: Marrying a white person (like him!) is means of obtaining respect? And we're not talking people who might find me less alien because I happen to be married to one of their own. We're talking about respect from my own parents!
(b) Gender: Marrying "well" is the only way to earn my parents' respect?

I was fuming so I went home and told my mom, who proceeded to unleash the class bomb:

Nevermind, she said. Forget it. What does he know? He doesn't even have a good education, he's just a shopkeeper.

Mortifying.

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Bombs

Came home today to a tiny, sweeeet arrangement of yellow and red Dahlias on our doorstep. No note. In a town that get frequently yarnbombed, I think we'd just been flower-bombed. Thanks, anonymous nice person.

It couldn't have happened on a better day, because all day, I'd had bombs going off in my head. I went to visit a mother who may end up losing her parental rights (CSB has filed for permanent custody of the child)  and when I asked her what she thought would be best for the chid, I could literally see her wrestle with her own shortcomings (incarceration, poverty, lack of education, bad parenting) compare them to the glowing report of the foster parents the CSB worker had just given her (partnered couple, solidly middle class, educated, very earnest and caring parents) and break down in tears saying, "I don't know. I don't know. You know?" It was raw. It felt like I had peeled her skin away from her body in one long swathe in the name of effective reportage and all-round meddlesomeness.

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Two Scenes from a Marriage

The water pipes must have been flushed today because all the non filtered taps have been gushing muddy brown. Normally, I'd just deal, but since we lost our weekly housecleaner over a month ago, I've been doing a deep clean of the toilets on Sunday night. This is Monday morning. All that work wasted. I tell Big A.

Big A: I know, Puppy. I felt so bad. That's why I've been trying to direct my pee on all the muddy water marks.

Me: Yeah. You're a helper keeper.

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

No real reason why, but when I got out of the shower this morning I simply had to ask Big A.

Me: You know how... when you orgasm... and it feels like everything is radiating from the pelvic area [I'm all scientific terminology and shit, apparently]... because a dwarf's penis... would be proportionately larger than his relative body size....  does it mean that his orgasm would be that much more intense?

[I think it says something about our level of discourse that Big A doesn't look surprised by this.]

Big A: You would have to ask a dwarf that, Puppy.

Me: You mean they didn't cover this in medical school?

Big A: No.

Me: What a woefully inadequate education.

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Size Swap

Fun clothes swap yesterday: dedicated clotheslines, lots of noshing, unedited critique, even a curtained off dressing area--although everyone was stripping in the middle of the room by the end of the evening.

And I gave away my most "hoochie" shifts to someone all of a foot shorter and way more slender than I've ever been. And shazzam--the clothes looked adorable and right on their new owner! (Apparently, it's only questionably "skanky" when you're showing both leg and cleavage at the same time.)

V and H sized me up with exaggeratedly narrowed eyes and asked if I take a size ___ or ___. And I had to say I've no idea: it's been a while since I've shopped at places that sell stuff by numbered sizes, I'm not modeling anymore, and bonus plus--I have absolutely no idea what I weigh either.

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The Youngest of Us

There was something off about yesterday--and for most of the day I just couldn't put my finger on it.

The grandparents were home instead of on one of their long walks (interminable rain); Big A was off work and in bed (and spent the rest of the day running a half marathon); it wasn't a teaching day for me (so although I was making phone calls and running errands, it was with a glorious lack of deadline); Li'l A was home too (teacher enrichment day).

Baby A--the littlest, most pampered of us--was the only one "at work" making her own playdough, eating it, and "puddling" to her heart's content hard.

Our extra sweetness to her yesterday was faintly tinged with guilt.

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