A Tight Tuesday

After a relaxing morning of back-to-back classes from 9-noon, my afternoon consisted of a women's studies meeting until 3:55, then a CASA meeting at the Children's Services two towns over at 4:00. Throw in a few kickers e.g. car needs gas, we're out of milk, Baby A needs to be picked up by 5:00, and Li'l A is hanging out at the public library after school but he needs to be picked up at 5:00, and dinner needs to start at 5:00 because it takes my kids forever to eat and they have a playdate starting at 6:00 and another playdate staggered at 6:30.

I got gas and a couple of small servings of milk (Non organic. Yikes.) at the gas station and tossed the milk into the trunk because in this weather that's at least as good as a cooler (right?), left the awesome women's studies students with discussion points at 3:40 (and the responsibility of signing out of my e-mail account--I must really trust them!), drove the 30 mins to the CASA meeting, arriving at 4:10, but not late because--well--it was Children's Services. After discussing the case plan for the CASA kids in question (who it turned out the new caseworker hadn't even met yet) for 30 minutes, segued with the brilliant, fake-smile-y: "speaking of kids, I have to pick up mine!" and did precisely that.

Dinner was dino-shaped chicken nuggets, yogurt, and milk from the car trunk (The yogurt had processed fruit!). My kids ate like champions for once--eating at home, who knew it could be like eating at McDonald's! Then they playdated all the way till bathtime with only brief breaks--once for cashew cookies and chocolate milk and another one for crying (and consequently puking--let the record show it was Baby A and not G.E.R.Dy Li'l A).

Everyone was in bed by 8:30 including me. I woke up at 9:30 to clean up for bed and went right back to the afore-mentioned bed with a short detour to text Big A, who was working the late-night shift, goodnight.

Goodnight.

A Monday (Spring, 2011)

These dreams are like demons

Where ice breeds fibrous

Before you were born

You were an ocean.

Here, everyone is moving

Their apologies like smoke

Still under the new road

An older one flows.

_

Sunday, YSO

This street reaches

all the way to the sun

These neighborhoods

are always memories

These doors half open

are half done grins

Blind, your own fool

and so ready for life

_

Happen

The quad is slippery with yesterday’s snow

His gaze is slippery with diffidence

Do I remember him?

I do! Mike! One of the best students in his class

But it’s another semester

And there’s another Mike in another class

Almost as good, just as loved.

Why do I love them anyway?

These Caitlins (F), Mikes (M), Alexes (F/M)

Love while it lasts, a semester’s worth

I mark them, meaning to mark their minds

_

Fish needs bicycle

Last spring, I taught Transnational Feminisms. Which was *wonderful*--but you know, they were the choir, there was absolutely no need to preach.

This year, I begged to be assigned the introductory Women’s Studies course with some romantic activist notion of grooming forty feminists out of a cohort of “my advisor says I have to take this course to graduate.”

Yeah. You know how this is going already. There were so many assertions of post-feminism and accusations of “reading too much into things.”

Until this: http://twitter.com/rulesforgirls

_

Old friends and older teachers

My high school FB group posted a newspaper article about our old P.E. teacher. And although I used to be terrified of her (mostly because of her somewhat bossy habit of checking if we were indeed wearing regulation bloomers under our Catholic school uniforms), it made me really nostalgic for days when my main fear was about getting picked to shoot hoops.

And on the same FB group page, an appeal for funds for another teacher whose husband has dementia. The end of Goodbye Mr. Chips always made me cry, and this does too.

_

Report

A clue that maybe listening to a lot of classical music

can make you a little too laidback:

"There will be snow tomorrow, mostly between the hours of 2 a.m. and 11 p.m."

Dude. Kind of unhelpful, you know.

Anyway. I’ve always wanted to ice-skate—

and today, I did.

A beautiful, curlicue “q”.

On the way to school/preschool/work,

in our sweet-silly, snub-nosed car.

Baby A squealed;

Li’l A gasped;

I trembled.

Fair to say we were all really surprised

and delighted/ excited /

outright panicked.

_