Instead of posting today.....
...I updated yesterday`s post. See below.
posted by L. at 7:58 AM
0 comments
Saturday, September 30, 2006
Friday, September 29, 2006
Okay, this REALLY makes me want to go home to Tokyo.... (UPDATED)
I just had a woman threaten to call Child Protective Services on me. And I thought my preschool "problems" made me a bad mother -- this sort of puts them in perspective.
This afternoon, Little Son and I went to pick up the big kids at school. I couldn`t find a parking place right in front of the school, so I parked up the street, across a small intersection with four-way stop signs.
Little Son was wearing his flip-flops. It is not flip-flop weather in San Francisco -- it`s chilly, sweater weather here -- but he wears them every Monday and Wednesday night to karate, so I let him wear them to other places if we`re not going to be outside for a long time.
Daughter and a friend of hers, who was coming over, was pulling Little Son to the car on her backpack (which has wheels, like a little suitcase). They were dawdling -- I stopped at the intersection and told them to stop kidding around and hurry up.
"But we have to pull him! He doesn`t have any shoes!" said Daughter. He had taken off his flip-flops and was barefoot, and was not letting his feet touch the ground.
"Get off that, get your shoes on, and let`s GO, NOW," I said to Little Son, not too nicely.
I started crossing the intersection, turned around --- and saw Little Son, still barefoot, wobbling off the backpack, and falling into the street. In front of a car.
Now, there`s something special about this particular intersection. It`s in a residential neighborhood, but it does have steady traffic.
And there`s a scholarship at our school, given out every year by the parents of a six-year old boy who was struck and killed by a car -- right there, in that very spot.
"I TOLD YOU TO GET OFF THAT," I snarled, swatting Little Son`s butt, picking him up under one arm, and dropping him on the sidewalk on the other side, where he did a little "duck and roll" maneuver before standing up.
Suddenly, other cars were honking, as one screeched to a halt. A woman about my age got out, brandishing a cell phone.
"I`m calling Child Protective Services RIGHT NOW!"
"He was playing in the street!" I said.
"Is that your child? Are you his MOTHER?" she asked.
"Yes!" I said, "and he was playing in the street!"
Little Son wasn`t crying. He just stood there, barefoot, looking from me to the woman and back. My other two kids and their friend watched. People came out of their houses to watch, too.
"I can`t believe you just did that! I have four kids, and I would never do to any of them what you just did to him!" she said. "You hit him! And you spoke to him very disrespectfully! He`s a person! Just look at him -- HE DOESN`T EVEN HAVE ANY SHOES!"
Okay, I admit Little Son did look a bit pathetic. He had chocolate milk on one side of his mouth, he had the sad-eyed, chastened look of a little boy who knows he did something bad, and...he was barefoot. His bare feet did give him that "refugee waif" look.
Then I noticed the woman was....crying.
I realized she was not just another busybody, but a genuinely concerned human being, who saw what she perceived as a little boy in danger and felt as if she had to stop and speak up.
"You have anger issues! You need to take a child development class! You cannot treat a child that way!" she was saying.
So I told her the story of the six-year-old boy who was killed at that very intersection.
"I get very angry when my kids put themselves in danger," I said.
"Please get help. As a mother, I urge you to think about everything I just said to you," she said.
I didn`t say anything. I let her have the last word.
The kids and I all got into the car.
"She was really mean!" said my Daughter`s friend. "Do you think she`ll really call the police?"
"Well, she wasn`t mean," I said. "Think about what she saw. She didn`t see me yell at Little Son and tell him to get off the backpack and put his shoes on. All she saw was me grab him and swat him -- and she couldn`t tell how hard I swatted him -- and then she saw me scream at him and drop him on the sidewalk."
In fact, if my snarl of rage had been visible to the woman, I`m surprised she didn`t call the authorities on me before getting out of her car.
"The woman didn`t know us, and saw what to her looked like a little kid in danger. She did the right thing by stopping," I said. "She doesn`t know us. For all she knows, maybe I`m hitting Little Son at home every day. So she did the right thing, by speaking up."
"She did talk to you nicely at the end," said Daughter`s friend.
No, I don`t regret what I did -- I`d do it again, if Little Son ever fools around like that while crossing a street again.
I have to say, I think what the woman did was actually quite courageous.
Overall, though......this makes me even more homesick for Tokyo, where I could swat my kids` butts and yell at them, without stopping traffic.
BEGIN UPDATE HERE:
No one from CPS came knocking on our door last night. I didn`t really expect them to, but the woman did watch me drive away, and so she did see my license plate number, so it was within the realm of possibility.
As you might imagine, I`ve been thinking about this a lot since yesterday.
For one thing, my older kids all saw the woman yell at me. I had intended to lecture Daughter on the way home for her full participation and shared blame in her brother`s misdeed, and why I was just as angry at her for continuing to pull her brother when he didn`t get off her backpack. But instead we talked about why the woman did what she did.
All of us went swimming last night -- me, Big Son, Little Son, Daughter, and her friend who slept over. On the way to the pool, in the car, I talked about appropriate ways to help people. I told them that if you see someone you suspect is in trouble, and you think someone is hurting them, don`t just walk on by -- but don`t do exactly what the woman did, and confront them, either. Go tell a grownup.
It also occurred to me, since the woman`s very first questions to me wer, "Is that your child? Are you his MOTHER?" --- she might have thought I was the nanny. There are sites like this one, where people can report nanny "abuse," so maybe she thought this was a case of that. After all, my kids are all dark-haired and Asian looking, and I`m not.
If so, it wouldn`t be the first time, but it hasn`t happened in many years. Once, when we were living in Los Angeles, I was crossing the street with the "walk" signal, pushing baby Big Son in his stroller, and a woman in a VW convertible making a left turn almost ran us over. She had to swerve to miss us, and pulled over and started yelling at me, though she was clearly in the wrong.
"I could have killed that child! You weren`t even looking! I`m going to tell your employer!" she yelled.
I didn`t even yell back at her -- I was newly pregnant with Daughter, and glad she hadn`t killed me and Big Son. But the incident made me realize that any chubby woman walking around Brentwood in broad daylight with messy hair, baggy sweatpants and a dirty old T-shirt on was assumed to be the caregiver, and not a typical skinny, well-coiffed Brentwood mom.
I looked pretty slobbish yesterday, too. But at least my T-shirt was clean.
I`m trying to recall as many of the details as I could, from the incident yesterday, before I forget them. I`m trying to remember, for one thing, exactly what I yelled at Little Son, besides "I TOLD YOU TO GET OFF THAT!" I don`t remember my exact words, but I`m sure they also included some variations of, "LISTEN TO ME!" "THERE ARE CARS COMING!" and "I TOLD YOU TO PUT YOUR SHOES ON!"
It did not include profanity, since I don`t swear in front of my kids (I save most of my goddamn-fucking-shit words for my blog), but it was LOUD, and snarled. My voice gets very low-pitched and scary when I`m really mad.
Also, I`m very sure it didn`t contain any threats -- I wouldn`t say something like, "Wait `til we get home," when I was punishing him right on the spot.
I hit him on the rear end, once, with my open palm. I was carrying the remains of Big Son`s lunch in one hand, and it was dripping soy sauce. Because I was carrying the drippy lunch, I couldn`t pick Little Son up with both hands, but did the hand-under-one-shoulder-drag, and put him down -- hard -- on the sidewalk.
I don`t know from which direction the woman`s car came. Perhaps she was even in the car that I feared would hit him?
I`m trying to see the scene from the woman`s point of view. She said she has four kids -- she probably loves kids. She sees a cute little boy, crossing the steet, getting a ride from a big girl on her wheeled backpack. He is cute (he truly is), he is smiling, he is having a good time. He falls off the backpack, and stands up.
Then, suddenly, she sees a heavyset, poorly dressed woman with messy hair and an angry, snarling face dart over and whap the cute boy`s behind, grab him, carry him awkardly across the intersection, and drop him down -- hard -- on the opposite sidewalk. While yelling at him.
Yes, it must have been a jarring sight. But still -- he wasn`t fooling around and disobeying me on the sidewalk, in a yard, or in a park. He was fooling around in the street, with cars coming, at an intersection I get a chill passing through every time, because someone else`s little boy died there.
I`m also now thinking about the irony of woman yelling at me and threatening to call CPS on me, while telling me I had spoken "disrepectfully" to my son, and that I had "anger issues."
I`ve said on this blog before that spanking has never been my main method of discipline -- I don`t call myself "pro-spanking." I very rarely hit any my kids, but I have done it, and I am unapologetic for the few times I did hit or grab them in the past. So if people who are not 100% opposed to physical discipline in all circumstances count as "pro," then fine -- put me down as "pro," just because I`m not totally "anti."
I`ve also said before that physical discipline is exactly like drinking alcohol while pregnant, or feeding your kids junk food (and I`ve done all three). Are any of these examples healthy if you do them often? Can they all be potentially very harmful if you do them too much? Should they be held up as positive examples of desirable behavior, that society should encourage? No, no and no. But should they be considered shameful, even criminal, deserving of intervention from strangers? I would say, no.
Imagine -- what if I really were abusing Little Son? What if I were hitting him everyday, even many times a day, for minor infractions, or no reason at all? Would I change my behavior because someone shouted at me on the street? Somehow, I doubt it.
Later, Big Son asked me, "Mama? Do you really think that lady called the police? But you didn`t do anything! Can they really come and take you away? Or take my brother away?"
I said no, don`t worry -- it wasn`t that easy.
Despite my reassurances, Big Son slept in a sleeping bag next to me and Little Son last night, holding his little brother`s hand.
Thank you, strange lady, for giving my already disturbed pre-adolescent boy something else to worry about in his life.
This afternoon, Little Son and I went to pick up the big kids at school. I couldn`t find a parking place right in front of the school, so I parked up the street, across a small intersection with four-way stop signs.
Little Son was wearing his flip-flops. It is not flip-flop weather in San Francisco -- it`s chilly, sweater weather here -- but he wears them every Monday and Wednesday night to karate, so I let him wear them to other places if we`re not going to be outside for a long time.
Daughter and a friend of hers, who was coming over, was pulling Little Son to the car on her backpack (which has wheels, like a little suitcase). They were dawdling -- I stopped at the intersection and told them to stop kidding around and hurry up.
"But we have to pull him! He doesn`t have any shoes!" said Daughter. He had taken off his flip-flops and was barefoot, and was not letting his feet touch the ground.
"Get off that, get your shoes on, and let`s GO, NOW," I said to Little Son, not too nicely.
I started crossing the intersection, turned around --- and saw Little Son, still barefoot, wobbling off the backpack, and falling into the street. In front of a car.
Now, there`s something special about this particular intersection. It`s in a residential neighborhood, but it does have steady traffic.
And there`s a scholarship at our school, given out every year by the parents of a six-year old boy who was struck and killed by a car -- right there, in that very spot.
"I TOLD YOU TO GET OFF THAT," I snarled, swatting Little Son`s butt, picking him up under one arm, and dropping him on the sidewalk on the other side, where he did a little "duck and roll" maneuver before standing up.
Suddenly, other cars were honking, as one screeched to a halt. A woman about my age got out, brandishing a cell phone.
"I`m calling Child Protective Services RIGHT NOW!"
"He was playing in the street!" I said.
"Is that your child? Are you his MOTHER?" she asked.
"Yes!" I said, "and he was playing in the street!"
Little Son wasn`t crying. He just stood there, barefoot, looking from me to the woman and back. My other two kids and their friend watched. People came out of their houses to watch, too.
"I can`t believe you just did that! I have four kids, and I would never do to any of them what you just did to him!" she said. "You hit him! And you spoke to him very disrespectfully! He`s a person! Just look at him -- HE DOESN`T EVEN HAVE ANY SHOES!"
Okay, I admit Little Son did look a bit pathetic. He had chocolate milk on one side of his mouth, he had the sad-eyed, chastened look of a little boy who knows he did something bad, and...he was barefoot. His bare feet did give him that "refugee waif" look.
Then I noticed the woman was....crying.
I realized she was not just another busybody, but a genuinely concerned human being, who saw what she perceived as a little boy in danger and felt as if she had to stop and speak up.
"You have anger issues! You need to take a child development class! You cannot treat a child that way!" she was saying.
So I told her the story of the six-year-old boy who was killed at that very intersection.
"I get very angry when my kids put themselves in danger," I said.
"Please get help. As a mother, I urge you to think about everything I just said to you," she said.
I didn`t say anything. I let her have the last word.
The kids and I all got into the car.
"She was really mean!" said my Daughter`s friend. "Do you think she`ll really call the police?"
"Well, she wasn`t mean," I said. "Think about what she saw. She didn`t see me yell at Little Son and tell him to get off the backpack and put his shoes on. All she saw was me grab him and swat him -- and she couldn`t tell how hard I swatted him -- and then she saw me scream at him and drop him on the sidewalk."
In fact, if my snarl of rage had been visible to the woman, I`m surprised she didn`t call the authorities on me before getting out of her car.
"The woman didn`t know us, and saw what to her looked like a little kid in danger. She did the right thing by stopping," I said. "She doesn`t know us. For all she knows, maybe I`m hitting Little Son at home every day. So she did the right thing, by speaking up."
"She did talk to you nicely at the end," said Daughter`s friend.
No, I don`t regret what I did -- I`d do it again, if Little Son ever fools around like that while crossing a street again.
I have to say, I think what the woman did was actually quite courageous.
Overall, though......this makes me even more homesick for Tokyo, where I could swat my kids` butts and yell at them, without stopping traffic.
BEGIN UPDATE HERE:
No one from CPS came knocking on our door last night. I didn`t really expect them to, but the woman did watch me drive away, and so she did see my license plate number, so it was within the realm of possibility.
As you might imagine, I`ve been thinking about this a lot since yesterday.
For one thing, my older kids all saw the woman yell at me. I had intended to lecture Daughter on the way home for her full participation and shared blame in her brother`s misdeed, and why I was just as angry at her for continuing to pull her brother when he didn`t get off her backpack. But instead we talked about why the woman did what she did.
All of us went swimming last night -- me, Big Son, Little Son, Daughter, and her friend who slept over. On the way to the pool, in the car, I talked about appropriate ways to help people. I told them that if you see someone you suspect is in trouble, and you think someone is hurting them, don`t just walk on by -- but don`t do exactly what the woman did, and confront them, either. Go tell a grownup.
It also occurred to me, since the woman`s very first questions to me wer, "Is that your child? Are you his MOTHER?" --- she might have thought I was the nanny. There are sites like this one, where people can report nanny "abuse," so maybe she thought this was a case of that. After all, my kids are all dark-haired and Asian looking, and I`m not.
If so, it wouldn`t be the first time, but it hasn`t happened in many years. Once, when we were living in Los Angeles, I was crossing the street with the "walk" signal, pushing baby Big Son in his stroller, and a woman in a VW convertible making a left turn almost ran us over. She had to swerve to miss us, and pulled over and started yelling at me, though she was clearly in the wrong.
"I could have killed that child! You weren`t even looking! I`m going to tell your employer!" she yelled.
I didn`t even yell back at her -- I was newly pregnant with Daughter, and glad she hadn`t killed me and Big Son. But the incident made me realize that any chubby woman walking around Brentwood in broad daylight with messy hair, baggy sweatpants and a dirty old T-shirt on was assumed to be the caregiver, and not a typical skinny, well-coiffed Brentwood mom.
I looked pretty slobbish yesterday, too. But at least my T-shirt was clean.
I`m trying to recall as many of the details as I could, from the incident yesterday, before I forget them. I`m trying to remember, for one thing, exactly what I yelled at Little Son, besides "I TOLD YOU TO GET OFF THAT!" I don`t remember my exact words, but I`m sure they also included some variations of, "LISTEN TO ME!" "THERE ARE CARS COMING!" and "I TOLD YOU TO PUT YOUR SHOES ON!"
It did not include profanity, since I don`t swear in front of my kids (I save most of my goddamn-fucking-shit words for my blog), but it was LOUD, and snarled. My voice gets very low-pitched and scary when I`m really mad.
Also, I`m very sure it didn`t contain any threats -- I wouldn`t say something like, "Wait `til we get home," when I was punishing him right on the spot.
I hit him on the rear end, once, with my open palm. I was carrying the remains of Big Son`s lunch in one hand, and it was dripping soy sauce. Because I was carrying the drippy lunch, I couldn`t pick Little Son up with both hands, but did the hand-under-one-shoulder-drag, and put him down -- hard -- on the sidewalk.
I don`t know from which direction the woman`s car came. Perhaps she was even in the car that I feared would hit him?
I`m trying to see the scene from the woman`s point of view. She said she has four kids -- she probably loves kids. She sees a cute little boy, crossing the steet, getting a ride from a big girl on her wheeled backpack. He is cute (he truly is), he is smiling, he is having a good time. He falls off the backpack, and stands up.
Then, suddenly, she sees a heavyset, poorly dressed woman with messy hair and an angry, snarling face dart over and whap the cute boy`s behind, grab him, carry him awkardly across the intersection, and drop him down -- hard -- on the opposite sidewalk. While yelling at him.
Yes, it must have been a jarring sight. But still -- he wasn`t fooling around and disobeying me on the sidewalk, in a yard, or in a park. He was fooling around in the street, with cars coming, at an intersection I get a chill passing through every time, because someone else`s little boy died there.
I`m also now thinking about the irony of woman yelling at me and threatening to call CPS on me, while telling me I had spoken "disrepectfully" to my son, and that I had "anger issues."
I`ve said on this blog before that spanking has never been my main method of discipline -- I don`t call myself "pro-spanking." I very rarely hit any my kids, but I have done it, and I am unapologetic for the few times I did hit or grab them in the past. So if people who are not 100% opposed to physical discipline in all circumstances count as "pro," then fine -- put me down as "pro," just because I`m not totally "anti."
I`ve also said before that physical discipline is exactly like drinking alcohol while pregnant, or feeding your kids junk food (and I`ve done all three). Are any of these examples healthy if you do them often? Can they all be potentially very harmful if you do them too much? Should they be held up as positive examples of desirable behavior, that society should encourage? No, no and no. But should they be considered shameful, even criminal, deserving of intervention from strangers? I would say, no.
Imagine -- what if I really were abusing Little Son? What if I were hitting him everyday, even many times a day, for minor infractions, or no reason at all? Would I change my behavior because someone shouted at me on the street? Somehow, I doubt it.
Later, Big Son asked me, "Mama? Do you really think that lady called the police? But you didn`t do anything! Can they really come and take you away? Or take my brother away?"
I said no, don`t worry -- it wasn`t that easy.
Despite my reassurances, Big Son slept in a sleeping bag next to me and Little Son last night, holding his little brother`s hand.
Thank you, strange lady, for giving my already disturbed pre-adolescent boy something else to worry about in his life.
posted by L. at 3:43 PM
16 comments
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Please, can I go home to Tokyo now? (UPDATED)
More than anything I`ve encountered over the past 15 months since we moved here, I think this article in the New York Times clearly shows that I do NOT fit in to U.S. middle-class motherhood:
Janet Dracksdorf, an educational publisher in Boston, said that a sitter she employed had been taking her daughter — a toddler at the time — on regular candy runs. Ms. Dracksdorf did not learn about them until “two years later, when my daughter was articulate enough to talk about it,” she said.
“Maybe I should have suspected something when the baby sitter gave my daughter the Candy Land game for a third-birthday present,” Ms. Dracksdorf said. Her current nanny has a degree in nutrition.
What bothered Ms. Dracksdorf more than the sugar and fat was the revelation that her trusted sitter saw nothing wrong with feeding a 2-year-old chocolate and never thought to clear it with her.
Not only did I allow my Tokyo babysitter to feed Little Son candy, I used to give her money to buy it for him. Sure, she fed him candy -- but she also fed him fresh vegetables, and chickens she killed herself. Did the candy cancel that out? I don`t think so.
I see nothing wrong with feeding a two-year-old moderate amounts of chocolate, unless he or she is allergic to it or something.
And oh yeah -- I bought the dreaded Candy Land game myself. That must be a really dark sign of my skewed priorities.
No wonder I`m mama non grata at Little Son`s preschool.
(UPDATED to add, in the interest of full disclosure, that I do limit my children`s sugar consumption -- particularly the older kids, who brush their own teeth now, and don`t always do as thorough a job as I did when they were little and I brushed them for them. I didn`t intend this post to imply that we have an all-junk-food, all-the-time lifestyle. Also, I know parents who have to rigidly monitor their kids` diets because of legitmate health problems.
But still, sometimes I just want to scream, "It`s SUGAR -- not ARSENIC.")
Janet Dracksdorf, an educational publisher in Boston, said that a sitter she employed had been taking her daughter — a toddler at the time — on regular candy runs. Ms. Dracksdorf did not learn about them until “two years later, when my daughter was articulate enough to talk about it,” she said.
“Maybe I should have suspected something when the baby sitter gave my daughter the Candy Land game for a third-birthday present,” Ms. Dracksdorf said. Her current nanny has a degree in nutrition.
What bothered Ms. Dracksdorf more than the sugar and fat was the revelation that her trusted sitter saw nothing wrong with feeding a 2-year-old chocolate and never thought to clear it with her.
Not only did I allow my Tokyo babysitter to feed Little Son candy, I used to give her money to buy it for him. Sure, she fed him candy -- but she also fed him fresh vegetables, and chickens she killed herself. Did the candy cancel that out? I don`t think so.
I see nothing wrong with feeding a two-year-old moderate amounts of chocolate, unless he or she is allergic to it or something.
And oh yeah -- I bought the dreaded Candy Land game myself. That must be a really dark sign of my skewed priorities.
No wonder I`m mama non grata at Little Son`s preschool.
(UPDATED to add, in the interest of full disclosure, that I do limit my children`s sugar consumption -- particularly the older kids, who brush their own teeth now, and don`t always do as thorough a job as I did when they were little and I brushed them for them. I didn`t intend this post to imply that we have an all-junk-food, all-the-time lifestyle. Also, I know parents who have to rigidly monitor their kids` diets because of legitmate health problems.
But still, sometimes I just want to scream, "It`s SUGAR -- not ARSENIC.")
posted by L. at 8:54 PM
12 comments
Preschool Update
So I dropped Little Son off this morning, and one of the instructors whispered to me, We think we might have found some help for your problem.
Um.
Well, I thought I had found the answer to my problem, which was to send Little Son to the babysitter`s house instead of preschool, on days I couldn`t pick him up on time.
The whispering bugged me, too -- it told me that they considered my "problem" to be something requiring discretion. To be sure, it would have bugged me if she`d shouted it, too, but why not speak in a normal tone of voice? Okay, I admit I`m far too easily bugged these days.
"Was Little Son upset yesterday, that he didn`t come to school?" she asked me, again in a discreet whisper.
"No, he was fine -- I lied to him, and told him the school was closed, ha ha HA!" I laughed, and immediately regretted it, because she wasn`t going to think that was funny, was she? What the hell was I thinking? Man oh man, why do I even try to fit in at this place??? I ducked away to avoid eye contact with her.
Later, when I went to pick up Little Son today, the director came out to meet me, and said she thinks she`s found someone I can ask to walk Little Son to the babysitter`s house for me, on days I have to work.
I know they`re trying to help, but... damn it, I don`t want their help!
I don`t want to deal with asking some parent I don`t know to walk my son somewhere. I would rather he just missed preschool sometimes.
"It would really help if we knew your schedule," the director said. She was frowning -- perhaps she expected me to smile gratefully and thank her for solving my "problem," and instead I was just standing there looking confused, and not sure what to say.
"It`s not the type of job where I always know my schedule much in advance," I said. "I know in your job, you need schedules, but this job doesn`t really have one. I`m not used to doing a job with a set schedule."
"People with small children need schedules!" she said, a bit too emphatically.
My defensive walls went up, and I thought about how I would love to just pull Little Son out of this preschool entirely, and send him to the babysitter`s house a few days a week instead.
But I won`t do that. Little Son loves this school. He will stay. And I will deal.
Oh, and my job.
I don`t feel as if I can talk about my job on this blog, even though it`s anonymous. But I can describe just one of my tasks: I somehow have to take down all the dusty plastic cherry blossom decorations that some of the tenants put up for a festival and left up there. The owners want them down, and replaced with fake bamboo. The tenants are... less than cooperative.
A few weeks ago, I wrote I will think of this job as community service for which I receive a small honorarium.
Well, let`s just say that I no longer think of it in those terms anymore. Now it`s more along the lines of, I`m working for a friend of mine, and I don`t want him to hate me, so I`m going to do whatever he asks me to do.
I will deal.
I`ve dealt with much worse...(shudder...)
[Is it a bad sign, that I`ve ended my post with a (shudder) for two days in a row?]
Um.
Well, I thought I had found the answer to my problem, which was to send Little Son to the babysitter`s house instead of preschool, on days I couldn`t pick him up on time.
The whispering bugged me, too -- it told me that they considered my "problem" to be something requiring discretion. To be sure, it would have bugged me if she`d shouted it, too, but why not speak in a normal tone of voice? Okay, I admit I`m far too easily bugged these days.
"Was Little Son upset yesterday, that he didn`t come to school?" she asked me, again in a discreet whisper.
"No, he was fine -- I lied to him, and told him the school was closed, ha ha HA!" I laughed, and immediately regretted it, because she wasn`t going to think that was funny, was she? What the hell was I thinking? Man oh man, why do I even try to fit in at this place??? I ducked away to avoid eye contact with her.
Later, when I went to pick up Little Son today, the director came out to meet me, and said she thinks she`s found someone I can ask to walk Little Son to the babysitter`s house for me, on days I have to work.
I know they`re trying to help, but... damn it, I don`t want their help!
I don`t want to deal with asking some parent I don`t know to walk my son somewhere. I would rather he just missed preschool sometimes.
"It would really help if we knew your schedule," the director said. She was frowning -- perhaps she expected me to smile gratefully and thank her for solving my "problem," and instead I was just standing there looking confused, and not sure what to say.
"It`s not the type of job where I always know my schedule much in advance," I said. "I know in your job, you need schedules, but this job doesn`t really have one. I`m not used to doing a job with a set schedule."
"People with small children need schedules!" she said, a bit too emphatically.
My defensive walls went up, and I thought about how I would love to just pull Little Son out of this preschool entirely, and send him to the babysitter`s house a few days a week instead.
But I won`t do that. Little Son loves this school. He will stay. And I will deal.
Oh, and my job.
I don`t feel as if I can talk about my job on this blog, even though it`s anonymous. But I can describe just one of my tasks: I somehow have to take down all the dusty plastic cherry blossom decorations that some of the tenants put up for a festival and left up there. The owners want them down, and replaced with fake bamboo. The tenants are... less than cooperative.
A few weeks ago, I wrote I will think of this job as community service for which I receive a small honorarium.
Well, let`s just say that I no longer think of it in those terms anymore. Now it`s more along the lines of, I`m working for a friend of mine, and I don`t want him to hate me, so I`m going to do whatever he asks me to do.
I will deal.
I`ve dealt with much worse...(shudder...)
[Is it a bad sign, that I`ve ended my post with a (shudder) for two days in a row?]
posted by L. at 1:28 PM
9 comments
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
A Long-Winded Post About a Boring Problem That Will Put Even My Closest Friends to Sleep (zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....)
Okay, I`ve got this....problem with our preschool.
First, the background: Little Son attends a very ritzy half-day preschool. It doesn`t think of itself as "ritzy" -- it thinks of itself as "artsy," and perhaps it was, at one time. But who are the kind of people now, who can manage to pay big bucks for just half a day of preschool in expensive San Francisco? Sure, there are some normal people lucky enough to have flexible schedules, but there are also lots of people with serious money.
That`s not the problem. I have no trouble at all dealing with seriously rich people -- hell, some of my dearest friends and relatives fit that description. And the preschool itself isn`t the problem -- Little Son loves it, and the teachers have all been there for years. They are all warm, caring individuals, who have devoted their lives to early childhood education.
The problem is the 11:45 pick-up time, no exceptions. This has nothing to do with any failure on the preschool`s part. This is a structural problem for me and only me.
Last year, Little Son went only on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. This was the only open slot they had, and I grabbed it, because we moved to San Francisco in July and I figured I had the proverbial snowflake in Hell`s chance of getting my little guy into preschool for September. Little Son and I happened to be walking down the street a few blocks from our house, I happened to knock on the preschool`s door, and they happened to have just had a cancellation for the upcoming school year. So we didn`t really "pick" this school -- fate picked it for us.
Last year, my life was very different. I wasn`t working at all, and Au Pair Extraordinaire was a bona fide au pair, earning her keep and her salary by placing our family`s needs first. I had my hands full with the older two kids, who were struggling with school work in English, so Au Pair Extraordinaire was in charge of bringing Little Son to preschool and picking him up. And this worked out fine.
But this year, Au Pair Extraordinaire is not a "real" au pair but just a fulltime student who lives with us, and babysits as needed, with the understanding that her classes come first. And she is in class all day, Monday through Thursday, and can`t pick up Little Son those days.
No problem, I thought. My job is extremely part-time -- I can pick him up. Right?
Now, I should also say that I don`t fit in too well at this preschool. I`m considered one of the "slacker" moms -- I skip most of their outside events because we`re so busy with the older kids` Japanese school and sports events on weekends. Something has to give, and it`s usually the preschool picnic, preschool parents` cocktail party, preschool garage sale, etc. Last year I did go to (and bought stuff at) the major fundraising auction, and I contributed cash toward the end-of-the-year bonuses for the teachers -- isn`t that enough? I thought so.
But... well, there`s more. Little Son brings in Happy Meal toys for "Sharing Day" (their version of show-and-tell), and I`ve been known to slip organic whole-wheat teddy graham crackers into Little Son`s lunchbox, in violation of their "no treats" rule. So I`m not exactly a "mom in good standing."
My worst transgression by far, though, is that since school began less than a month ago, I`ve been late three times to pick him up. This has pushed me out of the realm of "slacker" into the "unreliable flake" zone.
The school`s official pickup time is 11:45. They require people meeting the kids to stand outside the door at pickup time, and they lead the kids out the door one by one, to the people waiting for them. This is all supposed to be done in 10 minutes -- if you arrive after 11:55, you are LATE.
And three times, I`ve arrived at 12:00 -- not terribly late, but late enough for them to read me the riot act. And when I got home each time, there was a message on my phone from them, received, each time, at 11:56, asking, "WHERE ARE YOU? YOU`RE LATE!"
Twice, I had been on the phone with Au Paire Extraordinaire, as she called me from the hospital in Wyoming after their car accident. I was unable to call her back -- she was calling me from someone`s borrowed cell phone. So those times, I judged it to be worth being a few minutes late, and braced myself for their wrath.
Yesterday, though, the third time, I just spaced out, and thought it was Friday, and that Au Pair Extraordinaire was picking Little Son up. Yeah, I know -- it was Tuesday. See above, "unreliable flake." Yeah, I`m worried.
"You need to get this problem straightened out!" the director said to me, as she handed over Little Son.
So I thought about this situation, and decided that this is my problem, not the daycare center`s problem. Their policy is clear, and they have sound reasons for it: the afternoon session kids start arriving at 12:30, so the teachers only have half an hour to eat their lunches and clean up. I don`t blame them at all for enforcing their timely pick-up rule. It is what it is, and I understand why.
But actually, because of my job, I had been thinking about cutting Little Son back to three or four days a week, anyway. He loves this school, but I anticipate sometimes having to go to Japantown during the week, and I know there`s no way I can make that 11:45 pick-up time every time if I do.
Coincidentally, I had an appointment in J-town the day after my latest untimely offense. I had intended to mention it to the school that Little Son would be out, but I was unable to do this -- I mean, it`s not easy to change the subject when you`re getting lectured on your lateness, and your son is being gently pushed out the door to you.
So yesterday afternoon, shortly after my less-than-timely pick-up, I called the director and said I was thinking of dropping a day for Little Son, because of my new job.
I was kind of unprepared for her reaction, especially since she had been justifiably angry with me only a short time before.
"Maybe we can help you, and find another parent who could do it. Can`t you ask a friend to pick him up?" she said. She was very nice and friendly and seemed genuinely concerned.
Now, we have plenty of friends (which always amazes me, that so many kind people willingly put up with emotionally needy homesick freaks like our family). But I want to keep my friends, and so I don`t like to impose on them unless I`m really in a pinch -- and my part-time job doesn`t qualify as a "pinch," because 1) it`s a commitment that I made all by myself, so it`s my responsibility, and 2) whenever I need to send him, Little Son can go to a great babysitter`s house nearby. (Unfortunately, the babysitter doesn`t pick kids up at school, or else she`d be too perfect.)
The director tried to get an idea of exactly what I do for a part-time job, but....well, let`s just say, it`s not exactly what I thought it would be. Yeah, remember my part-time job? Well, it`s going okay, I`m still doing it, but... it`s a long story, but it didn`t quite turn out to be the job I expected, nor is it easily explained. I haven't been blogging about it, and I probably won`t, just because it`s gotten a bit...weird.
Today, for example, I had to meet with a polite, blue-haired Japanese lady about ordering artificial bamboo. It was an appointment that came up kind of suddenly, and couldn`t be rescheduled.
"But what days do you work?" asked the preschool director. "Don`t you have a schedule?"
"Um....no. No, it`s just a few hours a week, but I have to adjust according to the needs of the job," I said.
"Well, that doesn`t sound very reasonable," she said.
I can`t say that I blame her for not understanding, since her working life has a very tight schedule, by necessity. But since I`m used to having my working hours and schedule set according to the breaking news of the day, I`m perfectly comfortable changing my plans on short notice -- except it does make juggling kids more challenging.
The director kept saying, "Little Son is so happy here! We want to figure out how you can solve this problem."
And I kept saying, "I really think it would be best if I dropped a day. I just don`t think it`s a good fit for us."
I assured her it wasn`t about money, in case she was concerned that five days/week was proving too expensive for us, or the part-time job was something I desperately needed to do to make ends meet. It`s not -- it`s just that I made a commitment to this job, and I want to see it through.
So I finally said fine, we wouldn`t even drop a day -- I would even continue to pay for 5 days/week. But sometimes Little Son would be missing some days of preschool and going to his babysitter`s house instead, because I didn`t want to risk ever being late to pick him again.
She was, um... upset by this. Apparently, her concerns had less to do with losing a paying student for a day on their books, and more about losing Little Son in particular.
"But he`s so happy! We love having him here everyday! He gets so much more out of preschool than he does at a babysitter`s house!" she said, which may be true, but I suppose it depends on the babysitter.
Then she asked me, "Do you have to do this job? He`s your last child, and he`ll be in school all day so soon...."
I had told her he would be our last child, and I enjoyed spending time with him. I was still kind of surprised that she brought this up. Was she trying to make me feel guilty? She doesn`t seem like that type of person -- I think she just blurted it out, thinking mainly of Little Son.
But I wasn`t surprised at how UN-guilty I felt, about doing a part-time job. Hey, I went back to work at a wire service when Little Son was 14 weeks old -- I`m pretty immune to guilt at this point.
So Little Son skipped preschool today, and went to the babysitter`s house for a couple of hours while I had my meeting.
What will the preschool folks say to me tomorrow? I am not looking forward to seeing the director face-to-face.
But as long as I`m alive and conscious, I resolve this: I will never be late to pick up Little Son again. On the whole, I`d rather be an evil working mom than an unreliable flake -- but I will certainly do my best to avoid being an evil, unreliable, flakey, working mom.
Let`s just say, been there, done that... (shudder).....
First, the background: Little Son attends a very ritzy half-day preschool. It doesn`t think of itself as "ritzy" -- it thinks of itself as "artsy," and perhaps it was, at one time. But who are the kind of people now, who can manage to pay big bucks for just half a day of preschool in expensive San Francisco? Sure, there are some normal people lucky enough to have flexible schedules, but there are also lots of people with serious money.
That`s not the problem. I have no trouble at all dealing with seriously rich people -- hell, some of my dearest friends and relatives fit that description. And the preschool itself isn`t the problem -- Little Son loves it, and the teachers have all been there for years. They are all warm, caring individuals, who have devoted their lives to early childhood education.
The problem is the 11:45 pick-up time, no exceptions. This has nothing to do with any failure on the preschool`s part. This is a structural problem for me and only me.
Last year, Little Son went only on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. This was the only open slot they had, and I grabbed it, because we moved to San Francisco in July and I figured I had the proverbial snowflake in Hell`s chance of getting my little guy into preschool for September. Little Son and I happened to be walking down the street a few blocks from our house, I happened to knock on the preschool`s door, and they happened to have just had a cancellation for the upcoming school year. So we didn`t really "pick" this school -- fate picked it for us.
Last year, my life was very different. I wasn`t working at all, and Au Pair Extraordinaire was a bona fide au pair, earning her keep and her salary by placing our family`s needs first. I had my hands full with the older two kids, who were struggling with school work in English, so Au Pair Extraordinaire was in charge of bringing Little Son to preschool and picking him up. And this worked out fine.
But this year, Au Pair Extraordinaire is not a "real" au pair but just a fulltime student who lives with us, and babysits as needed, with the understanding that her classes come first. And she is in class all day, Monday through Thursday, and can`t pick up Little Son those days.
No problem, I thought. My job is extremely part-time -- I can pick him up. Right?
Now, I should also say that I don`t fit in too well at this preschool. I`m considered one of the "slacker" moms -- I skip most of their outside events because we`re so busy with the older kids` Japanese school and sports events on weekends. Something has to give, and it`s usually the preschool picnic, preschool parents` cocktail party, preschool garage sale, etc. Last year I did go to (and bought stuff at) the major fundraising auction, and I contributed cash toward the end-of-the-year bonuses for the teachers -- isn`t that enough? I thought so.
But... well, there`s more. Little Son brings in Happy Meal toys for "Sharing Day" (their version of show-and-tell), and I`ve been known to slip organic whole-wheat teddy graham crackers into Little Son`s lunchbox, in violation of their "no treats" rule. So I`m not exactly a "mom in good standing."
My worst transgression by far, though, is that since school began less than a month ago, I`ve been late three times to pick him up. This has pushed me out of the realm of "slacker" into the "unreliable flake" zone.
The school`s official pickup time is 11:45. They require people meeting the kids to stand outside the door at pickup time, and they lead the kids out the door one by one, to the people waiting for them. This is all supposed to be done in 10 minutes -- if you arrive after 11:55, you are LATE.
And three times, I`ve arrived at 12:00 -- not terribly late, but late enough for them to read me the riot act. And when I got home each time, there was a message on my phone from them, received, each time, at 11:56, asking, "WHERE ARE YOU? YOU`RE LATE!"
Twice, I had been on the phone with Au Paire Extraordinaire, as she called me from the hospital in Wyoming after their car accident. I was unable to call her back -- she was calling me from someone`s borrowed cell phone. So those times, I judged it to be worth being a few minutes late, and braced myself for their wrath.
Yesterday, though, the third time, I just spaced out, and thought it was Friday, and that Au Pair Extraordinaire was picking Little Son up. Yeah, I know -- it was Tuesday. See above, "unreliable flake." Yeah, I`m worried.
"You need to get this problem straightened out!" the director said to me, as she handed over Little Son.
So I thought about this situation, and decided that this is my problem, not the daycare center`s problem. Their policy is clear, and they have sound reasons for it: the afternoon session kids start arriving at 12:30, so the teachers only have half an hour to eat their lunches and clean up. I don`t blame them at all for enforcing their timely pick-up rule. It is what it is, and I understand why.
But actually, because of my job, I had been thinking about cutting Little Son back to three or four days a week, anyway. He loves this school, but I anticipate sometimes having to go to Japantown during the week, and I know there`s no way I can make that 11:45 pick-up time every time if I do.
Coincidentally, I had an appointment in J-town the day after my latest untimely offense. I had intended to mention it to the school that Little Son would be out, but I was unable to do this -- I mean, it`s not easy to change the subject when you`re getting lectured on your lateness, and your son is being gently pushed out the door to you.
So yesterday afternoon, shortly after my less-than-timely pick-up, I called the director and said I was thinking of dropping a day for Little Son, because of my new job.
I was kind of unprepared for her reaction, especially since she had been justifiably angry with me only a short time before.
"Maybe we can help you, and find another parent who could do it. Can`t you ask a friend to pick him up?" she said. She was very nice and friendly and seemed genuinely concerned.
Now, we have plenty of friends (which always amazes me, that so many kind people willingly put up with emotionally needy homesick freaks like our family). But I want to keep my friends, and so I don`t like to impose on them unless I`m really in a pinch -- and my part-time job doesn`t qualify as a "pinch," because 1) it`s a commitment that I made all by myself, so it`s my responsibility, and 2) whenever I need to send him, Little Son can go to a great babysitter`s house nearby. (Unfortunately, the babysitter doesn`t pick kids up at school, or else she`d be too perfect.)
The director tried to get an idea of exactly what I do for a part-time job, but....well, let`s just say, it`s not exactly what I thought it would be. Yeah, remember my part-time job? Well, it`s going okay, I`m still doing it, but... it`s a long story, but it didn`t quite turn out to be the job I expected, nor is it easily explained. I haven't been blogging about it, and I probably won`t, just because it`s gotten a bit...weird.
Today, for example, I had to meet with a polite, blue-haired Japanese lady about ordering artificial bamboo. It was an appointment that came up kind of suddenly, and couldn`t be rescheduled.
"But what days do you work?" asked the preschool director. "Don`t you have a schedule?"
"Um....no. No, it`s just a few hours a week, but I have to adjust according to the needs of the job," I said.
"Well, that doesn`t sound very reasonable," she said.
I can`t say that I blame her for not understanding, since her working life has a very tight schedule, by necessity. But since I`m used to having my working hours and schedule set according to the breaking news of the day, I`m perfectly comfortable changing my plans on short notice -- except it does make juggling kids more challenging.
The director kept saying, "Little Son is so happy here! We want to figure out how you can solve this problem."
And I kept saying, "I really think it would be best if I dropped a day. I just don`t think it`s a good fit for us."
I assured her it wasn`t about money, in case she was concerned that five days/week was proving too expensive for us, or the part-time job was something I desperately needed to do to make ends meet. It`s not -- it`s just that I made a commitment to this job, and I want to see it through.
So I finally said fine, we wouldn`t even drop a day -- I would even continue to pay for 5 days/week. But sometimes Little Son would be missing some days of preschool and going to his babysitter`s house instead, because I didn`t want to risk ever being late to pick him again.
She was, um... upset by this. Apparently, her concerns had less to do with losing a paying student for a day on their books, and more about losing Little Son in particular.
"But he`s so happy! We love having him here everyday! He gets so much more out of preschool than he does at a babysitter`s house!" she said, which may be true, but I suppose it depends on the babysitter.
Then she asked me, "Do you have to do this job? He`s your last child, and he`ll be in school all day so soon...."
I had told her he would be our last child, and I enjoyed spending time with him. I was still kind of surprised that she brought this up. Was she trying to make me feel guilty? She doesn`t seem like that type of person -- I think she just blurted it out, thinking mainly of Little Son.
But I wasn`t surprised at how UN-guilty I felt, about doing a part-time job. Hey, I went back to work at a wire service when Little Son was 14 weeks old -- I`m pretty immune to guilt at this point.
So Little Son skipped preschool today, and went to the babysitter`s house for a couple of hours while I had my meeting.
What will the preschool folks say to me tomorrow? I am not looking forward to seeing the director face-to-face.
But as long as I`m alive and conscious, I resolve this: I will never be late to pick up Little Son again. On the whole, I`d rather be an evil working mom than an unreliable flake -- but I will certainly do my best to avoid being an evil, unreliable, flakey, working mom.
Let`s just say, been there, done that... (shudder).....
posted by L. at 4:25 PM
8 comments
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Breaking Her Father`s Heart
"What should we do tonight?" I asked on Sunday.
"Let`s watch one of my Japanese DVDs together, as a family!" suggested Hub, eagerly.
Daughter said, "Okay -- as long as it isn`t black and white, and about samurai."
Hub sulked for the rest of the evening.
The kids read books instead.
Poor Hub.
"Let`s watch one of my Japanese DVDs together, as a family!" suggested Hub, eagerly.
Daughter said, "Okay -- as long as it isn`t black and white, and about samurai."
Hub sulked for the rest of the evening.
The kids read books instead.
Poor Hub.
posted by L. at 10:37 AM
9 comments
Monday, September 25, 2006
Flashback
A sunny afternoon -- sunlight is streaming into the classroom in central Tokyo, at the public elementary school right next to Roppongi Hills.
My son`s third-grade teacher is showing me his test scores, and going over his report card with me. I`ve just had Daughter's parent-teacher conference, and I thought her grades and scores were great, but Big Son`s are even better.
"He has the highest math scores in the class, and excellent scores in everything else," he tells me.
Students don`t receive letter grades at this school -- they are graded on a scale of one to three, one being the lowest and three being the highest.
Big Son has almost all three`s.
"He loves to read," the teacher tells me. "He is always challenging other boys to reading contests, to see who can finish the thickest books first."
Big Son turns in all of his homework, some of which he even finishes at school before he goes home.
The teacher's only complaint?
"Sometimes Big Son doesn`t like to play with the rest of the group. If the other boys are playing ball at recess, sometimes he wants to play something else, by himself or with a few friends. He should try to go along more with the group, " the teacher said. This strikes me as a very Japanese concern -- I nod, but I`m secretly glad that my son doesn`t follow the group all the time.
I stand up and thank the teacher, because I have to leave, and get back to my new job, which I absolutely love. I`m the bureau chief of a small dot.com news organization, and although I have a lot of responsibility, I have a lot of freedom and flexibility, too. It is the kind of job I have always dreamed of doing.
As I walk to the door, the teacher calls my name.
I turn around.
"One more thing," he said. "I really enjoy teaching your son. You have a wonderful boy."
And that must be where I wake up, and say, "Ah -- it was all a dream."
But no -- that whole scene really took place, just a couple of years ago.
Hub and I are still married, the whole family is still healthy, and though we`re not rich, we`re still getting by, even though I`m not working anymore.
But I feel as if I sneezed or something, and my whole life fell to pieces, and now all I can do is try to glue the broken bits back together.
What happened?
Where did that happy mother and happy kids go?
My son`s third-grade teacher is showing me his test scores, and going over his report card with me. I`ve just had Daughter's parent-teacher conference, and I thought her grades and scores were great, but Big Son`s are even better.
"He has the highest math scores in the class, and excellent scores in everything else," he tells me.
Students don`t receive letter grades at this school -- they are graded on a scale of one to three, one being the lowest and three being the highest.
Big Son has almost all three`s.
"He loves to read," the teacher tells me. "He is always challenging other boys to reading contests, to see who can finish the thickest books first."
Big Son turns in all of his homework, some of which he even finishes at school before he goes home.
The teacher's only complaint?
"Sometimes Big Son doesn`t like to play with the rest of the group. If the other boys are playing ball at recess, sometimes he wants to play something else, by himself or with a few friends. He should try to go along more with the group, " the teacher said. This strikes me as a very Japanese concern -- I nod, but I`m secretly glad that my son doesn`t follow the group all the time.
I stand up and thank the teacher, because I have to leave, and get back to my new job, which I absolutely love. I`m the bureau chief of a small dot.com news organization, and although I have a lot of responsibility, I have a lot of freedom and flexibility, too. It is the kind of job I have always dreamed of doing.
As I walk to the door, the teacher calls my name.
I turn around.
"One more thing," he said. "I really enjoy teaching your son. You have a wonderful boy."
And that must be where I wake up, and say, "Ah -- it was all a dream."
But no -- that whole scene really took place, just a couple of years ago.
Hub and I are still married, the whole family is still healthy, and though we`re not rich, we`re still getting by, even though I`m not working anymore.
But I feel as if I sneezed or something, and my whole life fell to pieces, and now all I can do is try to glue the broken bits back together.
What happened?
Where did that happy mother and happy kids go?
posted by L. at 11:12 AM
8 comments
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Bad Mama
Big Son slept over a friend M.`s house last night. It was a birthday sleepover, so most of the boys in his class were there.
I didn`t hear anything from the friend`s parents all morning, so right before noon, I gave them a call.
"He just left -- he got a ride with D.`s mom," said the friend`s mother.
When they arrived, D.`s mom came to the door. She looked serious -- even a bit angry. I wonder what had happened.
"Big Son doesn`t know his own phone number! You need to make sure he knows it! The M. family wanted to call you, but couldn`t know how to get in touch with you!"
M.`s mother hadn`t mentioned that when I talked to her.
"Oh, he knows it," I said. "Well...maybe he forgot. Or maybe he just said he didn`t know it, to buy himself a little more time at the party."
D.`s mom didn`t quite know what to say to that.
"Well, D. would never try to pull anything like that. He knows I wouldn`t let him get away with it!"
"Thanks for the ride!" I said, mentally wishing her out of my house.
I have nothing against this particular woman, whom I don`t know well, and whose son seems like a very nice boy.
She does seem a bit focused on her own agenda, though. Last year, for example, we had invited her son to Big Son`s birthday sleepover, and he told Big Son at school that he was coming -- and then didn`t show up.
"I didn`t let D. go," she told me later. "He hadn`t finished all his homework."
Yeah, fine, I thought, but a call would have been nice, so Big Son wouldn`t have waited and waited and finally realized, "I guess D. isn`t coming." No big deal, Big Son had other friends over, but still....I put it out of my mind and forgot all about that, until this morning.
Later, I quizzed Big Son on our phone number. Indeed, he had some of the digits wrong -- I guess it`s been quite a while since I went over it with him. He has never called our house before. He remembered my cell phone number, though, when I asked him.
"I didn`t even think of calling your cell phone," he said, "You always tell people never to call you on it," he said, which is true -- I`m always forgetting it, leaving it off, letting the battery run down or not hearing it ring, so I`d rather people called me at home.
Our home number is in both the school directory and the regular phone book. It`s very easy to find us.
But still --- all kids should know their home phone number, and I will be sure to quiz Big Son, Daughter and even Little Son on it regularly, to make sure they don`t forget.
I should be grateful that D.`s mother brought to my attention something that I really need to know about, and correct, but....
...is it okay to hate the way she did it?
I didn`t hear anything from the friend`s parents all morning, so right before noon, I gave them a call.
"He just left -- he got a ride with D.`s mom," said the friend`s mother.
When they arrived, D.`s mom came to the door. She looked serious -- even a bit angry. I wonder what had happened.
"Big Son doesn`t know his own phone number! You need to make sure he knows it! The M. family wanted to call you, but couldn`t know how to get in touch with you!"
M.`s mother hadn`t mentioned that when I talked to her.
"Oh, he knows it," I said. "Well...maybe he forgot. Or maybe he just said he didn`t know it, to buy himself a little more time at the party."
D.`s mom didn`t quite know what to say to that.
"Well, D. would never try to pull anything like that. He knows I wouldn`t let him get away with it!"
"Thanks for the ride!" I said, mentally wishing her out of my house.
I have nothing against this particular woman, whom I don`t know well, and whose son seems like a very nice boy.
She does seem a bit focused on her own agenda, though. Last year, for example, we had invited her son to Big Son`s birthday sleepover, and he told Big Son at school that he was coming -- and then didn`t show up.
"I didn`t let D. go," she told me later. "He hadn`t finished all his homework."
Yeah, fine, I thought, but a call would have been nice, so Big Son wouldn`t have waited and waited and finally realized, "I guess D. isn`t coming." No big deal, Big Son had other friends over, but still....I put it out of my mind and forgot all about that, until this morning.
Later, I quizzed Big Son on our phone number. Indeed, he had some of the digits wrong -- I guess it`s been quite a while since I went over it with him. He has never called our house before. He remembered my cell phone number, though, when I asked him.
"I didn`t even think of calling your cell phone," he said, "You always tell people never to call you on it," he said, which is true -- I`m always forgetting it, leaving it off, letting the battery run down or not hearing it ring, so I`d rather people called me at home.
Our home number is in both the school directory and the regular phone book. It`s very easy to find us.
But still --- all kids should know their home phone number, and I will be sure to quiz Big Son, Daughter and even Little Son on it regularly, to make sure they don`t forget.
I should be grateful that D.`s mother brought to my attention something that I really need to know about, and correct, but....
...is it okay to hate the way she did it?
posted by L. at 12:44 PM
11 comments
Saturday, September 23, 2006
Just a normal Saturday around here....
Daughter woke up this morning moaning and groaning. "Oh... my head hurts... so much!"
Unfortunately, she has "cried wolf" so often on Saturday mornings that someday, if she is ever truly suffering, she will still be dragged off to her weekly Japanese school.
This morning was particularly ugly. She went to change, while I stayed in bed with Little Son, and sang him some songs. I did not get up to check to make sure she was getting dressed -- I`m the "bad guy" five days a week, and I consider it Hub`s job to get them off to school on Saturday, since he`s the one who thinks Japanese school is such a good idea. I do not think it`s such a good idea, but rather than present a less-than-united front to the kids, I try to stay out of everything.
I went into the kitchen to make coffee, and Hub went to check on Daughter, two minutes before they were supposed to walk out the door.... and, from what I could hear, he found her still in her pajamas.
I listened to Hub yelling, and Daughter shrieking like a wild animal. I never hear her shriek like that any other time except Saturday mornings.
Two minutes later, my shrieking Daughter was being dragged against her will to the car by Hub. She had on a tank top totally inappropiate for the cool weather, her hair was uncombed, her face was unwashed, and her cheeks were slick with tears.
She looked... feral. That`s the only way to describe it.
"Here," I said, and handed her a roll to eat in the car, and her lunch bag.
"I HATE YOU, TOO, MAMA! I THOUGHT YOU WERE ON MY SIDE, BUT YOUR`RE ON PAPA'S SIDE!"
I could still hear her keening cries as they drove away.
But at least I noticed she was eating her roll between shrieks. She`ll be okay, I know -- despite the morning histrionics, she always comes home in a good mood, her Japanese school over for another week.
I can guess why she`s howling --- Japanese school is NO FUN. It lasts from 8:45 to 3:25, with only a few very short breaks. Sometimes my kids don`t even have time to finish all their lunches.
There are several hundred students at their Saturday school, which uses a public middle school in the Sunset. Some of them are children of Japanese parents who settled here and want their kids to grow up fluent in their native language, and others are from families like ours who are just abroad for a few years and will move back to Japan.
The curriculum follows the Japanese Ministry of Education guidelines, which is very standardized. This means my kids are learning exactly the same concepts as their peers back in Japan, according to exactly the same timeline -- except my kids have to cram a whole week`s worth of lessons into one day.
Until recently, Hub didn`t make them do all of their Japanese homework. This was ostensibly to give them a break, since last year they were both struggling to get up to grade level in English.
But I realized it was also to give Hub a break. He didn`t really like helping them with their homework, and listening to them whine and ask him over and over why they had to go to Japanese school at all. Homework sessions would often end in tears.
Both kids, though, have developed a pretty bad work ethic since we moved here last year. Give them an inch, and they`ll slack a mile (hey, they`re MY kids, after all!). Since they weren`t doing all of their Japanese homework, and getting away with this at home, both of them now push the limits on their regular school homework, too.
One reason Big Son is failing three of his classes in his regular school is that he insists he just "didn`t know" about certain assignments, for which he received zeros. This might be true, to an extent, but I suspect he also thinks he can get away with not doing some of it.
His teacher now requires him to write down the assignments (that are clearly written on the baord everyday, for all subjects) in a special notebook, which she initials after she checks to make sure he does it. Then I can help him at home. The problem was that I couldn`t help him with assignments I didn`t know about.
Daughter`s teacher said to me this week that her homework has been "spotty" so far, too. On the days she stays after school and does it with her friends, she gets it done -- on the days I don`t let her stay, she sometimes doesn`t. She, too, insists she just "didn`t know" about certain assignments -- and she is learning that ignorance is no excuse.
So, in an effort to eliminate the double standard that was giving my kids an excuse for their poor work habits, I`ve recently expanded my "no TV or GameBoy until your homework is done" rule to include their Japanese homework, too.
This has made me the Mama Monster of the house.
I really, really wish they could just quit their fucking Japanese school. But unless I can come up with another great idea as to how to keep up their Japanese, Hub won`t even consider this.
Therefore, he gets to wrestle the feral animal into the car every Saturday morning.
Unfortunately, she has "cried wolf" so often on Saturday mornings that someday, if she is ever truly suffering, she will still be dragged off to her weekly Japanese school.
This morning was particularly ugly. She went to change, while I stayed in bed with Little Son, and sang him some songs. I did not get up to check to make sure she was getting dressed -- I`m the "bad guy" five days a week, and I consider it Hub`s job to get them off to school on Saturday, since he`s the one who thinks Japanese school is such a good idea. I do not think it`s such a good idea, but rather than present a less-than-united front to the kids, I try to stay out of everything.
I went into the kitchen to make coffee, and Hub went to check on Daughter, two minutes before they were supposed to walk out the door.... and, from what I could hear, he found her still in her pajamas.
I listened to Hub yelling, and Daughter shrieking like a wild animal. I never hear her shriek like that any other time except Saturday mornings.
Two minutes later, my shrieking Daughter was being dragged against her will to the car by Hub. She had on a tank top totally inappropiate for the cool weather, her hair was uncombed, her face was unwashed, and her cheeks were slick with tears.
She looked... feral. That`s the only way to describe it.
"Here," I said, and handed her a roll to eat in the car, and her lunch bag.
"I HATE YOU, TOO, MAMA! I THOUGHT YOU WERE ON MY SIDE, BUT YOUR`RE ON PAPA'S SIDE!"
I could still hear her keening cries as they drove away.
But at least I noticed she was eating her roll between shrieks. She`ll be okay, I know -- despite the morning histrionics, she always comes home in a good mood, her Japanese school over for another week.
I can guess why she`s howling --- Japanese school is NO FUN. It lasts from 8:45 to 3:25, with only a few very short breaks. Sometimes my kids don`t even have time to finish all their lunches.
There are several hundred students at their Saturday school, which uses a public middle school in the Sunset. Some of them are children of Japanese parents who settled here and want their kids to grow up fluent in their native language, and others are from families like ours who are just abroad for a few years and will move back to Japan.
The curriculum follows the Japanese Ministry of Education guidelines, which is very standardized. This means my kids are learning exactly the same concepts as their peers back in Japan, according to exactly the same timeline -- except my kids have to cram a whole week`s worth of lessons into one day.
Until recently, Hub didn`t make them do all of their Japanese homework. This was ostensibly to give them a break, since last year they were both struggling to get up to grade level in English.
But I realized it was also to give Hub a break. He didn`t really like helping them with their homework, and listening to them whine and ask him over and over why they had to go to Japanese school at all. Homework sessions would often end in tears.
Both kids, though, have developed a pretty bad work ethic since we moved here last year. Give them an inch, and they`ll slack a mile (hey, they`re MY kids, after all!). Since they weren`t doing all of their Japanese homework, and getting away with this at home, both of them now push the limits on their regular school homework, too.
One reason Big Son is failing three of his classes in his regular school is that he insists he just "didn`t know" about certain assignments, for which he received zeros. This might be true, to an extent, but I suspect he also thinks he can get away with not doing some of it.
His teacher now requires him to write down the assignments (that are clearly written on the baord everyday, for all subjects) in a special notebook, which she initials after she checks to make sure he does it. Then I can help him at home. The problem was that I couldn`t help him with assignments I didn`t know about.
Daughter`s teacher said to me this week that her homework has been "spotty" so far, too. On the days she stays after school and does it with her friends, she gets it done -- on the days I don`t let her stay, she sometimes doesn`t. She, too, insists she just "didn`t know" about certain assignments -- and she is learning that ignorance is no excuse.
So, in an effort to eliminate the double standard that was giving my kids an excuse for their poor work habits, I`ve recently expanded my "no TV or GameBoy until your homework is done" rule to include their Japanese homework, too.
This has made me the Mama Monster of the house.
I really, really wish they could just quit their fucking Japanese school. But unless I can come up with another great idea as to how to keep up their Japanese, Hub won`t even consider this.
Therefore, he gets to wrestle the feral animal into the car every Saturday morning.
posted by L. at 11:12 AM
6 comments
Friday, September 22, 2006
Lost in Translation
"Mama, could you please check my sentence?"
Big Son was doing his homework earlier this week, and had to assemble scrambled words into a grammatical sentence.
The words were, "Plymouth, Mayflower, on, Massachusetts, The, Landed, December 21, 1620."
Big Son had written, The Plymouth Mayflower in Massachusetts landed on December 21, 1620.
Sure, it`s grammatically correct, but....can you tell there are still some gaping holes in Big Son`s knowlege of U.S. history?
How about this one?
The Pennsylvania House is at 1600 Washington Ave. in White, DC.
Hey, at least he gets the grammer part!
Today, he`s home with his first migraine of the year today. Actually, I`m trying to head this one off, by making sure he gets enough sleep, which is why he`s home.
It`s only September, and I`ve gotten word he`s failing Spelling, Religion and Social Studies.
He doesn`t even try, his teacher says. He just hands in blank test papers, and says he doesn`t get it. Last year, the old nun and her discipline methods were our main problem, but this year, his attitude is the main problem.
I think he`s determined to fail, even though it means getting taken off the school`s soccer team, and morning traffic duty, both of which he loves. He says, "I just can`t do it. No one believes me, but I really can`t do it," even though everyone encourages him and tells him to just try. He`s determined to fail and prove everyone wrong.
His average in math, as usual, is a 97, but he can`t afford to have another lost year in everything else.
I think I will to give it to Christmas, and then put him a public school, which could be better for him, but who knows, might be even worse.
A big complicating factor is that he doesn`t want to change schools -- he wants to stay at this one, with all his new friends. He didn`t even want to leave last year, when Huggy Nun was torturing him everyday.
Of course, if things go completely to hell, I can always move back with the kids to Tokyo in April, and let them begin the new Japanese school year at their old school there, where they both excelled.
Hub, needless to say, isn`t so thrilled with that idea.
Nowhere to go but up....
Big Son was doing his homework earlier this week, and had to assemble scrambled words into a grammatical sentence.
The words were, "Plymouth, Mayflower, on, Massachusetts, The, Landed, December 21, 1620."
Big Son had written, The Plymouth Mayflower in Massachusetts landed on December 21, 1620.
Sure, it`s grammatically correct, but....can you tell there are still some gaping holes in Big Son`s knowlege of U.S. history?
How about this one?
The Pennsylvania House is at 1600 Washington Ave. in White, DC.
Hey, at least he gets the grammer part!
Today, he`s home with his first migraine of the year today. Actually, I`m trying to head this one off, by making sure he gets enough sleep, which is why he`s home.
It`s only September, and I`ve gotten word he`s failing Spelling, Religion and Social Studies.
He doesn`t even try, his teacher says. He just hands in blank test papers, and says he doesn`t get it. Last year, the old nun and her discipline methods were our main problem, but this year, his attitude is the main problem.
I think he`s determined to fail, even though it means getting taken off the school`s soccer team, and morning traffic duty, both of which he loves. He says, "I just can`t do it. No one believes me, but I really can`t do it," even though everyone encourages him and tells him to just try. He`s determined to fail and prove everyone wrong.
His average in math, as usual, is a 97, but he can`t afford to have another lost year in everything else.
I think I will to give it to Christmas, and then put him a public school, which could be better for him, but who knows, might be even worse.
A big complicating factor is that he doesn`t want to change schools -- he wants to stay at this one, with all his new friends. He didn`t even want to leave last year, when Huggy Nun was torturing him everyday.
Of course, if things go completely to hell, I can always move back with the kids to Tokyo in April, and let them begin the new Japanese school year at their old school there, where they both excelled.
Hub, needless to say, isn`t so thrilled with that idea.
Nowhere to go but up....
posted by L. at 5:47 PM
7 comments
Thursday, September 21, 2006
How I Give All My Google Ad Revenue To My Grandmother
(This is for Her Bad Mother, who asked her readers to write about about "a cause that you are passionate about. ")
It`s high time I explained the link on my sidebar, "I pledge to send any money I make from this blog to this organization." This month, I got my first check from Google, for $106.21. I would like to thank all the people whose c*l*i*c*k*s on those ads made this possible, and let you know where the money you helped me earn is going.
I will be sending a check for that amount to this charity -- The Rural School Project in Cambodia. In fact, it will be earmarked toward a specific school, which I funded and named after my grandmother.
I can`t tell you which one, in the interest of preserving my semi-anonymity, but you can click on links to specific schools on this page, and some of them have photos and interviews with students, teachers and local residents.
Now, before I start talking about the school, please allow me to first say a few words about my grandmother.
Many of my blog readers who know me in real life know I was very close to my mother`s mother, who lived with our family when I was growing up.
Daughter is named after her. Four days after I told my grandmother I was pregnant, I had a dream in which she said to me, "I`m sorry I won`t be around to see the new baby, but I heard from someone on the other side that it`s my time." And she pointed to a gravestone with her name and "1918-1996" written on it.
It was a sad, vivid dream, and I told Hub about it in the morning. I called my grandmother that night, just to hear her voice, but my mother said she wasn`t feeling well and had gone to bed early. The following morning, we were awakened by a call from my father saying Gramma had suffered a fatal heart attack.
That was the end of her life story, which began in New Haven, Connecticut, There, my grandmother had a pretty crappy early life, by all accounts. Her parents were Polish immigrants, and her mother died giving birth to a boy when she was 8 and her younger sister was 6. The little brother died of pneumonia at 14 months, and her father was consumed by grief. The Polish immigrant community quickly fixed him up with a new wife to take care of his girls, but she turned out to be a serious alcoholic. Then the Depression came.
Gramma told me she always dreamed of being a nurse, and if she could just have stayed in school a little longer, she thinks she would have been able to get a full scholarship to nursing school, because she said her grades were very good (I can`t imagine their being otherwise). Unfortunately, she had to leave school as soon as she was old enough to get her working papers at 14, and was never able to go back.
Instead, she worked for most of her life as a waitress. I guess she figured the next best thing to nursing was to place hot food in front of hungry people.
I could go on and on about my grandmother, and what she meant to me. She is the main reason I`m still a Catholic of sorts, despite the fact that it`s not a great fit with my secular/ feminist/relativist leanings --- and I grew up to marry a secular Buddhist (with Gramma`s blessing -- she knew a good thing when she saw it).*
Since I was in college, I`ve always sought out volunteer work with the elderly. The reason is pretty obvious: in every elderly person I meet, I see a little bit of Gramma.
After she died, it bothered me that besides Daughter, the only thing on earth with her name on it was a tombstone. So whenever I contributed any money to any causes, I did so "In memory of..." Gramma. Someday, I wanted her name to come up in a Google search, at least.
I vowed that if I ever won the lottery or otherwise got rich, I would build a medical clinic somewhere and name it after her. I know she would have liked that, because of her unfulfilled nursing dream.
Then I heard about the Rural School Project.
Cambodia keeps making the UN`s list of 50 poorest countries. Rural poverty is rampant there -- about three-quarters of the population gets by on subsistence farming. Over half of Cambodia`s population is 20 years old or younger. The country needs help right now, but it also needs forward-looking help, like teachers and schools, to train this generation to care for the next.
It now costs $14,000 to build a school (though it was somewhat less when I did it). Once it's built, you can keep on contributing to that specific school, by buying books and computers, paying teachers` salaries, etc.
Right now, my donations are relatively small, compared to my large initial outlay. But someday if we can afford it, I want to set up a nursing scholarship for students at the school that carries on my grandmother`s name.
Hub initally balked at my wanting to spend such a big chunk of our savings on something like this, since we do have three kids and a mortgage, but then I reminded him about an inheritance I`d received a few years before. No, not from Gramma -- from another old man in a nursing home I`d visited weekly for four years, when we lived in Los Angeles. Mr. Z.`s family had been wiped out in the Holocaust, and he had no living relatives except for an elderly cousin in Haifa. Mr. Z. died after we moved back to Tokyo, and....he left me $10,000. I wanted to pass this on. (Yes, I could have named the school after Mr. Z., but unlike my grandmother, he had enough cash at the end of his life to put his name on something, if that had been important to him.)
I suppose my motivation is largely selfish, since honoring my grandmother`s memory is probably not as virtuous as helping people strictly for the sake of helping them. But I`m sure the students at my grandmother`s school don`t care about my reasons -- they just care that they have computers, and no longer have to study their lessons under a leaky thatched roof.
This cause has also given me my ultimate back-up plan, should all go horribly, tragically wrong in my life. If I were ever to lose everything, Hub and the kids, what would I do? What would I live for?
Now I have a plan. I would start learning to speak Khmer, and go teach English or something at Gramma`s school.
-----------------------------
*(Gramma did once tell me, though, "If you had to marry a non-Catholic, couldn`t you at least have married a nice Jewish boy?")
It`s high time I explained the link on my sidebar, "I pledge to send any money I make from this blog to this organization." This month, I got my first check from Google, for $106.21. I would like to thank all the people whose c*l*i*c*k*s on those ads made this possible, and let you know where the money you helped me earn is going.
I will be sending a check for that amount to this charity -- The Rural School Project in Cambodia. In fact, it will be earmarked toward a specific school, which I funded and named after my grandmother.
I can`t tell you which one, in the interest of preserving my semi-anonymity, but you can click on links to specific schools on this page, and some of them have photos and interviews with students, teachers and local residents.
Now, before I start talking about the school, please allow me to first say a few words about my grandmother.
Many of my blog readers who know me in real life know I was very close to my mother`s mother, who lived with our family when I was growing up.
Daughter is named after her. Four days after I told my grandmother I was pregnant, I had a dream in which she said to me, "I`m sorry I won`t be around to see the new baby, but I heard from someone on the other side that it`s my time." And she pointed to a gravestone with her name and "1918-1996" written on it.
It was a sad, vivid dream, and I told Hub about it in the morning. I called my grandmother that night, just to hear her voice, but my mother said she wasn`t feeling well and had gone to bed early. The following morning, we were awakened by a call from my father saying Gramma had suffered a fatal heart attack.
That was the end of her life story, which began in New Haven, Connecticut, There, my grandmother had a pretty crappy early life, by all accounts. Her parents were Polish immigrants, and her mother died giving birth to a boy when she was 8 and her younger sister was 6. The little brother died of pneumonia at 14 months, and her father was consumed by grief. The Polish immigrant community quickly fixed him up with a new wife to take care of his girls, but she turned out to be a serious alcoholic. Then the Depression came.
Gramma told me she always dreamed of being a nurse, and if she could just have stayed in school a little longer, she thinks she would have been able to get a full scholarship to nursing school, because she said her grades were very good (I can`t imagine their being otherwise). Unfortunately, she had to leave school as soon as she was old enough to get her working papers at 14, and was never able to go back.
Instead, she worked for most of her life as a waitress. I guess she figured the next best thing to nursing was to place hot food in front of hungry people.
I could go on and on about my grandmother, and what she meant to me. She is the main reason I`m still a Catholic of sorts, despite the fact that it`s not a great fit with my secular/ feminist/relativist leanings --- and I grew up to marry a secular Buddhist (with Gramma`s blessing -- she knew a good thing when she saw it).*
Since I was in college, I`ve always sought out volunteer work with the elderly. The reason is pretty obvious: in every elderly person I meet, I see a little bit of Gramma.
After she died, it bothered me that besides Daughter, the only thing on earth with her name on it was a tombstone. So whenever I contributed any money to any causes, I did so "In memory of..." Gramma. Someday, I wanted her name to come up in a Google search, at least.
I vowed that if I ever won the lottery or otherwise got rich, I would build a medical clinic somewhere and name it after her. I know she would have liked that, because of her unfulfilled nursing dream.
Then I heard about the Rural School Project.
Cambodia keeps making the UN`s list of 50 poorest countries. Rural poverty is rampant there -- about three-quarters of the population gets by on subsistence farming. Over half of Cambodia`s population is 20 years old or younger. The country needs help right now, but it also needs forward-looking help, like teachers and schools, to train this generation to care for the next.
It now costs $14,000 to build a school (though it was somewhat less when I did it). Once it's built, you can keep on contributing to that specific school, by buying books and computers, paying teachers` salaries, etc.
Right now, my donations are relatively small, compared to my large initial outlay. But someday if we can afford it, I want to set up a nursing scholarship for students at the school that carries on my grandmother`s name.
Hub initally balked at my wanting to spend such a big chunk of our savings on something like this, since we do have three kids and a mortgage, but then I reminded him about an inheritance I`d received a few years before. No, not from Gramma -- from another old man in a nursing home I`d visited weekly for four years, when we lived in Los Angeles. Mr. Z.`s family had been wiped out in the Holocaust, and he had no living relatives except for an elderly cousin in Haifa. Mr. Z. died after we moved back to Tokyo, and....he left me $10,000. I wanted to pass this on. (Yes, I could have named the school after Mr. Z., but unlike my grandmother, he had enough cash at the end of his life to put his name on something, if that had been important to him.)
I suppose my motivation is largely selfish, since honoring my grandmother`s memory is probably not as virtuous as helping people strictly for the sake of helping them. But I`m sure the students at my grandmother`s school don`t care about my reasons -- they just care that they have computers, and no longer have to study their lessons under a leaky thatched roof.
This cause has also given me my ultimate back-up plan, should all go horribly, tragically wrong in my life. If I were ever to lose everything, Hub and the kids, what would I do? What would I live for?
Now I have a plan. I would start learning to speak Khmer, and go teach English or something at Gramma`s school.
-----------------------------
*(Gramma did once tell me, though, "If you had to marry a non-Catholic, couldn`t you at least have married a nice Jewish boy?")
posted by L. at 12:13 PM
12 comments
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Teaching Myself a Lesson
This morning, after I brought the kids to school, I noticed that Daughter had forgotten the lunch I`d packed for her.
Let her go hungry this time, I thought. I`m sick and tired of making her lunches and reminding her again and again, and then bringing it to school for her everytime she forgets (which is not often, but once every other month or so).
She really needs to learn to remember by herself, I thought. She needs to be better organized. Someday when I go back to work, I won`t be able to bring her forgotten lunches to school for her.
When I went to pick her up at school today, I said to her, "Are you hungry? Sorry, I didn`t bring your lunch that you forgot."
She looked at me blankly.
"Um...Mama? You ordered hot lunch for me today!"
Oh. Right.
I really need to learn to remember these things.
Let her go hungry this time, I thought. I`m sick and tired of making her lunches and reminding her again and again, and then bringing it to school for her everytime she forgets (which is not often, but once every other month or so).
She really needs to learn to remember by herself, I thought. She needs to be better organized. Someday when I go back to work, I won`t be able to bring her forgotten lunches to school for her.
When I went to pick her up at school today, I said to her, "Are you hungry? Sorry, I didn`t bring your lunch that you forgot."
She looked at me blankly.
"Um...Mama? You ordered hot lunch for me today!"
Oh. Right.
I really need to learn to remember these things.
posted by L. at 4:43 PM
9 comments
Monday, September 18, 2006
The Continuing Saga of Chinese SOUPer Woman
And now, the moment you`ve all been waiting for: the thrilling conclusion of my "What`s for dinner?" post.
In our last episode, I had just discovered Au Pair Extraordinaire`s little Chinese mother, wearing a neck/back brace with one arm strapped in a sling COOKING in my kitchen, when she was supposed to be in bed.
I was unable to communicate with her at all -- she kept shooing me away, saying, "No, no, no, no, NO!" which was the only English I ever heard her speak.
Au Pair Extraordinaire was out sightseeing with her sister. I immediately called her cell phone.
"You`re mother is cooking," I said.
"OH NO! Let me talk to her!"
I gave the phone to her little Chinese mother, who took it with a smile. The smile faded away, when she realized it was her daughters on the phone.
I didn`t understand a word of the conversation that followed, but I think I can guess -- her little Chinese mother was probably saying something along the lines of, "OF COURSE I`m cooking, because my daughters are out sightseeing instead of home cooking for me!"
I will never know for sure what they said, but her little Chinese mother kept right on cooking. She had browned some pork chunks in oil, and was now adding water and chopped vegeatables and making soup.
Au Pair Extraordinaire and her sister came right home as soon as they could, and made her go back to bed.
The pot of pork and vegetable soup stayed on the stove. I thought they were going to eat it, but it turned out they were waiting for our family to eat first. They did not make this clear -- we waited for them, and got hungrier and hungrier as the hours ticked by, until I finally asked Au Pair Extraordinaire, and she let me know that we should go ahead. I suggested we all eat together, but she said her mother really wanted us to eat first.
My kids took one look at Chinese cabbage, Chinese broccoli and ample mushroom slices, and made gagging faces. They do eat vegetables, but so far, I`ve been unable to convince them that mushrooms won`t kill them. So I let them get away with just drinking cups of the broth with pork.
I poured large helpings into bowls for Hub and myself, and sat down to try it.
"How do you like it?" asked Au Pair Extraordinaire.
"Tell your mother it`s delicious!" I said.
But... it really wasn`t. I mean, it wasn`t bad.... it just had no taste at all. She hadn`t put in any seasoning, not even salt. It was just boiled meat and vegetables.
I could tell by Hub`s face that he was thinking the same thing that I was, and wishing he could slather it with his beloved pesto sauce. But he didn`t.
"Do I have to finish it?" he whispered to me.
"Here -- put it in my bowl, and I will," I said, figuring at the very least that it was healthy and pretty low-cal.
When Au Pair Extraordinaire, her sister and her mother came to eat, her mother looked at the pot and made a worried-sounding proclamation in Chinese.
"She said you didn`t eat much! You didn`t like it?" asked Au Pair Extraordinaire`s sister, translating for her mother.
"No, no -- it was delicious!" I repeated.
The daughters tried it, and made faces. "It has no taste!"
A heated discussion with their mother in Chinese followed, of which I understood zilch.
However, I have three theories as to what had transpired:
(1) Either the mother, who was taking major amounts of prescription pain-killers, had simply forgotten to put in any seasoning, or
(2) The mother meant to ask her daughters to find out where I kept the seasoning in my kitchen, but forgot because she was so ticked off they stayed out so long, or
(3) The mother left the seasoning out on purpose, to teach her daughters a lesson.
I know (3) seems a bit farfetched, but it is possible. My own grandmother, who lived with our family when I was growing up, was a woman of few words, who used food to communicate with us. Most of the time, she cooked us delicious food as a way of showing her love for us, and expected us to show our love for her by eating and appreciating it. However, I could always tell when I had fallen out of Gramma`s good graces, because she would cook me runny eggs, and hiss, "Why are you complaining? That`s how you like them!" And I would have to be extra nice to her for a while, and eat the runny eggs, until I had atoned for whatever I had done.
Later that night, Au Pair Extraordinaire was packing the suitcases in our car, to get ready to bring her sister and mother to go to the airport for their flight back to Taiwan. They were scheduled to depart at some ungodly wee hour of the morning.
Her sister couldn`t help with the suitcases, because she had sprained some body part in the accident (not clear which part, but thankfully, she seemed fine). So her sister stood in the entranceway translating for the mother, who was saying her formal thank-you-and-goodbye to us, with lots of bowing gestures.
"She said, she is so sorry for the soup! It had no taste! And the meat was tough!"
"It was delicious!" I said, bowing back.
"She said next time, she`ll cook you better soup!"
"No, really -- it was delicious!" I said.
The mother gestured toward Au Pair Extraordinaire outside, and said something.
"She said, please make sure my daughter is home by 10:00 pm everynight! Please don`t continue to allow her to stay out all night!"
"She`s 26 -- we can`t really stop her, can we?" I said, and laughed, figuring she was kidding.
That was the wrong response. She wasn`t kidding at all.
"That was my mother`s request," said the sister, looking slightly pained. "I`m just translating for her, not asking you myself."
A fourth possibility occurred to me -- perhaps the mother had cooked us tasteless soup on purpose, as her way of letting us know she was unhappy that we hadn`t imposed a curfew on her unmarried daughter?
Anyway, Au Pair Extraordinaire drove them to the airport. Her mother, upon arriving in their home city, went straight to the local hospital, where she was admitted and will likely stay for a few weeks of rest and rehabilitation. Au Pair Extraordinaire used to work as a nurse at this same hospital for a few years, and was able to arrange special care for her mother with all her old doctor and nurse pals.
The next day, I added soy sauce, lemon juice, salt and pepper to the soup, and it was much improved. Au Pair Extraordinaire ate the leftovers with us.
"You chopped the pork and vegetables for her, didn`t you?" she asked, holding up a tiny, paper-thin mushroom slice.
"No," I said. "I didn`t find her until she was browning the meat."
"The meat and vegetables were in big pieces! How did she chop them into these little pieces with ONLY ONE HAND?"
I don`t even want to think about that one -- all I can say is, I`m glad I wasn`t watching her do it.
In our last episode, I had just discovered Au Pair Extraordinaire`s little Chinese mother, wearing a neck/back brace with one arm strapped in a sling COOKING in my kitchen, when she was supposed to be in bed.
I was unable to communicate with her at all -- she kept shooing me away, saying, "No, no, no, no, NO!" which was the only English I ever heard her speak.
Au Pair Extraordinaire was out sightseeing with her sister. I immediately called her cell phone.
"You`re mother is cooking," I said.
"OH NO! Let me talk to her!"
I gave the phone to her little Chinese mother, who took it with a smile. The smile faded away, when she realized it was her daughters on the phone.
I didn`t understand a word of the conversation that followed, but I think I can guess -- her little Chinese mother was probably saying something along the lines of, "OF COURSE I`m cooking, because my daughters are out sightseeing instead of home cooking for me!"
I will never know for sure what they said, but her little Chinese mother kept right on cooking. She had browned some pork chunks in oil, and was now adding water and chopped vegeatables and making soup.
Au Pair Extraordinaire and her sister came right home as soon as they could, and made her go back to bed.
The pot of pork and vegetable soup stayed on the stove. I thought they were going to eat it, but it turned out they were waiting for our family to eat first. They did not make this clear -- we waited for them, and got hungrier and hungrier as the hours ticked by, until I finally asked Au Pair Extraordinaire, and she let me know that we should go ahead. I suggested we all eat together, but she said her mother really wanted us to eat first.
My kids took one look at Chinese cabbage, Chinese broccoli and ample mushroom slices, and made gagging faces. They do eat vegetables, but so far, I`ve been unable to convince them that mushrooms won`t kill them. So I let them get away with just drinking cups of the broth with pork.
I poured large helpings into bowls for Hub and myself, and sat down to try it.
"How do you like it?" asked Au Pair Extraordinaire.
"Tell your mother it`s delicious!" I said.
But... it really wasn`t. I mean, it wasn`t bad.... it just had no taste at all. She hadn`t put in any seasoning, not even salt. It was just boiled meat and vegetables.
I could tell by Hub`s face that he was thinking the same thing that I was, and wishing he could slather it with his beloved pesto sauce. But he didn`t.
"Do I have to finish it?" he whispered to me.
"Here -- put it in my bowl, and I will," I said, figuring at the very least that it was healthy and pretty low-cal.
When Au Pair Extraordinaire, her sister and her mother came to eat, her mother looked at the pot and made a worried-sounding proclamation in Chinese.
"She said you didn`t eat much! You didn`t like it?" asked Au Pair Extraordinaire`s sister, translating for her mother.
"No, no -- it was delicious!" I repeated.
The daughters tried it, and made faces. "It has no taste!"
A heated discussion with their mother in Chinese followed, of which I understood zilch.
However, I have three theories as to what had transpired:
(1) Either the mother, who was taking major amounts of prescription pain-killers, had simply forgotten to put in any seasoning, or
(2) The mother meant to ask her daughters to find out where I kept the seasoning in my kitchen, but forgot because she was so ticked off they stayed out so long, or
(3) The mother left the seasoning out on purpose, to teach her daughters a lesson.
I know (3) seems a bit farfetched, but it is possible. My own grandmother, who lived with our family when I was growing up, was a woman of few words, who used food to communicate with us. Most of the time, she cooked us delicious food as a way of showing her love for us, and expected us to show our love for her by eating and appreciating it. However, I could always tell when I had fallen out of Gramma`s good graces, because she would cook me runny eggs, and hiss, "Why are you complaining? That`s how you like them!" And I would have to be extra nice to her for a while, and eat the runny eggs, until I had atoned for whatever I had done.
Later that night, Au Pair Extraordinaire was packing the suitcases in our car, to get ready to bring her sister and mother to go to the airport for their flight back to Taiwan. They were scheduled to depart at some ungodly wee hour of the morning.
Her sister couldn`t help with the suitcases, because she had sprained some body part in the accident (not clear which part, but thankfully, she seemed fine). So her sister stood in the entranceway translating for the mother, who was saying her formal thank-you-and-goodbye to us, with lots of bowing gestures.
"She said, she is so sorry for the soup! It had no taste! And the meat was tough!"
"It was delicious!" I said, bowing back.
"She said next time, she`ll cook you better soup!"
"No, really -- it was delicious!" I said.
The mother gestured toward Au Pair Extraordinaire outside, and said something.
"She said, please make sure my daughter is home by 10:00 pm everynight! Please don`t continue to allow her to stay out all night!"
"She`s 26 -- we can`t really stop her, can we?" I said, and laughed, figuring she was kidding.
That was the wrong response. She wasn`t kidding at all.
"That was my mother`s request," said the sister, looking slightly pained. "I`m just translating for her, not asking you myself."
A fourth possibility occurred to me -- perhaps the mother had cooked us tasteless soup on purpose, as her way of letting us know she was unhappy that we hadn`t imposed a curfew on her unmarried daughter?
Anyway, Au Pair Extraordinaire drove them to the airport. Her mother, upon arriving in their home city, went straight to the local hospital, where she was admitted and will likely stay for a few weeks of rest and rehabilitation. Au Pair Extraordinaire used to work as a nurse at this same hospital for a few years, and was able to arrange special care for her mother with all her old doctor and nurse pals.
The next day, I added soy sauce, lemon juice, salt and pepper to the soup, and it was much improved. Au Pair Extraordinaire ate the leftovers with us.
"You chopped the pork and vegetables for her, didn`t you?" she asked, holding up a tiny, paper-thin mushroom slice.
"No," I said. "I didn`t find her until she was browning the meat."
"The meat and vegetables were in big pieces! How did she chop them into these little pieces with ONLY ONE HAND?"
I don`t even want to think about that one -- all I can say is, I`m glad I wasn`t watching her do it.
posted by L. at 9:55 AM
8 comments
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Friends Are For Chewing Up and Spitting Out
Here`s Little Son, singing to himself, a song he learned at school:
"Make new friends, and keep the old -- one is silver and the other`s SKOAL!"
"The other`s GOLD," I corrected.
"No, the teacher said the other`s SKOAL!"
Whatever are they teaching him at that preschool? And to think all this time I was taken in by their "no refined sugar" policy....
"Make new friends, and keep the old -- one is silver and the other`s SKOAL!"
"The other`s GOLD," I corrected.
"No, the teacher said the other`s SKOAL!"
Whatever are they teaching him at that preschool? And to think all this time I was taken in by their "no refined sugar" policy....
posted by L. at 9:09 AM
4 comments
Thursday, September 14, 2006
I Wonder What`s For Dinner....?
I heard a funny noise, and went to see what was going on, and found a little Chinese woman wearing a neck/back brace with one arm strapped in a sling COOKING IN MY KITCHEN.
Au Pair Extraordinaire went out sightseeing with her sister, leaving me alone with her non-English speaking mother. They said they`d be back "soon." That was over two hours ago. I don`t think they anticipated that their mother would rise from her bed, and COOK.
She`s frying things in oil -- and she has use of only one arm, and can`t turn her head or look down. Should I be worried?
I keep offering to help. She keeps shaking her head and waving me away.
Yeah... I`m worried.
But it does smell great.
Au Pair Extraordinaire went out sightseeing with her sister, leaving me alone with her non-English speaking mother. They said they`d be back "soon." That was over two hours ago. I don`t think they anticipated that their mother would rise from her bed, and COOK.
She`s frying things in oil -- and she has use of only one arm, and can`t turn her head or look down. Should I be worried?
I keep offering to help. She keeps shaking her head and waving me away.
Yeah... I`m worried.
But it does smell great.
posted by L. at 7:07 PM
10 comments
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
My Own Special Little Conversation with Linda Hirshman
All of you who are sick of reading about Linda Hirshman, please go elsewhere. But you all know me -- I love to pick at things, like an itching, crusty scab I just...can`t..leave...alone...
The other day, Hirshman wrote this post, and I commented,
"Wow. So I guess, as a "choice feminist," I have left no sense of decency, according to this?
You have a lot of useful, positive things to say, that have the potential to help a great many women and society as a whole. I can`t help but wonder why you seem so determined to alienate women like me, who would otherwise embrace your message."
And Linda responded! Oooh, I haven`t felt this touched by celebrity since I got Bob Hope`s autograph at the Greater Hartford Open in 1981.
Here is what she said, in its unadulterated entirety:
I am always interested in who writes saying that they would embrace my message if only I didn't speak so loudly. "Why," the "L" commenter muses, do I seem so determined to alienate "women like [her] who would otherwise embrace" my message. I am dying to know what women are out there who would educate themselves for work, take work seriously, never marry a jerk, not have more than one child and lobby for repeal of the joint tax filing if only Linda would watch her language. I might even change my language for millions of would be followers.
Well, what is the "L" commenter like? In this case, the commenter maintains a blog, homesickhome.com, in which she describes herself. Here it is:
The other day, Hirshman wrote this post, and I commented,
"Wow. So I guess, as a "choice feminist," I have left no sense of decency, according to this?
You have a lot of useful, positive things to say, that have the potential to help a great many women and society as a whole. I can`t help but wonder why you seem so determined to alienate women like me, who would otherwise embrace your message."
And Linda responded! Oooh, I haven`t felt this touched by celebrity since I got Bob Hope`s autograph at the Greater Hartford Open in 1981.
Here is what she said, in its unadulterated entirety:
I am always interested in who writes saying that they would embrace my message if only I didn't speak so loudly. "Why," the "L" commenter muses, do I seem so determined to alienate "women like [her] who would otherwise embrace" my message. I am dying to know what women are out there who would educate themselves for work, take work seriously, never marry a jerk, not have more than one child and lobby for repeal of the joint tax filing if only Linda would watch her language. I might even change my language for millions of would be followers.
Well, what is the "L" commenter like? In this case, the commenter maintains a blog, homesickhome.com, in which she describes herself. Here it is:
"We now live in San Francisco, after leaving our home in Tokyo three months ago. Hence, my title -- "Homesick Home." We are all homesick here. Or rather, most of us are -- ironically, my Japanese husband (to be known as "Hub") isn`t homesick at all. He`s zipping around in his Saab, loving his job, eating at expensive sushi bars in Sausalito while I`m eating turkey dogs with the kids. Big Son is 10, Daughter is 8, and Little Son is 3. I thought about calling them "Big Brother, Sister, and Little Brother," to describe how they relate to each other instead of to me. But "Big Brother" conjures up 1984 images, and "Sister" would get confusing, because the older two now go to Catholic school, and I`m sure I`ll be writing here about some of the nuns."
Now, I may be wrong here, but this stay at home mom with three children all born before I ever put pen to paper, being educated by the institutions of revealed religion, and a relationship to spouse, including the allocation of good and nourishing food, that fits pretty cleanly into the concept of caste, does not indeed seem to me to be someone all that ready to "embrace my message." Unless I am missing something pretty major here, I would suggest that it does not advance the discourse for "women like" her to write and tell me they're going to jump right on board if I will only what, stop ending my sentences with a preposition?
In short -- Hirshman appears to have written off "women like" me. And I think she`s making a big mistake.
Would it help if I told Hirshman that I always drink good champagne with my turkey dogs?
No, she`d probably just argue that my "relationship to spouse" which "fits pretty cleanly into the concept of caste" has driven me to drink.
If I wanted to get petty, I could also point out to her that the fact that my kids are "being educated by the institutions of revealed religion" does not mean they`re being Bible-schooled by fundies. I mean, we`re in San Francisco, for godssake -- our school has kids with two daddies, and my older son has decided he`s an athiest. (And even if I were a devout Catholic, does that mean I couldn`t ever be a "real" feminist? Are the two mutually exclusive? Are all religious women just dupes of the patriarchy? But I digress...)
Let`s examine Linda`s little checklist, item by item.
She says, I am dying to know what women are out there who would educate themselves for work, take work seriously, never marry a jerk, not have more than one child and lobby for repeal of the joint tax filing.
1) I educated myself for work. And I had the student loans to prove it.
2) I take work seriously -- I worked for many years before I took time off, and I expect to work again. I had a good job, in Hirshman`s dear "public sphere" -- and income-wise, I made much more than Hub, and was the main breadwinner for six of the last eight years. In all likelihood, when we move back to Tokyo, I will make much more than him again.
3) Marry a jerk? Isn`t that every woman`s dream? Come on, now.
4) Not have more than one child -- NOPE! She lost me there. I originally wanted two, and we decided to go for that "extra" one -- but I think I can credibly argue that three kids are as easy to juggle as one, IF you can outsource lots of the work to daycare and babysitters, as I did (and don`t regret doing) when I worked fulltime.
5) I hope joint tax filing dies an ugly death. I`m lucky -- my spouse is an alien, so when we`re in Japan, I can file my U.S. return as "Head of Household." Damn, that`s a good thing.
That`s four out of five. So, despite Hirshman`s attempt to dismiss me as another turkey dog-sucking papist victim of the patriarchy, I have to say... we agree more than we disagree.
Hirshman`s larger point, if I`m not mistaken, is how to get more women into the public sphere of influence, where they can effect change. I wholeheartedly support that idea.
However, Hirshman`s point was initially lost on me, because I was so infuriated by her attack on educated women who "opt out" to be with their children. As I`ve said before, it is very hard to see the forest for the trees when someone is attacking your ankles with an axe.
Ironically, Hirshman`s exclusive definition of feminism reminds me a lot of the Catholic church.
There are Catholics who think the church would be better off with only "ideologically pure" believers, and the rest of us can -- literally -- go to hell. Who cares if the only people who show up for mass every week are a few widows, a handful of nuns, and Opus Dei members? Those gay-loving, contracepting, baby-killing feminists don`t belong in our church! They`re hurting themselves and society -- who needs `em! So let`s bad-mouth them and their heretical values, and drive them all away!
But I would argue that`s the wrong approach for any movement striving for societal change, which is impossible without the force of will of lots and lots of people. Shouldn`t such movements try hard to win the hearts and minds of their followers, instead of alienating those whose views aren`t a perfect fit? Some of us just aren`t willing to give up our contraception... or our turkey dogs.
Unless I am missing something pretty major here, I would suggest that it does not advance the discourse for "women like" her to write and tell me they're going to jump right on board if I will only what, stop ending my sentences with a preposition?
If I may directly address Hirshman -- yes, you are missing something "pretty major here."
I`m already "on board." And I`m not going to let anyone shove me off.
posted by L. at 11:04 PM
22 comments
How did it get to be WEDNESDAY already?
Wasn`t it just Monday a few minutes ago?
So much to write about, so little time. There`s been a couple of great posts over at American Family, about raising multicultural, multilingual children, and I have a lot of thoughts on that subject. In fact, I could probably spew forth a few hundred posts about that alone.
North of the border, Her Bad Mother has challenged bloggers to write about their efforts to change the world:
...sometime this week, write a post about a cause that you are passionate about. Provide links and information and guidance for people to actually follow up on your post and take some sort of action: where can they make a donation? Sign a petition? Volunteer? How can they help promote your cause? Use this post as a catalyst for action – make it your mission to show, in whatever small way, how the blogosphere can support real action in support of real causes.
I have a lot to say on that, too. Has anyone ever clicked on the link on my sidebar, I pledge to send any money I make from this blog to this organization ? I`ve never explained why it`s there, and it`s about time I did.
Oh, and Her Bad Mother also interviewed Gloria Steinem. Can I admit that I`m seething with jealousy, or is jealousy just tacky? Seriously -- I chose my college because I wanted to walk on paths trodden by Steinem, Betty Friedan and... Julia Child. How could I ever go astray, following in the great footsteps of two feminist icons and a TV chef?
Linda Hirshman would love to answer that question!
Yes, she has a blog now, and mentions me in her latest post. Okay, so she doesn`t link me, and she has my blog address wrong, but at least I know for sure that she read (but didn`t post) my comments to her.
I used to have a great deal of anger at Hirshman, and would tremble with rage at the very mention of her name. This sentiment appears to be a common one. For example, if you Google "Linda Hirshman" and "bite me," you get about 8o references -- which I think is pretty impressive.
And what are young women, presumably her target audience, saying about her? Um... stuff like this.
But then, my anger miraculously disappeared, as, in a deep reflective moment, I realized that Linda Hirshman IS MY MOTHER! -- an old-style feminist who loves to tell me, "We didn`t send you to college to sit around on your ass all day!" In fact, she even looks like my mother. It`s a little unnerving -- separated at birth, perhaps?
So now that I`m over my anger at Hirshman and no longer take everything she says personally (without therapy!), I am merely confused.
I think I understand her overall message, and even agree with many parts of it. But I don`t understand why, even if she wants to avoid sugar-coating her words, she finds it so necessary to slather them with bile?
Perhaps she`ll answer that question on her blog someday. Perhaps, once she gets her comment function problems sorted out, her blog will become a venue of meaningful dialogue on the questions she raises.
In the meantime.... I can`t write about any of these things today, because I still have a tiny, frail non-English speaking Chinese woman in a back brace as a houseguest.
So... later.
So much to write about, so little time. There`s been a couple of great posts over at American Family, about raising multicultural, multilingual children, and I have a lot of thoughts on that subject. In fact, I could probably spew forth a few hundred posts about that alone.
North of the border, Her Bad Mother has challenged bloggers to write about their efforts to change the world:
...sometime this week, write a post about a cause that you are passionate about. Provide links and information and guidance for people to actually follow up on your post and take some sort of action: where can they make a donation? Sign a petition? Volunteer? How can they help promote your cause? Use this post as a catalyst for action – make it your mission to show, in whatever small way, how the blogosphere can support real action in support of real causes.
I have a lot to say on that, too. Has anyone ever clicked on the link on my sidebar, I pledge to send any money I make from this blog to this organization ? I`ve never explained why it`s there, and it`s about time I did.
Oh, and Her Bad Mother also interviewed Gloria Steinem. Can I admit that I`m seething with jealousy, or is jealousy just tacky? Seriously -- I chose my college because I wanted to walk on paths trodden by Steinem, Betty Friedan and... Julia Child. How could I ever go astray, following in the great footsteps of two feminist icons and a TV chef?
Linda Hirshman would love to answer that question!
Yes, she has a blog now, and mentions me in her latest post. Okay, so she doesn`t link me, and she has my blog address wrong, but at least I know for sure that she read (but didn`t post) my comments to her.
I used to have a great deal of anger at Hirshman, and would tremble with rage at the very mention of her name. This sentiment appears to be a common one. For example, if you Google "Linda Hirshman" and "bite me," you get about 8o references -- which I think is pretty impressive.
And what are young women, presumably her target audience, saying about her? Um... stuff like this.
But then, my anger miraculously disappeared, as, in a deep reflective moment, I realized that Linda Hirshman IS MY MOTHER! -- an old-style feminist who loves to tell me, "We didn`t send you to college to sit around on your ass all day!" In fact, she even looks like my mother. It`s a little unnerving -- separated at birth, perhaps?
So now that I`m over my anger at Hirshman and no longer take everything she says personally (without therapy!), I am merely confused.
I think I understand her overall message, and even agree with many parts of it. But I don`t understand why, even if she wants to avoid sugar-coating her words, she finds it so necessary to slather them with bile?
Perhaps she`ll answer that question on her blog someday. Perhaps, once she gets her comment function problems sorted out, her blog will become a venue of meaningful dialogue on the questions she raises.
In the meantime.... I can`t write about any of these things today, because I still have a tiny, frail non-English speaking Chinese woman in a back brace as a houseguest.
So... later.
posted by L. at 10:20 AM
2 comments
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Au Pair Extraordinaire Update (UPDATED)
Thanks to all who expressed their concern -- I just got a call from Au Pair Extraordinaire, saying that her mother will be released from the hospital today, and she and her mother and her sister will be flying back to San Francisco tonight. Her mother injured her neck and arm, and is in a lot of pain, but is expected to be well enough to return to Taiwan on Friday as originally planned.
So in a few hours, I`ll be welcoming a woman who was just released from the hospital.
Hmmmm..... I guess I`d better go pick up all the toys and garbage on our floor. I don`t want her to trip and break another bone, after all she`s been through.
I told my mother on the phone about Au Pair Extraordinaire`s horrible experience, and she, always eager to demonstrate her keen grasp of the obvious, said this:
"Well, I guess that probably ruined their vacation."
As Daughter would say, "DUUUUUH!"
(UPDATED: They`re heeeeeere! A tiny, smiling older women in a neck/back brace, with her left arm in a sling, is now tottering around our house and chattering in Chinese, which I don`t understand, but she sounds in good spirits. And I am scurrying around picking up toys/books/pillows off the floor in her path -- I never realized what a minefield our house is, for someone who can`t look down...)
So in a few hours, I`ll be welcoming a woman who was just released from the hospital.
Hmmmm..... I guess I`d better go pick up all the toys and garbage on our floor. I don`t want her to trip and break another bone, after all she`s been through.
I told my mother on the phone about Au Pair Extraordinaire`s horrible experience, and she, always eager to demonstrate her keen grasp of the obvious, said this:
"Well, I guess that probably ruined their vacation."
As Daughter would say, "DUUUUUH!"
(UPDATED: They`re heeeeeere! A tiny, smiling older women in a neck/back brace, with her left arm in a sling, is now tottering around our house and chattering in Chinese, which I don`t understand, but she sounds in good spirits. And I am scurrying around picking up toys/books/pillows off the floor in her path -- I never realized what a minefield our house is, for someone who can`t look down...)
posted by L. at 1:17 PM
6 comments
Bad Mama
"If you`re looking for your Little Son, he went outside the gate!"
I had not been looking for Little Son. I was waiting for another mom in the schoolyard after school, and had walked over to the church hall for a moment, leaving Little Son, who was playing with all the older kids.
"He must have followed his big brother out there," I said, noticing Big Son out there, too.
"No, I sent Big Son out there to get him! He was out there by himself!"
This was highly unlikely, since he sticks like a shadow to the older kids, and in fact, I found out a minute later that he was out there playing with another boy from Big Son`s class.
Now, Little Son is four and a half, and will be starting kindergarten in a year. He`s not two, or three. He rollerskates on the sidewalk in front of our house all the time, and knows he`s not allowed in the street. In fact, once when Big Son and Daughter crossed the street to play with our little Russian neighbor boy, Little Son came forlornly in the house and told me he "can`t follow them, because I can`t cross the street."
Granted, our house is on a low-traffic street, and the street in front of our school has all the parent pick-up traffic. But the sidewalk in front of the school is extra wide and filled with other kids waiting for their rides. Plus, I had never explicitly told him, "Don`t go out the gate," the way I always tell him, "Never go in the street" -- he wasn`t even disobeying me. So the fact that he walked out the gate to play with someone he knew on the wide sidewalk was, in my opinion, nothing to get excited about.
So who was this woman, who seemed so concerned about it, and the fact that I had let him out of my sight?
Yup -- Big Son`s new teacher.
Why don`t I just wear a tee-shirt that says, "I LET MY KIDS RUN WILD!"
I had not been looking for Little Son. I was waiting for another mom in the schoolyard after school, and had walked over to the church hall for a moment, leaving Little Son, who was playing with all the older kids.
"He must have followed his big brother out there," I said, noticing Big Son out there, too.
"No, I sent Big Son out there to get him! He was out there by himself!"
This was highly unlikely, since he sticks like a shadow to the older kids, and in fact, I found out a minute later that he was out there playing with another boy from Big Son`s class.
Now, Little Son is four and a half, and will be starting kindergarten in a year. He`s not two, or three. He rollerskates on the sidewalk in front of our house all the time, and knows he`s not allowed in the street. In fact, once when Big Son and Daughter crossed the street to play with our little Russian neighbor boy, Little Son came forlornly in the house and told me he "can`t follow them, because I can`t cross the street."
Granted, our house is on a low-traffic street, and the street in front of our school has all the parent pick-up traffic. But the sidewalk in front of the school is extra wide and filled with other kids waiting for their rides. Plus, I had never explicitly told him, "Don`t go out the gate," the way I always tell him, "Never go in the street" -- he wasn`t even disobeying me. So the fact that he walked out the gate to play with someone he knew on the wide sidewalk was, in my opinion, nothing to get excited about.
So who was this woman, who seemed so concerned about it, and the fact that I had let him out of my sight?
Yup -- Big Son`s new teacher.
Why don`t I just wear a tee-shirt that says, "I LET MY KIDS RUN WILD!"
posted by L. at 10:57 AM
5 comments
Monday, September 11, 2006
Five Long Years Ago
It was already near the end of the day in Tokyo. I was putting Big Son and Daughter to bed, when the phone rang.
"Turn on the TV!" said one of my co-workers. "A plane just hit the World Trade Center!"
I did, and watched. How could I not? I watched even though I was sick and exhausted, and wanted nothing more than to sleep -- I had found out just a few days before that I was pregnant with Little Son.
At first I thought the large falling objects were pieces of debris, until I saw some of them flapping their arms.
What kind of world is this baby going to be born into? I remember thinking.
I called my parents in Las Vegas, to ask where my brother`s new office was. He lived and worked in Manhattan and had recently changed jobs.
I woke them up. They said they didn`t know where it was. They turned on their TV.
I called my brother`s home, and their nanny said she had just spoken to my sister-in-law, whose office was pretty far from Ground Zero -- but my brother was out visiting clients that morning, and had forgotten his cell phone.
"We all just have to pray," said the nanny, a deeply religious elderly woman from the South.
When the second plane hit, then-six-year old Big Son said, "COOL!"
I hadn`t even realized he was there. I thought my kids had gone to sleep, but they were awake and watching with me.
"No, it`s not cool," I told him. "It`s not pretend -- it`s real. And there are people in the buildings, and in the planes. Mamas and papas were working in the buildings."
"So the plane hit a work place?" he asked.
"Yes. Let`s go to sleep now."
"Will a plane hit your work place, Mama?"
"I don`t know. No, I don`t think so. Let`s go to bed."
"Were there kids in the planes? Will our plane hit a building?"
We were supposed to leave on a family vacation to Saipan in a few days. Big Son had been really looking forward to the plane ride, but I realized we probably wouldn`t be going on our vacation after all.
"I don`t think so," I said. "Come on -- let`s go back to bed."
I spent hours on the phone that night, calling friends and family and watching the live coverage. At some point, my brother realized what was going on, and called my parents, who called me and said he was okay, and nowhere near the WTC that morning.
Hub and I watched TV for most of the night.
After sleeping for a few hours, I went in to my job, at a financial wire service. I vaguely recall writing one of the market-wrap-up stories that day. I remember Treasurys trading was chaotic, because the New York office of Cantor Fitzgerald no longer existed. I was on forex markets for some of the day, but none of the traders wanted to talk about business. They all wanted to talk about colleaugues and friends they`d lost.
The immediate aftermath of September 11 coincided with the first awful trimester of my pregnancy. At any given moment, I felt as if I was on the verge of crying or throwing up. Airplanes, tall buildings and explosions haunted my dreams every night.
Most of all, I remember that sick feeling I had, that life would never be the same. I went home from work on September 12, and walked with a new appreciation through our Tokyo neighborhood, which had been totally destroyed in the World War II firebombings and rebuilt.
In fact, some of the people who helped rebuild it still lived there --- how ever did they do that? How did these ordinary people keep moving forward, one foot in front of the other, day in and day out, when their old way of life was utterly destroyed?
Suddenly, they didn`t seem so ordinary anymore.
We didn`t take our vacation to Saipan, and our travel agent gave us a full refund. We went to Kyoto for a few days instead, to spend time with Hub`s family.
I remember how many Japanese -- and people from other countries, too -- said to me, "It`s so terrible, what happened in your country." People left flowers outside the U.S. Embassy, and signed a condolence book there.
My parents (my unsentimental, austere parents!) told me they hung a flag outside their house.
One of my former college professors, a true blue '60`s Summer-of-Love liberal in Massachusetts, told me, "It`s so great to see all the American flags everywhere, you know?" He was the last person I ever expected to say something like that, and it drove home for me what the mood must have been like in the U.S.
Five long years later.... where did all that goodwill and solidarity go?
How did an event so bad bring forth something even worse?
And when will it end?
"Turn on the TV!" said one of my co-workers. "A plane just hit the World Trade Center!"
I did, and watched. How could I not? I watched even though I was sick and exhausted, and wanted nothing more than to sleep -- I had found out just a few days before that I was pregnant with Little Son.
At first I thought the large falling objects were pieces of debris, until I saw some of them flapping their arms.
What kind of world is this baby going to be born into? I remember thinking.
I called my parents in Las Vegas, to ask where my brother`s new office was. He lived and worked in Manhattan and had recently changed jobs.
I woke them up. They said they didn`t know where it was. They turned on their TV.
I called my brother`s home, and their nanny said she had just spoken to my sister-in-law, whose office was pretty far from Ground Zero -- but my brother was out visiting clients that morning, and had forgotten his cell phone.
"We all just have to pray," said the nanny, a deeply religious elderly woman from the South.
When the second plane hit, then-six-year old Big Son said, "COOL!"
I hadn`t even realized he was there. I thought my kids had gone to sleep, but they were awake and watching with me.
"No, it`s not cool," I told him. "It`s not pretend -- it`s real. And there are people in the buildings, and in the planes. Mamas and papas were working in the buildings."
"So the plane hit a work place?" he asked.
"Yes. Let`s go to sleep now."
"Will a plane hit your work place, Mama?"
"I don`t know. No, I don`t think so. Let`s go to bed."
"Were there kids in the planes? Will our plane hit a building?"
We were supposed to leave on a family vacation to Saipan in a few days. Big Son had been really looking forward to the plane ride, but I realized we probably wouldn`t be going on our vacation after all.
"I don`t think so," I said. "Come on -- let`s go back to bed."
I spent hours on the phone that night, calling friends and family and watching the live coverage. At some point, my brother realized what was going on, and called my parents, who called me and said he was okay, and nowhere near the WTC that morning.
Hub and I watched TV for most of the night.
After sleeping for a few hours, I went in to my job, at a financial wire service. I vaguely recall writing one of the market-wrap-up stories that day. I remember Treasurys trading was chaotic, because the New York office of Cantor Fitzgerald no longer existed. I was on forex markets for some of the day, but none of the traders wanted to talk about business. They all wanted to talk about colleaugues and friends they`d lost.
The immediate aftermath of September 11 coincided with the first awful trimester of my pregnancy. At any given moment, I felt as if I was on the verge of crying or throwing up. Airplanes, tall buildings and explosions haunted my dreams every night.
Most of all, I remember that sick feeling I had, that life would never be the same. I went home from work on September 12, and walked with a new appreciation through our Tokyo neighborhood, which had been totally destroyed in the World War II firebombings and rebuilt.
In fact, some of the people who helped rebuild it still lived there --- how ever did they do that? How did these ordinary people keep moving forward, one foot in front of the other, day in and day out, when their old way of life was utterly destroyed?
Suddenly, they didn`t seem so ordinary anymore.
We didn`t take our vacation to Saipan, and our travel agent gave us a full refund. We went to Kyoto for a few days instead, to spend time with Hub`s family.
I remember how many Japanese -- and people from other countries, too -- said to me, "It`s so terrible, what happened in your country." People left flowers outside the U.S. Embassy, and signed a condolence book there.
My parents (my unsentimental, austere parents!) told me they hung a flag outside their house.
One of my former college professors, a true blue '60`s Summer-of-Love liberal in Massachusetts, told me, "It`s so great to see all the American flags everywhere, you know?" He was the last person I ever expected to say something like that, and it drove home for me what the mood must have been like in the U.S.
Five long years later.... where did all that goodwill and solidarity go?
How did an event so bad bring forth something even worse?
And when will it end?
posted by L. at 8:29 AM
12 comments
Sunday, September 10, 2006
A Little Sunday Post, A Little Bookish Meme
Will this week be a good week?
Possibly yes, but since I expect to be welcoming back some houseguests recovering from serious trauma, possibly not.
Au Pair Extraordinaire said she and her sister and mother might fly back to San Francisco on Tuesday, if her mother is well enough to travel. Her mother and sister are supposed to return to Taiwan on Friday.
Au Pair Extraordinaire was supposed to begin her classes at SFSU on Wednesday. Will she? Or will she instead decide to accompany her mother back to Taiwan, and stay and take care of her?
So yesterday, after hearing the bad news about Au Pair Extraordinaire`s horrible car accident, I did what millions of other humans do after something like that: I went to church.
Instead of praying for the well-being of Au Pair Extraordinaire`s mother, whose prognosis already sounds pretty good, I prayed that the car rental company clerks did their job and convinced Au Pair Extraordinaire to purchase their collision damage waiver, loss damage waiver, supplemental liability and personal accident insurance.
Please, God, let Au Pair Extraordinaire have had a guardian angel with an actuarial table instead of a halo and fluffy wings.
There`s a new priest at our church who speaks slower than any human being I have encountered in my life. I wonder if he`s had some kind of stroke, and his brain moves more slowly than average?
So there was plenty of down time, in which to ponder life`s mysteries, and try to conjure up my grandmother`s ghost. There was one old woman in front of me who sort of looked like her from the back, and if stared at her long enough without blinking, while listening to Father Stroke drone, I could convince myself that it was her, and that all I had to do was tap her on the shoulder and she would be with me again.
Then the woman turned around, and whispered something to the person next to her in what sounded like Tagalog, and I couldn`t get my grandmother to come back.
At the end of the mass, Father Stroke asked for a round of applause for....the alter server, who wasn`t expecting it and looked very uncomfortable.
"Without this young man to help, I would have had a hard time doing everything myself," he said. "We need more young people like him. Why don`t more young people want to serve?"
Well, I thought, because some young people have already decided that they're athiests --- like Big Son, for instance.
Oh, speaking of irreverent people (!), sketchgirl has tagged me for a meme, so I will now abruptly switch gears in mid-post. It`s been a while since I`ve done one of these, and this one is about BOOKS.
1) A book that changed my life: All the President`s Men, which convinced me I wanted to be a reporter. I don`t remember how old I was when I read it -- I surely was not precocious enough to have read it in elementary school, when it was first published, so I guess I must have been in junior high or high school. And yeah, I saw the movie, and don`t ask me which one I liked better, because I don`t remember, but it probably wasn`t the book.
2) A book I’ve read more than once: Where the Wild Things Are, which, after reading to three consecutive offspring, I can now recite from memory. "Let The Wild Rumpus Begin!"
3) A book I would take with me if I were stuck on a desert island: A book of empty pages, that I could fill up myself.
4) A book that made me laugh: Depth Takes a Holiday, by Sandra Tsing Loh. I was living an unhappy, desperate life in LA when I read it -- maybe it`s not as funny to people who aren`t local and on the edge? I`m afraid to re-read it now, for fear I won`t like it as much (though her recent stuff does make me smile).
5) A book that made me cry: I remember reading The Little Matchgirl when I was in fourth grade, and crying not for the matchgirl but for her dead grandmother, and rushing home from school to make sure my own grandmother was still alive.
6) A book that I wish had been written: Um...gee, I don`t know. If it wasn`t written, how would I know?
7) A book that I wish had never been written: I`m tempted to give Linda Hirshman, Catilin Flanagan or Ann Coulter some bad attention here, but I`d have to say it`s a toss-up between Mein Kampf, and What to Expect When You`re Expecting.
8) A book I’ve been meaning to read: Tertia`s book, as soon as it`s available in America.
9) A book I’m currently reading: Parent Management Training: Treatment for Oppositional, Aggressive and Antisocial Behavior in Children and Adolescents.
What a mouthful of a title! And guess what? It`s really boring, and the more I read, the more I`m convinced that none of those awful labels apply to Big Son.
I`m supposed to tag people for this meme. I want to tag everyone who wants to do it, either in my comments or on their own blogs -- with a special tag to Mo-Wo, just because she`s a librarian.
So, once everyone gets their September 11 Aniversary posts out of the way (I mean, aren`t we all planning to write one? Yes? Yes?), do the book meme, okay?
And I`ll spice it up a little bit, and add a bonus question:
10) Where`s the weirdest place you ever had sex?
Oh...wait. You mean, it has to be about books? Oh... I see. Okay, how about this?
10) What is the worst sex scene you`ve ever read in a book? I`m going to go with Chapter 13 of Ulysses -- I once wrote an entire term paper on it without even realizing what Bloom was doing on the beach as he looked up the girl`s skirt.
And I want everyone who does this meme to add their own question, too.
Possibly yes, but since I expect to be welcoming back some houseguests recovering from serious trauma, possibly not.
Au Pair Extraordinaire said she and her sister and mother might fly back to San Francisco on Tuesday, if her mother is well enough to travel. Her mother and sister are supposed to return to Taiwan on Friday.
Au Pair Extraordinaire was supposed to begin her classes at SFSU on Wednesday. Will she? Or will she instead decide to accompany her mother back to Taiwan, and stay and take care of her?
So yesterday, after hearing the bad news about Au Pair Extraordinaire`s horrible car accident, I did what millions of other humans do after something like that: I went to church.
Instead of praying for the well-being of Au Pair Extraordinaire`s mother, whose prognosis already sounds pretty good, I prayed that the car rental company clerks did their job and convinced Au Pair Extraordinaire to purchase their collision damage waiver, loss damage waiver, supplemental liability and personal accident insurance.
Please, God, let Au Pair Extraordinaire have had a guardian angel with an actuarial table instead of a halo and fluffy wings.
There`s a new priest at our church who speaks slower than any human being I have encountered in my life. I wonder if he`s had some kind of stroke, and his brain moves more slowly than average?
So there was plenty of down time, in which to ponder life`s mysteries, and try to conjure up my grandmother`s ghost. There was one old woman in front of me who sort of looked like her from the back, and if stared at her long enough without blinking, while listening to Father Stroke drone, I could convince myself that it was her, and that all I had to do was tap her on the shoulder and she would be with me again.
Then the woman turned around, and whispered something to the person next to her in what sounded like Tagalog, and I couldn`t get my grandmother to come back.
At the end of the mass, Father Stroke asked for a round of applause for....the alter server, who wasn`t expecting it and looked very uncomfortable.
"Without this young man to help, I would have had a hard time doing everything myself," he said. "We need more young people like him. Why don`t more young people want to serve?"
Well, I thought, because some young people have already decided that they're athiests --- like Big Son, for instance.
Oh, speaking of irreverent people (!), sketchgirl has tagged me for a meme, so I will now abruptly switch gears in mid-post. It`s been a while since I`ve done one of these, and this one is about BOOKS.
1) A book that changed my life: All the President`s Men, which convinced me I wanted to be a reporter. I don`t remember how old I was when I read it -- I surely was not precocious enough to have read it in elementary school, when it was first published, so I guess I must have been in junior high or high school. And yeah, I saw the movie, and don`t ask me which one I liked better, because I don`t remember, but it probably wasn`t the book.
2) A book I’ve read more than once: Where the Wild Things Are, which, after reading to three consecutive offspring, I can now recite from memory. "Let The Wild Rumpus Begin!"
3) A book I would take with me if I were stuck on a desert island: A book of empty pages, that I could fill up myself.
4) A book that made me laugh: Depth Takes a Holiday, by Sandra Tsing Loh. I was living an unhappy, desperate life in LA when I read it -- maybe it`s not as funny to people who aren`t local and on the edge? I`m afraid to re-read it now, for fear I won`t like it as much (though her recent stuff does make me smile).
5) A book that made me cry: I remember reading The Little Matchgirl when I was in fourth grade, and crying not for the matchgirl but for her dead grandmother, and rushing home from school to make sure my own grandmother was still alive.
6) A book that I wish had been written: Um...gee, I don`t know. If it wasn`t written, how would I know?
7) A book that I wish had never been written: I`m tempted to give Linda Hirshman, Catilin Flanagan or Ann Coulter some bad attention here, but I`d have to say it`s a toss-up between Mein Kampf, and What to Expect When You`re Expecting.
8) A book I’ve been meaning to read: Tertia`s book, as soon as it`s available in America.
9) A book I’m currently reading: Parent Management Training: Treatment for Oppositional, Aggressive and Antisocial Behavior in Children and Adolescents.
What a mouthful of a title! And guess what? It`s really boring, and the more I read, the more I`m convinced that none of those awful labels apply to Big Son.
I`m supposed to tag people for this meme. I want to tag everyone who wants to do it, either in my comments or on their own blogs -- with a special tag to Mo-Wo, just because she`s a librarian.
So, once everyone gets their September 11 Aniversary posts out of the way (I mean, aren`t we all planning to write one? Yes? Yes?), do the book meme, okay?
And I`ll spice it up a little bit, and add a bonus question:
10) Where`s the weirdest place you ever had sex?
Oh...wait. You mean, it has to be about books? Oh... I see. Okay, how about this?
10) What is the worst sex scene you`ve ever read in a book? I`m going to go with Chapter 13 of Ulysses -- I once wrote an entire term paper on it without even realizing what Bloom was doing on the beach as he looked up the girl`s skirt.
And I want everyone who does this meme to add their own question, too.
posted by L. at 10:11 PM
5 comments
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Why am I getting so many Google ads lately that are variations of "Help For Troubled Teens?"
I want my rodent control ads back, dammit.
Time to grab my shovel and go vole hunting!
Time to grab my shovel and go vole hunting!
posted by L. at 4:12 PM
1 comments
A Little Piece of Horrible News
Our Au Pair Extraordinaire recently returned to America on a student visa, to be a fulltime English student. She intended to live with us and continue to babysit our kids as her class schedule permitted.
Before classes started, she was sightseeing in Wyoming/Montana with her mother and sister, who were visiting from Taiwan, and they unfortunately got into a car accident with their rented car -- I don`t know the details. Au Pair Extraordinaire just called me to tell me her mother is still hospitalized and has just had surgery -- again, I don`t know the details, because she was whispering and in a hurry to get off the phone.
Her mother will be all right, and is expected to leave the hospital soon, which is the most important thing.
But I don`t think Au Pair Extraordinaire has any real grasp of the insurance/medical bill odyssey on which she is about to embark.
Of course I will do all I can to help her, but.... I feel powerless right now to anything much at all.
I hope everyone else out there is having a better weekend.
Before classes started, she was sightseeing in Wyoming/Montana with her mother and sister, who were visiting from Taiwan, and they unfortunately got into a car accident with their rented car -- I don`t know the details. Au Pair Extraordinaire just called me to tell me her mother is still hospitalized and has just had surgery -- again, I don`t know the details, because she was whispering and in a hurry to get off the phone.
Her mother will be all right, and is expected to leave the hospital soon, which is the most important thing.
But I don`t think Au Pair Extraordinaire has any real grasp of the insurance/medical bill odyssey on which she is about to embark.
Of course I will do all I can to help her, but.... I feel powerless right now to anything much at all.
I hope everyone else out there is having a better weekend.
posted by L. at 10:52 AM
7 comments
Friday, September 08, 2006
Big Son Update (UPDATED... making it an Updated Update! Heh.)
Last night was Parents' Night at the older kids` school.
Big Son`s teacher told me, "He`s doing much MUCH better!"
I`m now trying to remember, was it her who used the term "ODD," or was it the principal? I am absolutely sure she told me I needed to "get him into counseling immediately!" and after that, I had sort of a brain freeze. On the way out, I stopped to mention it to Mr. Principal, and maybe he was the one who actually used the term? If so, that`s fine -- Mr. Principal is friendly and a bit wishy-washy sometimes, but he`s been solidly on Big Son`s side since day one. All I know is that after about a minute and a half, I left the school last week with the words, "Counseling! Immediately! ODD!" ringing in my ears.
Since then, Big Son`s teacher seems to have avoided making eye contact with me whenever we`ve passed in the yard after school.
"She`s not very friendly, is she?" I said to the mother of one of Big Son`s classmates.
"Would you rather he had a nun who goes around hugging people all the time?" she asked.
Well, no.
(UPDATE: Big Son`s new teacher wore JEANS to school today! Teachers at our school don`t usually do that.* And... there was a school mass this morning! She wore jeans to mass! Either that was a little faux pas on her part.... or a hopeful sign that she really is a relaxed human being???)
(*Mothers attending school masses, or any masses at all at our church, wear clothing that runs across the entire spectrum of decorum, from old women in baggy dresses with scarfs tied over their hair, to young women in outfits that reveal more than most people show on the beach. But I`ve noticed teachers usually dress conservatively.)
On that (updated) note -- have a great weekend, everyone.
Big Son`s teacher told me, "He`s doing much MUCH better!"
I`m now trying to remember, was it her who used the term "ODD," or was it the principal? I am absolutely sure she told me I needed to "get him into counseling immediately!" and after that, I had sort of a brain freeze. On the way out, I stopped to mention it to Mr. Principal, and maybe he was the one who actually used the term? If so, that`s fine -- Mr. Principal is friendly and a bit wishy-washy sometimes, but he`s been solidly on Big Son`s side since day one. All I know is that after about a minute and a half, I left the school last week with the words, "Counseling! Immediately! ODD!" ringing in my ears.
Since then, Big Son`s teacher seems to have avoided making eye contact with me whenever we`ve passed in the yard after school.
"She`s not very friendly, is she?" I said to the mother of one of Big Son`s classmates.
"Would you rather he had a nun who goes around hugging people all the time?" she asked.
Well, no.
(UPDATE: Big Son`s new teacher wore JEANS to school today! Teachers at our school don`t usually do that.* And... there was a school mass this morning! She wore jeans to mass! Either that was a little faux pas on her part.... or a hopeful sign that she really is a relaxed human being???)
(*Mothers attending school masses, or any masses at all at our church, wear clothing that runs across the entire spectrum of decorum, from old women in baggy dresses with scarfs tied over their hair, to young women in outfits that reveal more than most people show on the beach. But I`ve noticed teachers usually dress conservatively.)
On that (updated) note -- have a great weekend, everyone.
posted by L. at 7:30 AM
7 comments
Thursday, September 07, 2006
My New Look
I am flattered that some people think I created my new blog banner myself.
I did in fact choose the two icons it features, as well their rough placement on the page. But the truth is, I am too lazy to learn to use Photoshop. Well, actually, it`s not just laziness --- I`m also afraid that given my
I did in fact choose the two icons it features, as well their rough placement on the page. But the truth is, I am too lazy to learn to use Photoshop. Well, actually, it`s not just laziness --- I`m also afraid that given my