Chocolate…good. Shoes…good.

I started thinking about Valentine’s Day today because it is foisted upon us this time of year like the Republican primaries.  Plus, I am far too cynical NOT to write a Valentine’s blog.  All of this thinking made me think of love and lust and chocolate and of course that made me think of shoes.  Ya see, I have this really cute pair of chocolate brown patent leather pumps that I was thinking I would wear today to boycott Valentine’s Day but not boycott chocolate.  Get it? Cuz they’re chocolate brown?  (That was totally funny in my head.  Seriously, I really need to stop hanging out with eight year olds who have a propensity for puns.) The chocolate brown pumps do have little plaid bows and are really cute and I bought them last year and they were like, 50% off and…oh never mind.

Last night, I had a long but fun night of basketball practice and Valentine shopping with my boys.  My older son, Max, has a short list of girlfriends this year.  Just two.  Both independent, smart, fabulous, great style and yep, eight years old.  I know both of the moms and we really like each other as friends so we are totally fine if they get married (after college) because then we would get to be in-laws.  Max is meticulous, let me tell you.  We spent like, thirty minutes at the 99Cent store shopping for the perfect gifts.  I figure when he’s nine he can hit Nordstrom and when he is ten:  Tiffany; but for now, the 99Cent store will do. 

I really would have loved him to have made the girls something instead of buying them something.  Remember in grade school when we would spend hours with pink and red paper, lots of glitter and glue and we would MAKE the cards?  You would come home covered in glitter like the way men come home from bachelor parties.  I love homemade gifts as much as I love bachelors.  My favorite Valentine gifts have always been homemade.  This very wonderful man once sent me a poem which made me smile and sigh for the entire day.  Paintings, songs, a original documentaries (well, it was a short) and once there was a Valentine dinner homemade and delicious and I didn't even have to do the dishes.  I love the sentiment with homemade gifts.  Come to think of it, a Victoria Secrets gift card is always nice too...

But I digress…

I would tell you what Max bought them, but both moms read my blog and I do want it to be a surprise for the lovely ladies. The moms both think it is adorable which is good because there was this other mom whose daughter used to liked to hold hands with Max at the YMCA and she got all like, “she’s too young for that!!”  What exactly did she think an eight year old, in a fluorescently lit room with tons of grownups around was going to do to her precious girl?  Seriously, the mom had issues. 

I really want my charming boy to enjoy Valentine’s Day.  I would hate for him to find out it is a total mockery of love tantamount to corporate peer pressure.  It has nothing to do with St. Valentine’s original intent.  Even if he was the patron saint of the plague, epilepsy, and bees; don’t forget he was also the patron saint of engaged couples and happy marriage.  The man was clubbed to death because he was secretly marrying couples in love.  I'm guessing the divorce rate wasn't as high as it is now, but he was really trying to bring love and joy and blah blah blah.  He apparently would secretly help pass notes between the affianced couples and then they killed him and stuck his head on a stake.  


By the way, some chick named Agatha was the patron saint of single women and some dude named Gregory the Great was the patron saint of teachers.  Nice to know I have someone looking out for me.

Digressing again…

My last year’s Valentine blog was called, Happy Capitalist Mockery of Chocolate Day.  (Crap, maybe I have issues.)

Anyway, here is how I explained my disdain for Valentine’s Day last year: 

Don’t get me wrong. I like love. I like chocolate. I even like heart shaped chocolate. I especially like the little heart shaped Valentine Peeps that are marked down 50% on the day after Valentine’s Day. If you poke a hole in the cellophane wrapper of the Peeps, they get just the right amount of staleness that makes them totally yummy. Then of course you have Tuescher’s Champagne truffles in Beverly Hills which, if one could marry chocolate, this would be the chocolate I would marry. Of course, I would weigh 300 pounds from being married to truffles, but who cares, I would be happy and the truffles would never leave the toilet seat up.

Oh, wait, that just explains my love of chocolate.  Hmmm…hold on.  Oh yeah, here we are:

Making someone wear red and hope someone will validate them on that one special day once a year is ludicrous. It’s stupid and makes people feel like crap. If you are single, then you feel like crap because the world is decorated with hearts and little cherubs should be buzzing around you, but they’re not buzzing around you, they are buzzing around the guy next to you who is looking at someone else.   If you are actually in a relationship, you may end up feeling like crap as well. There is all of this pressure to buy your significant other something romantic on Valentine's Day. Emphasis on BUY. God forbid you forget to buy something, then your significant other might think you are secretly harboring feelings for someone else or that you really don’t like them all that much because you couldn’t see the ten million ads that told you diamonds were on sale at Zales. But, hey, you can eat chocolate that is 50% off the next day to heal your wounds. You’ll just be eating it alone.

That wasn't too cynical.  Was it?

Anyway, I would just like to say once again that I have nothing against love and romance but I just prefer my love and romance on a Tuesday in say, April or June.  For no reason whatsoever.  Tell me you love me without the Hallmark card.  Bring me truffles when you just stopped by to say hi.  Or better yet, bring me daffodils on Memorial Day.  I like that holiday better. You get a day off from work.


Have a nice Valentine's Day.

And I can even do The Dougie

I was starting to write a blog about how all women think everything is their fault (mostly because there are certain men who tell them this and they believe them) but then I received a phone call that totally changed my mind.  Yes, I still think everything is my fault, but that can wait for another day.  I mean, I am sure it was me who caused the hole in the ozone layer from all of the Aqua Net I used in the late 70’s and the economy is crashing because I haven’t paid off my student loans yet; but seriously, all of that can wait for the next blog.  Although, the next blog will be on how stupid Valentine’s Day is, so the “It’s all my fault” blog will be the one after that.  I am kind of just thinking out loud here, ya know, planning.  You probably don’t actually have to be here for this conversation…

Let me tell you about some of the good things that can be considered “my fault”.

This is my third year of teaching at the same very small charter school.  Because the school is so small, I know almost all of the kids.  Plus, because I am one of only two high school English teachers, I have taught almost all of the students there as well.  Yep, there are only two of us hawking literature which is great because we have a little more autonomy than if we had to team teach. However, it may suck for a kid who isn’t thrilled with having me for their teacher.  It’s kind of like, sorry sweetie; you are stuck with me so make the most of it.  It’s probably a good life lesson for my students.  Ya know, prepare them for later in life when they have to deal with people that are annoying, like college roomates and co-workers and spouses.

Anyway…I am the senior class advisor again (go back and read I’m a leopard, not a cougar and The Prom) (go read the old ones too cuz they’re really funny, if I do say so myself) and these students I have had for all three years.  I know them, I’ve taught them, and I have learned from them too.  They taught me about The Urban Dictionary and taught me how to do “the dougie” and taught me about the joys of refined sugar.  As much as I think they are a collective pain in the ass, I really like them.  Well, I will be honest and say “most” of them. But these students, some of them, mean more to me than I thought possible. 

There is one kid who this blog is specifically about.  His father died on the last day of school last year, very suddenly.  At first, I thought he was joking when he told me because he had mastered the fine art of sarcasm under my tutelage as well as having a propensity for dark humor.  But his eyes, wide with grief, said it all.  I couldn't believe he was even at school, but he said he just didn't want to be at home.  It was all too much.

Since it was the last day of school, there wasn’t much going on, and he was totally in shock, so he asked if he could just hang out in my classroom for the day.  I called all of his teachers and there he stayed, on my makeshift couch, quietly playing on his contraband phone.  He talked a little, I made him eat (Jewish mother that I am) but mostly, he just sat there.  He asked me if I would come to the funeral.  Just be there.  The funeral was one of those huge Liberian funerals where at least twenty people spoke about his dad.  I had met his dad on several occasions and had had many conversations with him.  Ya see, although I really liked having him as a student, he was a total slacker who would always be failing my class at some point during the semester so calls home were inevitable.  His dad was very tall and serious but a warm hearted man.  He loved his son, he was a good father and I miss those conversations about how we were going to light a fire under his son to keep him motivated. 

So, there I was, white teacher at the African funeral.  Big black hat, little white lady in the back; that was me.  It was an open casket and I had never seen a dead body before and we all had to walk past the casket to pay our respects to his father.  I really didn’t want to, but I did it anyway.  I remember thinking how small his father looked for such a tall man.  It looked like his father but just sort of the shell of him.  After I walked past, I hugged my student and sat back down to listen to the eulogies and sermon.  The reverend was a little man but a powerful speaker.  I think there was one point during his sermon where I accidently accepted Jesus as my savior, I really didn't mean to.  I think my rabbi would totally understand.  It was an accident.  I told him about it later, (my student, not my rabbi) and he laughed, knowing the dialogue that was probably going on inside my head during the funeral.  The surreal nature of being there.  The funeral, the accidental acceptance of Christ, getting lost on the way to the funeral...seriously, there I was, in “the jungle” of South LA without a GPS, making repeated u-turns and wondering if the red flames on my mini-van should be blue.  It's funny, I wasn't scared of being murdered by gangs but rather scared of what my student had to deal with.  Scared of what we all had to deal with.  Scared of seeing his father one last time.  Scared of my own mortality.  And yet grateful that I was there.  Seriously, it was a powerful day that made me want to go home and hug my own children.

Months have passed and one by one my seniors have been accepted into college.  Well, most of them.  Some are still waiting, some have stopped waiting, and some just are waiting to graduate and be done.  I do love this part of being their senior class advisor because when my seniors do get accepted into college, they run into my classroom with their acceptance letters and hug me.  I always get chills.  This particular student was also accepted into college.  I told him how proud his dad would have been.  He just smiled quietly like his dad would have and nodded.  He looks so much like him...

Last night, out of the blue he called me to thank me.  He said he wasn’t sure if he ever had.  He told me I wasn’t just a teacher to him but something so much more.   I was special to him and I was there when he really needed me and he thanked me again.  I asked him to record that for me so I could play it back and hear it when teaching became hard and I needed a reminder.   It was a pretty great reminder of why I do what I do for very little money.

I just felt like sharing that.  I haven’t written much lately and it feels good to be inspired.  It just felt really, really wonderful to be validated by a student.  It’s not like I think I am Hillary Swank in Freedom Writers, or Sidney Poitier To Sir With Love but I think I do some good stuff here.  I realized last year that it may be the administration who pays the teachers, but ultimately, it’s the students we are working for.  Of course, I may get burned out in a few years from all of the stupid questions they ask like “But what if I don’t turn my paper in on time?” and “Oh, should I be writing the assignment down or can you just facebook it to me?” and “Ms. Levine, why do you teach in three-inch heels?” But for now, I’m good.  

Okay, on to the Valentines Blog with much more self deprecating humor, I promise.  But for now, I will just bask in the glow of that phone call and know that with the absolute idiocy of the No Child Left Behind Act, there are a few who have not been left behind.  

Vodka and scotch and grey ducks

It is as different as apples and oranges.  I don’t like that phrase.  I mean, it’s descriptive enough but why apples and oranges?  Because they are both round but of different tastes, smells and textures?  Oh, wait, that makes sense now.  But still, there are other things you can say instead of apples and oranges just to be more creative.  What about blueberries and raspberries?  Naw, too long.  It doesn’t flow.  Hmmm…mango and papaya?  You can’t really use pineapple for any of this…or banana for that matter.  I mean that would just sound dirty.  Hmmm…lemons and limes might work…coconuts and kiwis?  They are both round and fuzzy. 

How about choosing something that isn’t fruit.   Grass and astro-turf?  Men and women?  Vodka and scotch?  Both alcohol, but two different colors and two different tastes.  I think that works.   I would say vodka and whiskey but the smell of Jack Daniel’s makes me want to hurl.  I think I will go with vodka and scotch.  Mix things up a bit. I have also changed “six of one, half dozen of the other” to “half of one, one half of the other” just to watch people try to figure it, or rather me, out.  It’s fun to see that “I think you meant something else” look in their eyes but they are too polite and don’t want to offend anyone so they say nothing.  I have also changed “we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it” to “we’ll jump off that bridge when we get to it”.   That one just makes more sense to me.

The one thing I haven’t changed is saying “duck, duck, grey duck” instead of saying, “duck, duck, goose”.  If you are from Minnesota, you will be one of the only people in the whole wide world to say “duck, duck, grey duck” instead of saying, “duck, duck, goose”.  I have no idea why.  I once asked a farmer if it had to do with geese being grey when they were chicks but he said that no farmer was so stupid as to not see the difference between a baby duck and a baby goose.  The Urban Dictionary (and if it says it there you know it’s true) says a Grey Duck is slang for someone from Minnesota.  Like, it’s an insult or something.  I guess it could be worse.  You could be called a cheese-head or a Hoosier.  Yikes.

Anyway, so I was on the treadmill after work tonight and was contemplating my life as I usually do while on said machine.  It’s either contemplate my life or fantasize about winning the lottery.  Depends on the day.  And the music playing in my head.  Sometimes I like to ask a question to myself and have it answered by hitting shuffle on my IPod.  See what comes up, listen to the lyrics and read into them as some sort of a sign.  

So, tonight, while contemplating my life, I asked myself why I haven’t written my blog in awhile.  I already knew the answer to that question.  Lately when I try to write, it feels as if there are a few people standing behind me, judging what I write and it makes it arduous to write how I feel about anything.  I begin to write and hit delete.  Begin to write and hit delete.  I missed writing.  I missed hearing people sending wonderful comments to me about my blog.  I missed checking the stats to see that people in France and Moldavia and The Bahamas were still reading my stuff.

I started thinking about why writing now is so much more painstaking than before.  I love writing and it soothes my savage soul.  Or my restless and impatient soul.  Or my anxiety-ridden-question-asking-soul.  Sometimes I don’t care who reads it, it just feels good to write it.  But lately, those people standing behind me in my imagination have become a big hindrance.  I told myself to listen to the music and maybe I would create a blog while getting my heart rate up to 155.  I hit shuffle on my IPod and the song Turning Tables by Adele came on.  Not the most heart pumping thing to exercise to, but I began to listen to the lyrics as to answer my own questions.  “As hard as you try, no, I will never be knocked down” and “Under your thumb, I can’t breathe” rattled through my head.  The lyric “Next time I’ll be braver, I’ll be my own savior” gave me my answer and I started thinking of how my attitude had shifted.  It was different now.  I was different now; from how I once was.  As different as apples and oranges.  Or rather vodka and scotch.

A positive imagination can’t hurt you, I know that. However, negative fantasizing (ya know, when you imagine a conversation in your head, something that hasn't happened yet and you imagine it at its worst and then it snowballs into a full blown fight in your head or the worst possible scenario and you decide it would just be easier to lie on your couch and hide under the covers instead of moving forward) can hurt you.  But we all do it.  Just need to do it less.  Use your imagination for good instead of evil.  Of course some evil thoughts can be good too.  Hehehe.

Maybe that’s why Minnesotans use grey duck instead of goose in the game.  You got to play by tapping on little heads and calling them purple duck and polka dot duck and rhinestone duck.  You got to use your imagination and not just keep saying “goose, goose, goose”.  Hmmm…not a bad way to kick start the imagination at a young age.  I should play that with my kids.  Of course, then there would be Transformer duck and Pokemon duck and Lego duck...  

By the way, the next song on my IPod was I’m Sexy and I know it by LMFAO.  Yep, that one worked too.

Happy/Merry Chris-makkah

I am positive about two things during the month of December:  there are way too many holidays and everything at every store is always 50% off the day after Christmas.  But let’s face it, the second one is much more important to me than figuring out what the hell myrrh is used for.   

Okay, seriously, here’s the short list of December holidays: Besides Christmas there is Kwanzaa, Festivus, The Hopi Soyaluna Ceremony, The Winter Solstice (which includes the Halcyon Days) (natural highs only please), Yalda, Holy Innocents Day, Boxing Day, and believe it or not National Chocolate Day.  Seriously, I did not make that last one up.  I personally celebrate that one about once a month…

I really don’t know that much about Kwanzaa but it seems to be similar to Hanukkah.  They have something that resembles a menorah and that’s all I know.  I have several students from Africa so I should probably learn about it.   Festivus was created by Jerry Seinfeld and I am sure his wife just steams cauliflower and hides it in their children’s food to celebrate the day.  The Winter Solstice has something to do with Stonehenge and Boxing Day is literally about boxes that were used to hold presents from Christmas that were filled up with charitable things to give to the poor so it’s basically a glorified re-gifting day.  Yalda is the celebrations of the birth of Mithra, the Persian Sun god and has something to do with pomegranates.  Why the people who make POM haven’t picked up on this holiday for a marketing campaign is beyond me.  And then, there is Hanukkah or Chanukkah.  The spelling varies but the story is about this cool guy named Judah and his brothers the Maccabees who held off the Syrians or the Lybians or some middle eastern sect who hated the Israelites and then there was a miracle with the oil and it lit the lights of the temple for eight days.  Or something like that.  It’s been a few years since I went to Saturday School.

Let’s face it, if it ain’t Christmas it is barely accepted in this country.  I don’t care how liberal, how democratic or how I-believe-the-whole-world-should-be-treated-equally you are.  Christmas rules and all of the other holidays drool. 

Sometimes this totally sucks.  For example, try being the only Jewish family in New Hope, Minnesota during the month of December.  There were no other Jews for miles and my parents were from The Bronx.  They had a totally different accent and had no freakin clue what a “hotdish” was.  The whole city drank “pop” while my parents drank “soda”.  It was a challenge for all of us.  However, I have to say having that half New York/half Minnesota upbringing worked out well (now that I can look back on it with a sense of humor and lots of therapy) and probably made me more interesting than the average Minnesotan.  Or the average bear, for that matter.

During the month of December, being the only Jewish students in our school, it came down to my sister and me to explain the story of Haanukkah or Chaanukkah to our peers.  There was no Google back then.  It all came from Saturday school for us which meant we actually had to listen to what our Saturday school teachers were saying.  Plus, we actually had to remember what they told us.  Seriously, that was just too much pressure.   Of course teaching the kids in my class to play dreidel was like teaching them to play craps.  They loved it.  I was like the Hanuukah or Chanuukah Bookie to some of them.  I really should have charged more than just chocolate coins...

Anyway, being the only Jewish family was confusing during this time of year for several reasons. Number one:  Hanukahh or Chanukahh was always being referred to as “the Jewish Christmas”.  This was as offensive as the phrase, “Funny, you don’t look Jewish.”  (I often respond to that phrase with “Funny, you don’t look ignorant.”)   It’s just that Haanukah or Chaanukah is so NOT the Jewish Christmas.  It’s about a miracle of light not a miracle of a baby without sex.  I used to love to remind my peers how Jesus was actually a Jew first before he became Christian.  Sometimes there was nothing more fun than going to my friends’ bible study classes and making sure I brought that up during the class.  I always loved the look of the Sunday school teacher who usually stood there perplexed and not knowing quite how to respond to that.   Bad little Jewish girl…

Number two:  Telling the sweet little Levine girls that only good Christian kids received presents on Christmas from Santa was like, the meanest thing you could possibly do to a kid.  Wasn’t I good?  Hadn’t I been good all year?  I mean, before I was a rebellious teenager who thought Madonna was the role model I should follow.  When I was five or six years old all I wanted was a tree that was all sparkly and pretty and a red felt stocking with presents in it.  Jeepers, I was a good kid.  Didn’t Santa like Jewish kids?  What was his problem anyway? 

Ya see, at five, we didn’t equate religion with Santa.  I knew I was a different religion from all of my school chums, but was I really so different?  Seriously!  Good kid here!  I didn’t understand any of it.  Was Santa just mean or did he not know there were Jewish kids who believed in him too?  I decided to take matters into my own hands and write Santa a letter one year and tell him this.  I told my mom afterwards what I had done and she pretty much had no choice but to make sure my heart wouldn’t be broken.   So, being the emotionally supportive parents that they were, they opted for “holiday stockings” for Christmas morning.  We put out cookies and milk the night before and of course a few carrots for the reindeer.  Every year I told my parents I could see reindeer tracks in the snow.  And even though we didn’t even have a chimney, I believed in my heart that Santa knew I was a good kid who just wanted a few toys and like, a Pez dispenser in the shape of a snowman.  This made me happy and validated the way only a fat, white-haired, red-suited man could do.  I have wondered since if it made my parents uncomfortable…hmmm…ah, who cares, there was Pez.

The irony of the two holidays was the myth of the Jewish kids collecting eight presents for the eight nights of Haannuukkaah or Chaannuukkaahh when really, we got like, two really cool presents the first two nights and then socks and jammies and school supplies for the last six nights.  Yep, nothing says a present like Wonder Woman underwear. 

The sparkly and pretty tree was not going to happen in our house, no matter how much I wanted one.  Luckily, when I was in high school, my friend Chris let me come over and decorate her family’s Christmas tree.  I was in Jewish girl heaven.  They let me put on almost all of the ornaments and string the lights.  I can still hear the Carpenters’ singing Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.  It was the 1980’s so back then I wore really huge earrings (usually one at a time) and I remember I was wearing this silly red Transformer earring that was huge so we hung it on the tree as a joke.  Apparently, to this day they still hang it on their tree every year.  Thank goodness for Facebook or I would never have known they still did that.  Ah, technology.

Today, my kids are half Jewish and half um, not-Jewish.  So we have half of a tree decorated in blue and white (Hanukahh or Chanukahh colors) with little white lights.  We name him Toby the Hannamas Tree every year and we have our Menorah right next to the tree.  Of course not too close because that would be a fire hazard.

I am still optimistically confused this December.  I am still unclear on the Kwanzaa origins, the connection between the Winter Solstice and global warming and have no idea how Santa fits in with Jesus (the whole bunnies and Jesus rising from his grave on Easter baffles me as well).  I do know that there is magic in all of the holidays.  I see it in my children’s faces and not just when they open their presents either.  I have Santa on Facebook and as much as I like to threaten them with Santa (“eat the damn broccoli or I’m I.M.ing Santa”) having them read Mr and Mrs Claus’s status updates is a wonderful way to start our mornings. They count down the days, draw pictures and sing songs and I sing right along with them because I still like to believe in the magic of the holidays.  Christmas or Hanukah or Chanukah who cares, it's all about family and wonderment.  Being rich in friends and not in gifts.  Seriously, do you know one person who can watch It's a Wonderful Life without tearing up?  Unless of course it's the colorized version.

My kids will be with their dad on Christmas so I will be celebrating the traditional Jewish Christmas which involves a day of movies followed by Chinese food.  Ask any Jew and they will probably tell you the same thing.

Happy Holidays.

A Gosling Thanksgiving

First off, may I just say, Happy Thanksgiving to all of you and hope the Native American people of this country don’t hate the white people too much today.  I have been trying to gently explain the actual history of Thanksgiving to Max and how sometimes the Pilgrims weren’t very nice to the people already living here and how Columbus didn’t “discover” anything.  That one cannot discover a place that already has people living in it.  That would be like me saying that I discovered Starbucks or Loehmans.  He smiled and nodded but walked back to the kitchen to finish decorating cookies.  I am on my mini-vacation so should stop trying to have these little “teachable moments”.  It must suck sometimes to be a teacher’s kid.

My kids are just happy we are decorating Thanksgiving cookies so the civics lesson will have to wait, I guess.  They are having a blast decorating the cookies.  Ya know, traditional Thanksgiving cookie shapes:  Turkeys, maple leaves and dolphins.  Yep.  Nothing says Thanksgiving quite like aquatic mammals.  I actually made blue icing for them.  The boys have decided the turkeys should be rainbow colored.  Because of that request, my hands are now rainbow colored as well.  My thumbs are a lovely shade of pink.  But I love cooking on Thanksgiving, so I’m not complaining.  I love making everything from scratch.  I love roasting pumpkins for my pumpkin pie just so I can say that I roasted pumpkins for my pumpkin pie.  I am actually only making two desserts this year which was a difficult decision to concede to but there will be only nine people at my house this year and I know my boys will only be eating the blue dolphin cookies.  They probably won’t even touch the pretty maple leaves, iced in a lovely shade of light orange.  Which is also the color of my pinkie. 

I do love Thanksgiving for the idea of taking a little time out to be grateful for all of the stuff you have in your life.  That and taking time out for binge eating an entire meal made with butter.  I try diligently to not invite vegans.  Tofurkey scares me and seriously, vegans just don’t appreciate the butter component.  Or the turkey component for that matter.  It’s not like I eat like this every day, seriously, I would gain all of the weight back and I threw away all of my fat clothes so that cannot happen.  So, yes, grateful for butter and people who love butter.  But grateful for lots of other stuff too.  Grateful my parents are here at my house which means I didn’t have to fly home to Minneapolis on the busiest travel weekend of the year.  Super duper grateful for that. 

But instead of telling you all of the things I am grateful for, I took a poll this year at school and asked my students what they were grateful for.  I got a lot of answers of family and friends; video games and new phones.  I did get one kid who said he was grateful to have me as his English teacher but I am guessing he was just sucking up to get a good grade in my class.  Some kids said they were grateful for their lawyers and some said they were grateful just to be out of school for the week.  Two of my kids said they were grateful to have a home after being homeless.  That one made me think and be grateful that the universe seemed to be looking out for them.   Homeless kids and along with the few who mentioned their lawyers; seriously grateful.  I knew a few were for parents and a few for themselves.  Those are the ones that make my job hard to do without wanting to adopt them.  Good kids.  Most of them.

With all of the heartfelt grateful lists, I did appreciate the girls who said they were grateful for Hello Kitty, Elf cosmetics and Ryan Gosling.  I mean, who isn’t grateful for Ryan Gosling?  I liked how none of them hesitated on what they were grateful for.  I liked how all them smiled when they said what they were grateful for.  Not a bad poll. 

Before bed last night, I asked my boys what they were grateful for.  I was second on Dash’s list, right under racecars.  Max was grateful for my love.  Man, I love when he says that.  There is nothing more validating than a sincere eight year old. 

Okay, back to my turkey and my stuffing and my marshmallow ensconced sweet potatoes and my caramelized brussel sprouts and of course, my blue dolphin Thanksgiving cookies.  I am totally grateful my children have this wonderful sense of humor that incorporates marine life into the festivities.  Well, let’s face it; I am just grateful for them.  My life would be so boring without them.  I am also grateful for my friends and my family, the Gone with the Wind marathon on AMC, and having a great home filled with love and warmth and Hello Kitty.  And if it were filled with Ryan Gosling…

Oh, and by the way, I am grateful for the people who read this blog.  All of you.  Happy Thanksgiving.

It is what it is

I am realizing that the phrase “it is what it is” has become my favorite phrase.  There are others too.  “this too shall pass”, “that which does not kill us makes us stronger” and “success is the best revenge”.   However, sometimes it just…is what it is. (I should probably be citing these quotes with a good old fashioned MLA citation, being the English teacher here, but I’m tired so bite me.)

Another good one is “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade” but I gave up the good juicer in the divorce so making lemons becomes more arduous than one might have remembered.  I loved that juicer.  It was the big silver one from William Sonoma that had the old fashioned handle that made things fun to squeeze.  It was like, two feet high and made juicing entertaining.  But I traded that in for some freedom and peace of mind, so my little plastic juicer will do just fine.  Plus, Dash likes fresh squeezed OJ and getting fruit into that little man is arduous as well, so I will squeeze with what I have.

So, if one doesn’t have the big William Sonoma juicer or access to a good Nietzsche quote, then what does one do?  Bathtub, shoes, chocolate, treadmill.  Well, not in that order.  But definitely treadmill after the chocolate.  Usually, I am lucky and stress causes nausea so I lose weight when I am stressed.  The treadmill is good because there is nothing better than sweating to loud angry music while releasing some well needed endorphins.  Greenday is perfect for this.  So are Christina Aguilera and surprisingly, Pittbull.  Loud, really, really loud, so as to drown out the objections and yelling in my own head.  Adele is playing now.  I like her.  Soulful. 

Drinking is out.  Well, milkshakes maybe, but then there will just be more treadmill.  Railing at god, yoga, mindless television and well, blogging seems to help.  I have always been a big proponent of writing things down to explain it to yourself.  No one needs to read it, it’s really just for you, but it is nice knowing people in Croatia, France and Malaysia will be sharing my experiences. 

Yelling at strangers is always good.  Driving in LA makes that really easy to achieve.  Customer service people at AT&T make that pretty easy as well.  Let’s face it, most “customer service” isn’t.  Although, I have learned if you are nice to customer service people, you tend to get whatever you need. Wouldn’t that be nice with all people…

You get to a point in your life where you realize you can’t run away from your problems and issues and anxiety.  You need to face it.  You need to deal with it in a pragmatic and positive way.  You need to tell yourself the universe will help you if you ask.  You need to be a grownup and own your issues.  No matter how crappy they are.  No matter if you have no idea what the outcome may be.  No matter what.  Icky-ness ownership comes with maturity.  Right?  Or I could just take a bubble bath and hope for a hug.

An old therapist of mine once told me, “you are going to feel this way until you are done feeling like this, so let yourself feel like this.”  Advice as good as “wear a sweater, you never know”.  So, I guess that means facing the icky stuff you really have no desire to face.  Dealing with it and moving on.  Not taking the world so personally and remembering that although there is crap in the world, there is some pretty great stuff as well.  Focus on the good stuff?  Right?  After all, it is what it is and no amount of shoe buying or milkshake drinking or treadmilling will make it go away.  It will make it easier to take, but in the end, being a grownup will win out.  At least on my end.

Okay, I’m done.  Going to make some lemonade and take a bubble bath.  

That’s not funny.

The education arena is fraught with acronyms.  Man, the pedagogic set loves them.  Seriously, they won’t make a test, a standard or an educational cohort without spelling out something.  CAHSEE, WASC, FERPA, OY.  Then of course, you can never remember what the acronym stands for.  I bet if you tested even the oldest and wisest of the teaching profession none of them would be able to tell you what CAASFEP stood for.  But they could probably tell you what BFD, LOL and WTF mean…

I have recently begun the BTSA program.   Technically I am still a new teacher.  BTSA stands for Beginning Teacher Something or Another.  (I told you these were hard to remember)  When you get your teaching credential in California, you start with a preliminary credential and then have five years to “clear” it.  Apparently, teaching, getting one’s masters, along with by-monthly evaluations by your administrators isn’t enough.  You need to spend two more years learning more pedagogy stuff so you may implement this stuff into your lesson plans.  They (ya know, the big THEY) say that most teachers only teach for five years and then decide they are insane and move on to other jobs.  I guess only giving the preliminary credential weeds out the ones who want their lives back. 

The BTSA program is a two year program but because I am impatient, I have chosen to do the accelerated program which means I am cleared in one year.  I had to write a self-assessment and reflection on the Teacher Standards of California to be approved for it, which by the way, you can find the standards in the NBPTS, the CSTP, or the NCLB.  Yep, I know, more CRAP.

Anyway, so I was reflecting on my teaching standards; which sounds so much more romantic than it really is.  Like I should be gazing into a magic mirror while sipping on champagne, dressed in a flowing gown.  Nope.  I am writing about what things I am good at and what things I suck at as a teacher (drinking tea, in front of my computer in my sweatpants with the big bleach stain on them).  Hmmm…what am I good at?  Creative project based lesson planning, culturally and socially relevant stuff and making my students laugh while actually learning, that I am good at.  Time management, trying to believe that the CST and other standardized tests do anything but teach a child how to bubble things in, and organizing my desk, I seem to suck at.  My desk is like a waste land where essays come to die.  I need to work on actually grading the homework I give out faster or just stop giving homework that needs to be graded.  Oooh, now that’s a good idea.  I actually have a whole slew of stuff to grade but just realized I am giving quizzes tomorrow so I will have oodles of time to finish grading them as the ten week progress reports are due on Monday.  I hate working on the weekends so that will work.  Oh, look, I am good at time management.  

So, I started writing this reflection essay and I kept wanting to crack jokes about the teaching standards.  The running monologue in my head was quite amusing but I realized I should probably write a dry and boring or rather intelligent essay as to not freak out the school district.  But it was hard to keep it that way.  I started realizing that writing amusing anecdotes was a whole mess easier and you all don’t mind when I misspell things or use improper grammar.  Although, my mother sometimes likes to correct my blogs with a red pen and send them back to me, but that’s another story. 

I teach persuasive essays, expository essays, reflective and analytical essays to my students yet the most fun and the ones that ALL of the students seem to turn in are the narrative essays and short stories.  Probably because they are just more fun to write.  I like to think that researching a persuasive essay on “anchor babies” or medical marijuana could be fun.  But I am totally fooling myself.  I wouldn’t really like to write a five paragraph essay on dry, banal socially relevant crap either.  I like to write and then embellish just enough so my blogs are fictional.  No, really, nothing I write here actually happens.  I am really a six feet tall blonde man who is an accountant and hates children. 

When I had to write all of those pedagogic research papers during grad school, I would almost put myself to sleep.  Still got all A’s, but crap, they were boring.  Then when it came to my Master’s thesis, I was allowed to write a half-narrative-half-research-paper on my student teaching experience.  That was actually fun.  100 pages of fun (got 98 out of 100, by the way) because I was telling my story and telling them of my experience.  Basically just writing about myself, which let’s face it, I love doing.  It was actually more fun when I presented it because as an actress, I like to be expressive and well, I knew the people I was presenting to, so it was actually entertaining and enjoyable to perform, I mean, present.

I love writing.  This whole new blog experience has been a wonderful experiment of writing and creativity.  I should have my students blog…hmmm…not a bad idea…I need a rubric for that.

Back to my reflection assessment of moi.  As I said, I do love writing about me, regardless of who I am, and it was actually quite thought provoking for myself to realize what I am good at thus far in my teaching career and what I need some help on.  Unfortunately, my reflection was only allowed to be three pages long but it was based on a forty page document.  I actually had to change the font size to 11.5 just to squeeze in the last bit of over-wordy-ness that is me and my writing.  I had one small laughable moment in it and then the rest was a serious assessment of how I see myself as a teacher.  So the BTSA organizers at LAUSD will be very happy with my reflection on my TSC while teaching GATE, ELL and SPED students all the while hoping to increase my CALSTRS account and using some VAPA and SDAIE strategies to increase our CST scores to raise our AYP and API. 

Now I am back to blogging.  Way more fun.  Not bad for a six-foot tall blonde accountant.