Saturday, March 29, 2008

Amazement


Alexandra Osa has had some momentous milestones this week. She ate her first table food today (pancakes!), she cut her first tooth on top...while these all seem like tiny steps, for some reason this week just seemed like she grew up a chunk at once.

Sometimes I look at her while I'm nursing and just take in her long legs, her growing hair, and her sweet face and I am amazed that this baby girl grew in me and is ours. She is pure joy. Even when she wakes at 5am and cries until 6...

A photo from one year ago when I visited my friend Julia in Boulder--us hiking at the Flatirons. That's Alexandra in there! Crazy....

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

crawl stroke


after lots of training, alexandra finally managed her first crawl (stroke)!

Monday, March 17, 2008

food court musical

my dear friend and neighbor Mary (the one who got us one degree from Tina Fey) sent me this....

FOOD COURT MUSICAL!

but what Mary doesn't know is that i dream of this happening in real life....i break into song, everyone joins in, we all know the words, suddenly there's a dance routine with excellent choreography, emotions run high....i am a sucker for the musical. i blame this (and endless other neuroses) on my mother who only let us stay up late twice a year when i was younger: once to watch "The Sound of Music" and another time to watch "The Wizard of Oz" on television (you know, back in the days before VCRs when movies where shown on TV). we had to take naps that day, but then we could stay up and watch these movies, drink orange soda, and eat popcorn until 11pm! it was childhood bliss.

if you go to the improve everywhere website, they have videos of their missions. i really want to do the NO PANTS mission next year with Alexandra in her diaper. do you think she'll get taken away from me by social services?

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Governor Spitzer and the Ring of Fire

Okay, here's a question for my ladies out there:

If your husband was revealed to have spent $8000 of taxpayer money on repeat rendez-vous with a prostitution ring (and asked the prostitutes to do "unsafe things"), would YOU stand beside him as he apologized to the public and his "family" (never saying "my wife")?

What the eff?

I have made it very clear to Adam that if he were ever found to be involved with a prostitution ring (I think those two words together are just fabulous...like whores playing ring around the rosie together in a big field...) that I would divorce his behind, take him for ALL he's worth, and make sure he had little to no rights to visit the babe quicker than you can say "wire tap, idiot!"

And geez, with NPR doing copious amounts of stories on the HBO series The Wire, who isn't convinced that there is a wire tap on everything and cops taking photographs from every car? As my illustrious upstairs neighbor would say (in threatening notes to me): Spitzer...."Duh!"

Monday, March 10, 2008

Waterbugs and Breastmilk

You know, working full-time and breastfeeding full-time is a hard combination to balance. If you had a working and nursing mom, you should call her right now and tell her how much you love her for those extra brain smarts she squeezed out of her boobs for you. Seriously. Pumping at work (I pump 3x/day) is a royal pain in the ass. No lie. And I am not the only one who feels this way. Let me share a few pumping at work horror stories with you.

My friend Amy, a social worker, was doing a mediation training at a middle school and asked to for a space to pump. They sent her to a room FILLED with middle school girls, and she dutifully pumped in front of them. Needless to say she only pumped one ounce. She has also pumped in some office of a high city official (not the mayor, but some other big wig). My friend Ashley, who is a physical therapist in schools, had to pump in the gym on a trampoline with gym mats stacked around her for privacy--her pump cord dangling out from this haphazard set-up. Can you imagine?!

Today, while pumping, I had a stare down with a 3 inch waterbug. I am not sure what the difference is between a waterbug and a roach, all I know if that it seriously stared at me, waving it's antennae (is that a word?) as if in protest, which were literally 2 inches long. It was terrifying. I kept thinking that it was going to leap off the floor and attack my face. I was sitting on the student desk that I have placed in the bathroom to house my pump, with my feet on the chair I usually sit on. Eventually it crawled into the wall (Does that mean I won the stare down? Am I the alpha?), but I stared at the spot where it stood for the rest of my pumping session, afraid it would re-emerge with an entourage of friends.

Now I am just completely skeeved out and feel that there are roaches or waterbugs all over my clothes, bags, etc. A sign of true poverty or ghetto-ness is when a roach crawls out of a student's bag or coat. There is no better way to become a pariah in a public school than for that to happen. ARGH!

So, Alexandra Osa, my dear daughter, I hope that one day you read this post and know how much I love you--enough to pump milk for you in a bathroom that smells like fresh shit with roaches the size of small dogs bargaining for space. You better get a college scholarship girly!

Thursday, March 6, 2008

teachers' salaries

This has to be one of my favorite teacher email forwards. What I also love is that this is based on elementary school teachers (30 kids per class/day). Ummm...in high school we teach 34 kids per class, 5 classes a day (170 kids per day). If only we were all paid accordingly...

Teachers' salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or 10 months a year! It's time we pay them for what they do--babysit! We can get that for less than minimum wage. That's right. Let's give them $3.00 an hour for the hour they work, not any of that silly planning time.

That would be $19.50 a day (7:00 AM to 3:30 PM or so) with just 25 min. off for lunch. Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children. NOW...How many do they teach in a class, 30? So that's $19.50 x 30 =$585.00 a day.

However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! We're not going to pay them for any vacation. LET'S SEE....That's $585 x 180= $105,300 per year.

What about those teachers with advanced degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage, and just to be fair, round it off to $7.00 an hour. That would be $7 x 6 1/2 hours x 30 children x 180 days = $245,700 per year.

Wait a minute--there' s something wrong here! Average teacher salary $50,000/180 days = $277/per day/30 students = $9.23/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student. A very inexpensive "baby-sitter" and they even try - with your help - to EDUCATE your kids! WHAT A DEAL....

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

the rubber room

The rubber room is a mythical place in the New York City Department of Education where teachers are sent when they are "fired" until they await trial. I have heard that folks sit in there and play cards, write novels, sleep all day...a number of things. I envision it as a big, brightly-lit space with white padded walls and rows of cafeteria-like tables endlessly stretching into an oblivion. My vision of it is a combination of torture scenes from the novel 1984, the film "Brazil," and our school cafeteria. Ha!

This weekend on the radio program "This American Life" they did a segment on the NYC DOE's rubber rooms (Yes, there is more than ONE room!). It seems the rumors are quite true.

If you are a NYC teacher, you really should listen to this. God forbid any of us end up in there. Some of these fools' stories definitely warrant them landing in such a place, but others....it's a bit scary.

To listen, click here and sit down!