Haus Frau

Years ago I bought a linen dress from Old Navy. It was olive green (my favorite color for clothes) and fit me at the time, then I lost a bunch of weight and it was too big and tent like to wear in public so I made it my house dress. Much like the little old ladies who wear house dresses, I wore my linen dress around the house when it was too hot to wear clothes that touched me. I wore it bra-less, panty-less, and just sweat in it until it stank and then I would toss it in the wash, hang it back on my closet like a robe, and wear it again until it became rancid.

Fast forward about five years. The house dress (which became lovingly referred to as my haus frau dress) is tucked into my bin of SKINNY clothes. It's stored in a bin in the basement of my neighbor's apartment b/c they are kind and generous folks with a finished basement space not dank and dusty and buggy like our unfinished storage. But it hit 90 degrees this weekend in NYC (WTHades?) and clothes were too much. I had to christen a new haus frau dress.

It's a nursing dress by the company Boob (great stuff). It was adorable when I was pregnant, but now I look like a lumpy sausage in it. But shoot, it can be a haus frau dress. It has the ability for my boobs to come out to nurse, it's long enough not to flash too much leg or girl parts to my family, and it is a dark enough color to wear sans underclothes.

Ahhhh, sweet relief. Those little old ladies got something going on with their haus frau dresses. Try it--you'll like it.

Overheard in the Classroom

I have to write this before I forget it:

Last Friday, the bell was about to ring and the lesson was over. The students were chatting by the window and I was getting a standardized test ready for the next period when I overheard a tidbit of incorrect sex info. Of course, I pounced on it. I asked the students (9th grade girls) what they were talking about. One brazen one said,

"Miss, if your boyfriend comes in you and you stand up immediately and go to take a pee, then you won't get pregnant."

And THIS is why we have six. pregnant. freshmen. S-I-X.

I stopped the whole class and clarified that your urethra, where your pee comes out of, is a DIFFERENT hole from your vagina, where you have sex. Therefore peeing does NOTHING to "wash away the sperm" (as another student mentioned) and prevent pregnancy.

Their response: "No, Miss, you're wrong."

God help the children of those children.

Doctorate Irony

A friend on facebook posted this article entitled "The Long-Haul Degree," a lamentation about the worthlessness of doctorate degrees, particularly in this economy. Word.

Any of you who know me know that I am constantly wrestling with my doctorate--and not even in the "Oh sh*t, I have to finish this!" type of freak out but more in the vein of "This has been an exercise in futility and now we're hopelessly in debt...." kind of agony.

As much as everyone claims my doctorate, once earned, will open doors for me, blah blah blah, I just don't see it. If I could go back in time and erase it (and the 40 grand of debt I accumulated getting it) I would in a HEARTBEAT. That said, I am a much smarter person and a better teacher because of it, but when folks say you can't put a price on education I beg to differ. You can. And it's expensive. And it keeps you from buying a place to live, and saving for your kids' college, and vacationing until, um, the year 2017 when you will have paid it all off. Oh, and did I mention that as a doctoral student in Education (or another Humanities area of study) that you're never really going to make any money. I am truly hoping that my doctorate work does not end up being what financially f*cks us (my now family of four) for all eternity. No joke.

Bitter much?

But the best part of this diatribe sparked tonight was that in reading the above mentioned article in the New York Times, who should advertise their overpriced institution but Teachers College, Columbia University, the school that will one day (hopefully a year from now) be my alma mater from which I will have received my Doctorate in Education and all this additional stress. I had to take a screen shot of it b/c the irony was too too thick not to share with the world.

Sometimes you just have to laugh at it all to keep from crying.

Freaky Friday

Alexandra is very much into dressing herself lately. She is also prone to throwing herself on the floor in a demonstration of sheer frustration with heaping sighs, singing along to her new CityStomp CD at top volume,and "reading" her books with various character voices...She is a riot. All drama, all the time. That's my girl.

Above was her outfit today. Nico's truck pants (made by Bethany), one leg warmer on leg, one leg warmer on arm, owl shirt, and her cat hat from Halloween. Freaky Friday indeed.

Love that baby girl!

Girl Fights, Sex, & Homelessness

Now if that title doesn't get pique your interest, than I don't know what will. If read this blog then you probably know that those three topics pretty much summarize my school year this year. The ninth grade girls fight like feral cats. If they aren't beating the bejesus out of each other, they're either having sex in the stairwell (no lie), getting pregnant (we have six pregnant freshmen), or talking about sex. And, lastly, there are a large number of students who are currently homeless, or, also orphaned and being fought over by siblings for the social security check that comes with a minor who has lost a parent. It's intense.

I have never worked so closely with a guidance counselor as I have this year, and thankfully our ninth graders have the best guidance counselor our school can offer. But, one woman is not enough.

With all these issues in mind, I have created a unit around the book pictured above that deals with all these situations of adolescence in a forthright manner. I keep getting asked questions that pertain to sex, fighting, loyal friends, bad friends, dead parents, etc, and it takes up class time. While I'm not a stickler to sticking to the curriculum when I feel the students need a topic addressed, it would be nice to have a few books that deal with these issues.

So I wrote a Donors Choose grant here. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE give money so I can get these books for my students and conclude their final year with a unit that will hopefully give them a forum to discuss, read, and write about some serious topics young people face.

Many thanks.

My New Horror Movie Genre

When I was a kid, I LOVED horror movies. My mom wouldn't let me watch them, but my dad was sick a lot and my sister and I stayed at Dawn Amaismeier's house many weekends while my mom was at the hospital. Louise, Dawn's mom, would take us to Erol's Video and we would rent two movies: a horror movie and a funny movie. We would watch the horror one first, get scared to death, and then watch a Mr. Bill movie or a comedy of sorts to mellow us out before bed. That was elementary school.

In middle school, my friend Jen Osborne and I watched the "Nightmare of Elm Street" movies repeatedly. We would then hang a Freddy Kreugar poster over her bed and go to sleep under it, scared to death and giggling singing "One, two, Freddy's coming for you." Why? No idea. What is it in us that loves to be scared?

Then something happened: Right around the time that I had Alexandra I stopped being able to watch horror movies. I can't do it. I get too freaked out. Maybe it has something to do with being a mother, having these two little lives to protect, and all that, but I cannot for the life of me watch a horror movie. But I can and do read/watch dystopic/apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic books/movies. In fact, I'm pretty addicted to them.

Name a dystopic novel and I have read it--most likely twice: all Margaret Atwood books (The Handmaid's Take, Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood), George Orwell's 1984, Huxley's Brave New World, Cormac McCarthy's The Road...the list goes on. And movies? Fuggetaboutit. I watch them all: The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, any stupid thing about a meteor hitting planet earth and we're all swallowed up by a tsunami and I'm on it like white on rice.

And then I go bonkers with fear. I strategize on how to save my kids from the Cloverfield monster, lament that I have no survival skills (can't shoot a gun, find clean water, start a fire), and think of starting a canned food/bottled water secret stash in case of a pandemic that we just happen to survive. I am not exaggerating when I say that I lay in bed at night thinking of how to get my kids, who sleep on opposite ends of our 800 sq foot apartment, to safety if there were an earthquake.

So, although I have given up the original genre of horror flicks, I feel I have transplanted myself into a much scarier and more realistic genre of dyspotic/apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic film and fiction. And as much as Freddy Kruegar scared the bejesus out of me in 7th grade, the possibility of a the waterless flood that will wipe out humanity scares me even more.

Maybe I need some anti-anxiety meds, or is this just motherhood making me crazy?

(On my list of things to learn in case the world implodes and I survive with my kids: build a fire, skin and eat small animals, forage for non-poisonous foods, shoot multiple types of guns, find clean water, self-defense...Any other suggestions?)

The Trifecta of Gross

My two oldest girlfriends, Kim and Robyn, were here for the weekend. We did the touristy stuff, talked so much that I think my laryngitis might come back, and ate lots of cupcakes and drank lots of wine. It wasn't as much a girls weekend as a weekend with them hanging with my family. Since Nico is still breastfed, he had to be along or I'd have to pump. Finding a place to pump in the city is even more challenging than finding a bathroom that doesn't make you want to retch, so Nico became a girl for the weekend. Well, you can't explain that to an almost 3 year old who is going on 13, so Alexandra and Adam tagged along, too. But, since Robyn and Kim are awesome and have families and get it, they were cool with it all.

We took on Top of the Rock at 8pm on Saturday night. Alexandra was being exceeding good, so instead of taking her home for bed Adam and her came along. While we stopped mid-level to pee, Alexandra was crawling around under some benches and came up with a circular piece of something. I thought it was a piece of veggie booty, but no, it was a piece of CHEWED GUM.

This gum had been chewed, rolled into a ball, dropped onto the ground, under a bench in a place where hundreds of people visit every day. It was gray in color, covered with dirt, and Alexandra immediately fell in love with it. She HAD to hold onto it with all her energy. It went in her pocket, out of her pocket, and then she started to KISS it. Yes, kiss it. I could not wrestle it from her hands without a full-blown tantrum occurring (keep in mind that she'd had only a 1/2 hour nap in the stroller that day and it was about 9pm at that time, her normal bedtime being 7:30-8).

And with that, I had to let the gross gum go. I had to let her snuggling up to it, whisper sweet nothings into it, and rub it all over her fingers. Eventually it got dropped and she forgot about it, but not until we were back on street level and I went to retrieve it from her coat pocket while Kim took her potty.

But that was the perfect trifecta of gross: chewed gum, found on a floor of an insanely public space, meeting the lips of my child. Ewwwwww.