Permanent File

Sizing up everyone

2012-02-03T15:58:00.000-06:00

My students from all four sections I teach just turned in their second drafts. I'm supposed to be commenting on the drafts right now, but I've somehow managed to be the ONLY person in my house at the moment and I'm enjoying the stillness. Even my cats are locked out in the party fun room in the back. Nothing but the central heat and my typing is making any noise. I'm eating a peanut butter shake and chasing it with black coffee. It is pretty awesome...just now.

Back to reality.

I have found that everything up until the second draft of the first paper is for show. Even though the first draft is obviously work and even though I cover with my students elements of a narrative and ways to edit and show them examples and we talk about the examples and blah, blah, blah, it seems to me the first time I actually roll up my sleeves and get to work is when I comment on their second drafts. Any literate asshole can write something (first draft), but the tricky part, the studious part, is revision. And revision brings a second draft.

Although I've been interacting with most of my students from day 1 it really isn't until this point, the second draft, that I start sizing them up. They've been sizing me up from the first time I planted my short little self in front of the class. From the moment I began to cover the more important parts of the syllabus. They've been trying to figure out if I can help them, if I will notice them texting, if I will be "nice," if I will be fair, and if I will blame them for not knowing things upon entry. They've been sizing me up to determine if they can lie to me, if their refusal to complete work will have repercussions, if they can disrespect me, if I will respect them, and if I am what they consider to be authentic. They want to know if I'm a pushover. They want to know if I actually know anything. They want to know if I'll listen to them or brush them off.

I think about my students a lot. Probably too much. Not always in a good way, but not often in a mean-spirited way. Mostly, I think about their possible perspectives because I do not see myself in most of my students. Very few of them remind me even vaguely of an undergrad me. Part of this, certainly, is owed to the fact that over half of the students I am instructing this semester are attending a technical college and I was attending a university as a freshman. Part of this is owed to the whole I-skipped-my-senior-year-of-high-school thing. Part of it is because my primary caregiver until I was fourteen was a college graduate and many of my students are the first from their families to even pursue a degree.

Most of the difference between me and them has to do with what led me to a career in higher ed in the first place. I'm a big dorky dork who likes to read stuff and think about it and talk about it and write about it. I like to learn stuff and try to make connections between the things I've learned. The last course I took as a grad student covered different learning orientations (among many things) and it was then and there that I realized I was one of the class of learners who does not require that the information I learn be useful or practical in any way. I am perfectly content to spend my time learning things for the hell of it. Most of my students are not like that.

So what? As I read their second drafts and write in my attempts at thoughtful comments, I have to continuously remind myself that my comments really should have a particular direction. That is, I probably shouldn't include every single comment I come up with. It's overwhelming to a student who wants direction to be presented only with options. They want to learn. They also want to satisfy the assignment and make a passing grade.

Sizing students up is dangerous, though. I can't completely help it; I'm human and sizing up other people is a part of being. But allowing my determinations about a student too strictly direct the input I give her or him might deny that student exposure to some the things I decide she or he wouldn't understand or to options that she or he would be confused by.

Like I said, I probably think too much about this. Time to stop only thinking and start doing.

All your time are belong to us.

2012-01-26T21:44:00.000-06:00

This one's for all my homies out there who are still keeping it real. Specifically, the homies who used Christmas break to attempt to breathe life back into their blogs. (Okay, there's only one homie.)

I'm keeping it real over here in my 'hood too, but not so much in the bloggery. Chances are I'll never post anything longer than however long this post ends up. And I'll never edit another post either, including this one, as I have indicated by admitting that what goes on up here at the top of the post is not necessarily aware of or connected to whatever will be going on down there at the end of the post. I'm taking it one day at a time and I don't have time for complex shit.

Why's that?

I'm teaching FOUR sections of Comp I.

At two separate campuses, both of which are at least a 40-min. commute.

From roughly 11 to 1:30 every week day.

I have over 70 students. I've assigned 4 essays, plus a portfolio with a reflective essay due at the end of the semester. We've got readings, reading-response journals, drafts of the essays, groups, group contracts, and I guess a bunch of other shit.

I see my kids for about 3-4 hours a day.

All for the mad cash adjuncts pull down.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$yeah, right.$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
And NO BENEFITS!

The whole: I-work-two-part-time-jobs thing. That's what I'm doing.

I didn't start this out intending to bitch. And I don't really want to bitch. I love what I do. I just think four sections is crazy. But, somebody up in here gotta make some money. If I was teaching 3 already, what's 1 more section? It made sense at the time.

Point is, I don't eat lunch all week and I rush around like my ass is afire. I've never been this busy or this organized ever before.

Maybe I will blog about this. We'll see.

It's Halloween.

2011-11-16T23:29:00.001-06:00

Actually, Halloween was over two weeks ago, but my son still tells me that "it's Halloween," and promptly asks "Can we go trick or treating? Can we? Can we? Can we? Please?" Sounds like normal 2.5 year old confusion about holidays, right? Like, not knowing when a holiday is over or something. Except for Carroll didn't actually celebrate Halloween at all. We bought him a costume (a bumble bee costume which I tried to explain to my husband was a little girl's costume - not a boy's - but he wouldn't listen) and Carroll was terrified of it. He screamed in horror every time we got it out and told him it was his and that he was going to wear it. "No, no, no," he'd whine. "I don't want bumble bee." When we went to a Halloween festival put on by a local church I told Joe I'd just get Carroll dressed (shirt, pants, socks) just like normal. Then, while he was watching Dora I'd nonchalantly slip the bee costume on him. I was convinced that if he didn't anticipate it or think about it that his fear would not materialize. That it would, in effect, vanish. That he would not have fear of the bumble bee costume.

As soon as I got it halfway over his head he started to freak. out. It's okay, I told him. It's just a costume. "I don't want it! I don't want it!" After much crying and gnashing of teeth he finally calmed down. I told him Mommy was sorry, that she didn't realize he was truly afraid of the bumble bee, and that he did not have to wear the costume. I asked him if he wanted to wear his firefighter boots and be a firefighter. No, he said. Do you want to wear your cowboy boots and be a cowboy? No, he said. Do you want to dress up at all? No, he said.

"Halloween! Halloween! Trick or Treat! Our costumes can't be beat!" He chants this mantra some mornings before he asks me if we can go trick or treating. I tell him we can go, but he has to wear his bumble bee costume. "No! I don't want to." Last year he was a tiger and seemed oblivious to the costume and the candy.

Anyway, here's some pictures.

Pony rides are a GREAT reason to get out of the house.

This looks like a very sad Halloween photo.
It's not. Her eyes water in the wind.

Petting Zoos are right behind pony rides as a
great reason to get up and dressed on Saturday.

The Halloween chant came from a Dora the Explorer DVD Carroll's grandmother gave him for, you guessed it, Halloween. It contained at least one episode focusing on Halloween. (Duh.) When Dora talks about Halloween Carroll thinks it is wonderful. When I talk about Halloween Carroll thinks it is horrific. I am about sick of Dora teaching my kid about holidays -- she did the same thing with Easter through the same kind of grandmother-sponsored DVD campaign.

Turn the TV off, you say? I am going to. You know why people like me use the TV to distract their kids? Because we can't afford enough daycare to get whatever it is that we need to get done done before the kids come home. So, instead of spending our home time with our kids, we are still scrambling around, trying to get whatever it is done while watching them and attending to their more pressing needs like diapers, food, requests, and sibling violence. In order to turn off the TV I've got to get enough time away from my kids that I can actually get my work done.

'Cause I want Halloween to count next year. I want to go trick or treating and live it up. And next year we are going to let Carroll pick out his OWN costume.

A swimmingly good summer...but no vacation.

2011-08-13T00:16:00.001-05:00

As I mentioned earlier, this is becoming a pictures-of-my-kids blog. Here to reify that claim are more pictures. Follow through is awesome!

Carroll took swim lessons this summer at a swanky country club
we could never afford to be members of.

We did it to get him out of the house in the insanely hot afternoons
and help him become comfortable with being in the water.

Claire thought cheering Carroll on was awesome fun.

She's kinda snakey with that tongue. Gathering information.

We didn't go on any kind of vacation this summer. Not that I'm used to vacations; before I met Joe I'd taken only one vacation my entire life. My family went to Pensacola, Florida the summer before my parents seperated. It often is the case that a family trip to Florida directly precedes a divorce. Something about the combination of sun, ocean and that inexplicable swampy insanity Florida breeds in those already susceptible to demons. Anyway, Joe's globe-trotting family took many thousands of trips at various times over the course of his life as a minor with them. His parents still are hopping on planes and jetting off to sand and sun or snow and casinos or whatever and wherever they should and do desire. They're retired. They can do things like that.

We were planning on joining them in a trip to Puerto Rico at the end of May, but I cancelled it because of the childrens' ages...and all my anxieties (some warranted, some not so much) about them being so young and me not being able to let loose and have a good time. I mean, is it a vacation if you can't spend at least one night drinking too much? I'm not talking about a bender, just one night! Or even one lunch hour. The condo is on the third floor, there are two balconies Carroll can get to, last year when we went Carroll got a throat infection (from the airport!), there's a spiral staircase inside the condo that leads to the roof (the ROOF!), and my mother-in-law has a bad knee that goes out unpredictably. That's my brief list of compromising circumstances that convinced me going to Puerto Rico was not a good idea this year. Oh yeah. And I wasn't ready to leave Claire with anyone overnight. So no trip to PR for just Joe and me.

We talked about visiting New Orleans, all six of us (Joe, me, two kids and mother and father-in-law), but when it came down to it we didn't have enough time. What a bummer. Who doesn't want to visit NOLA? Especially with friends like these? Not only did we not have enough time, we have no extra money. And by "extra" I mean that we are not sure we will be able to pay all our bills this month. Sounds like a good time to not take a vacation.

In other news, I managed to complete the requirements to earn my MA. I don't have the degree in hand, but as far as my committee is concerned it is a done deal. "But Katherine," you say, "I'm pretty sure you abandoned your thesis. How on earth did you manage to graduate?" Two words, my friends: non-thesis option. Apparently, the UALR department of Rhetoric and Writing had considered offering a non-thesis option for quite a while. It became an official route to graduation this past spring when I was doing other thing rather than going to the library and writing drafts of thesis sections. I had a "come to Jesus" meeting with my committee chair and spilled the beans about how I knew I would not be able to finish my thesis in the foreseeable future because my kids would not both be in full time daycare (we can't afford it) and I would not have a series of quiet hours to myself to focus on ideas more complex than the price per diaper when buying diapers in bulk online.

He took pity on me. He told me to change paths. He told me all was not lost. I enrolled last-minute in a 5-week summer course. I constructed and submitted my master's portfolio and revised it and resubmitted it, et cetera. I defended my master's portfolio this past Thursday. I did a great job. ....Aaaand I'm done.

See those bags under my eyes? They are now done with. I can sleep more!

This has been, by far, the most stressful year of my life. When Joe started law school he told me that lots of people who start law school married don't end the first year of law school still together with their spouse. Carroll has continued to grow into a little boy from the baby that he once was. He's been challenging to deal with, mostly because he's inherited his mother's hot temper and intensity. Claire joined our family this year and I couldn't believe how seamlessly the transition from one kid to two actually was. I still can't. When did I ever not have kids? How the hell did I manage to sit around and not be driven crazy by not accomplishing something every single second of every single waking minute? Good grief. How things have changed.

In the end I am SO GLAD I completed my coursework and my degree. It's been a doozy for sure. Next summer, though, I'd really like to take a vacation. Maybe without the kids. Maybe with them. It's good to get out of town every now and again and the Lamb family is overdue.

I'll write when I'm de... wait that doesn't work.

2011-07-16T00:29:00.000-05:00

This blog has backslid from something I updated with obnoxiously lengthy "posts"(which were actually essays I wrote for my MA program) to just photos. Photos of my kids. It's a kid photos blog.

Which isn't surprising seeing as how I'm doing all kinds of things these days that I never thought I'd be doing. Things I thought I'd have more class than to do, like wear flip flops in public or wipe my son's nose on the inside hem of his shirt. Things I harshly judged others for doing, like bribing their children with suckers or being afraid to touch garter snakes. It should be no surprise to anyone that I can't even be bothered to sit down and write a few coherent paragraphs ~~for the hell of it~~ to document my life, most of which I will not remember 24 hours later. Because when you're a mommy of a 2-year-old and a 4-month-old and your law student husband works an hour away and you're enrolled in a 5-week summer course to complete your MA (Mondays and Wednesday nights from 6 to 9:45, but class ALWAYS gets out at 10) at your university that is 45 minutes aways and did I mention you're still breast feeding the baby every 3 or so hours, 'cause you are, and your toddler wants to go outside all the time but he gets tons of mosquito bites and swells up like crazy and scratches them 'till they bleed and he looks abused, anyway, when you're done doing all that shit and you realize it is finally time to go to bed you just want to GO TO BED. And so you do. And you sleep wonderfully.

Until the baby wakes up at 1. And the toddler wakes up at 2. And 4.

I'm really starting to not care. I'm starting to seriously and drastically amend my standards just so that I can continue to look at myself in the mirror. If I'm technically meeting my standards does it matter how low or skanky or compromised they are? Standards are standards, right? I'd think it was wrong of me to try to think of ways I can do less and still think highly of myself if I didn't absolutely know the depths of human exhaustion and insanity. That may be a slight overstatement, but not by much. Those of you who don't have children can fucking... well, I don't know what. I guess I was going to say "die" but that doesn't really make much sense. I guess I just wish you'd go ahead and have some children so we can all go crazy together.

Holy crap. This might actually be long enough to count as a post. Like, a real, stand alone post. I don't even need pictures to complete this update. Hell. I'll add 'em anyways.

We went to the park last Sunday.

I did not put him up to this. I swear.

This 4-month-old weighs over 16 lbs.
She's in the 97 percentile for weight. Whoa.

Maybe I'm doing it. Maybe I'm getting some extra-curricular writing done. All I have to do is let go and start bitching and BOOM! The writing is THERE! Seriously, though, I gotta go do my homework. This 5-week course is ri-di-cu-lous. But before I go, here's the garter snake I was telling you about earlier.

Yard Monster was so proud of himself he wanted to *share*
the moment with us all.

The blue legs belong to the toddler and the nearly bald head to the baby.
And, there's that snake, blending in with my cheap rug.

I humanely removed the *still live* (but probably wounded?) snake from my living room with a dust pan and brush and flung it outside for something other than my cat to eat. Go circle of life.

Pics only.

2011-07-07T23:13:00.000-05:00

Carroll hiding in his fav place to hide. (Bug bites on leg.)

Claire loves "daddy" and LOVES baby oatmeal!

Feeding a baby while trying to capture the moment results in
crooked captured moments. Note laundry in background.

Finally full.

The bandaids are to keep Carroll from scratching mosquito bites.
These last four were taken right before bedtime... and before the bedtime tears.

How am I ever going to get anything done in this house except raise these children? And maybe screw around on the internet a little? HOW?

Improvement

2011-06-27T16:28:00.002-05:00

No, I'm not talking that soul-searching, whole person kind of improvement an individual facing, say, an uncertain employment market and a dwindling bank account might embark upon. Not talking about any kind of personal reflection or serious examination of actual motives or values. I'm talking facades. American facades what don't have that little hangy down thing like the French façades do.

Joe improved our façade this weekend by painting the front door and faux shutters French Blue. Zoot, alors! C'est les sacre bleu, non? (Just kidding; I don't really parlez vous français. Or, is it Je nes parle pas fraçais? I bet you get the idea.)

This is what free time is for. Watching the children so your husband can execute the home improvement projects you are interested in. You know, like, trying something new.

Whatever. I think it looks better.

Couldn't wait for the pressure washer to be put away...

...because a certain little boy needed to take his train outside.

Do these shutters make us look Frenchy?

"You comin', Mommy?"

This conductor takes his train everywhere.

Carroll can open this door by himself.

I'm really happy about this.

House a Home

2011-06-24T16:19:00.003-05:00

Lamb House last week.

Joe and I bought our house in February 2007, three months before we married. Actually, Joe bought our house because his credit score was better and it was his father who helped us out enormously with a down payment. I'm still not on the deed or the mortgage. My coworkers at the time advised me against this. "If you two break up, you'll be out on the street!" I was living with him in his apartment before that though, so I didn't see much difference. I mean, house or apartment, I would be on the street either way. If we'd broken up, that is. And we didn't. We got married.

The apartment we lived in previously was pretty nice as apartments go. It was actually a townhouse with the living room, kitchen, laundry room and a half bath downstairs and two bedrooms and a full bath upstairs. It had berber carpeting throughout except for the industrial tile in the kitchen and bathrooms. There was a back concrete patio. There were some shade trees in the little side yard and the grass was nice. It had more than adequate closet space and nice appliances including a microwave. The walls were thick and I don't remember ever hearing the next-door, wall-sharing neighbors.

I realize all this now, but at the time I lived there I don't remember ever thinking, "Hey, this is a pretty nice place!" I should have been thinking that. I should have been thinking, "This place beats the hell out of all of the other places I've lived for the past three years! The a/c works ALL the time, no giant rats in the walls, no drug dealers knocking on the doors, looking for 'Roscoe'!" The rent was $600 a month (I payed nothing) and I started thinking that, whoa, that's a lot of money to be paying someone else for virtually nothing in return. $600 just to live somewhere? For a month? It seemed to me that since Joe and I were both working and since I thought we'd probably be together for a while (this was before we decided to get married) I figured we could either rent a little house and get more bang for Joe's buck or we could buy a house and potentially sell it later. Like, two or three years later. I told Joe about my plan, he nodded along, we decided to get married. And then he bought our little house.

At first, we lived in the house like it was an apartment, or worse, a dorm room. I doubt that we vacuumed AT ALL the first year that we lived there. (Really.) As I finished my undergraduate thesis in 2007, I even smoked inside. Then, we got pregnant and so many things began to change. Just before Carroll was born, my mother in law (MIL) began her mission to transform our house to look "nice" and have, like, decor. I went along in an ambivalent haze with whatever she wanted to do to any room. My own mother never decorated or expressed any interest in that feminine past time and my predilection to do so was obscured by my almost incessant and overwhelming fatigue at the (very pregnant) time. (It wasn't a very good time for me in general, either, but that's a different story.) She gave Joe and me a half dozen framed generic decor prints that had previously made her own home look "nice."She and my father in law (FIL) came down every other week to help my gigantic pregnant self clean. The nursery had no theme because I said "themes are stupid" and I wasn't engaged enough to put together a theme anyway.

It wasn't until last summer when we Lambs experienced a full-blown flea infestation and had our cheap carpet replaced with laminate faux-wood flooring as a partial remedy that I began to invest my time and effort into transforming this house into a home. Last Christmas, my MIL bought us draperies for the master bedroom and kids' room and the living/dining room. She also bought us a small leather sofa that I selected (it was from a local furniture store's overstock/damaged goods warehouse and was a major deal). I rearranged the living room a few times. Joe hung pictures and repositioned them to my satisfaction, and has done so several times. We gave back the baby bed we borrowed for Carroll, bought him a "big boy bed" and bought the not-yet-arrived Claire her own crib. I still haven't done a theme for the kids' room ('cause I kinda still think themes are stupid) but I have hung stuff up. I am currently working on more stuff to hang up. I think it's a nice room to live in for a kid (or two). I took the plunge and spent too much money on a duvet cover I LOVE for our bed and got a deal on matching lamps. We bought extra, preassembled cabinets for the kitchen which Joe and my father installed. Joe has landscaped the front yard this summer at my behest. We've even been using a (cheapo) sprinkler. Domesticity, anyone?

Claire's side of the room.

Carroll's side of the room.

Carroll helps with the flower bed dirt.

Flower bed close up!

"People with children live here."

I am hooked. This was a cute little older (and affordable) house that Joe and I bought initially with the intent to sell only a few years later, probably when we went away to grad school. We didn't know what we were doing at the time. Not really. We just did whatever. It turns out that was a great thing and a great decision. It's not a big house but not a tiny house either. And we are going to make it awesome. We are going to make it home.

P.S. Okay. I know it doesn't look that much different from the first picture. It does over here, though, and it will look even better as the plants grow. Unless we kill them.

Feed yer children

2011-06-10T14:10:00.002-05:00

It's been just under three months since I last wrote. I've been getting into the Mommy-of-two swing and aside from the month that was Joe's finals, I've been just relaxing like a big fat lazy bones when both kids are asleep. Or, you know, watching TV when the boy is asleep and the girl is just nursing. I mean, yeah, I still do all the housework around here. It's not like that has changed or ever will. But I've just been pretty free with my non-houseworking, non-Mommying time. Which means that I have NOT EVEN STARTED on my Master's thesis. Which means I am approaching at a high rate of speed SCREWED.

It's just got to be around 70 pages. "Seventy pages?!" you say, "That's not anything, Katherine!" Yeah, I know. I should have knocked out 30 or so before Claire was born and then another 15 or 20 since. But you know what I did? I freaked out about my house and how clean it was for about a month (maybe even a month and a half) before Claire was born and just nested the hell out of every day. For a month after she was born I seriously was recovering from the c-section and figuring out how to juggle two kids. Then Joe had finals (and I went to stay with his parents for about 3 weeks). Now Joe's school is out and I've been doing some other important stuff for about a month (though it's stuff which has no deadline) and I've still got this here thesis hanging over my head.

I'm starting to think that this degree is bullshit to me. That I should have gone down the art-faggey road of fiction writing and never ventured onto the road to an MA for Professional and Technical Writing. I took a theoretical approach to this master's and even though I CAN do business writing and I CAN do grant writing (which I learned as an undergrad), I have not specialized in those areas. So...it would seem that getting a mid-level job with this degree would be impossible. And since I didn't graduate in May, all the teaching jobs requiring an MA at any state school are impossible to get because I don't have an MA yet. The state don't care what I SAY I'm going to do. They don't care that I think I'll graduate in August. The state only cares what I have done. And I haven't done shit.

It is time to get to work. Right now. And it is time to come up with some back-up plans. Because these faces can't wait for Mommy to decide what she wants out of life. And it is time for this Mommy to feed her children.

New baby in the house

2011-03-16T02:01:00.001-05:00

Now that it's been over a week and some change since my daughter was born I figured I might should write about these recent days before they fade from my memory. Nothing big happened, aside from Claire finally joining the rest of her family and me undergoing major surgery to achieve our familial union, but hey! This here's a blog and not-big-whoops are allowable. After all, blogs have done been supplanted by micro-blogs and such.

(As a side-note I'd like to point out that the double modals I've been using are not incorrect, that they are legitimate English, and that dialects such as Southern American English are as valid as all other dialects. Standard English is a form, in the Platonic sense, and does not exist on Earth. Standard English is an abstraction. Actually, all categorical forms of English are abstractions, as none are spoken exactly as described by anyone. And, all being equally abstracted, none are inherently "better" or "worse" than others, though the social prestige of one may be higher or lower than the others. I'd like to write more about this, 'cause I think it's pretty interesting. And it IS. That's part of why I'm an educated person…'cause I can explain stuff.)

Joe and I never did satisfactorily explain to or prepare our son for the arrival of Claire. I mean, we tried to tell him "there's a baby in Mommy's belly" and "we're getting a baby," "a baby's gonna come live with us," "she's gonna live with us forever," and "you and the baby are going to share your room." Most of the time Carroll stared back at us and changed the subject ("Caillou?" "Where kitty cats?" "More juice?"). Sometimes he would frown (especially when I mentioned him sharing his room) and yell "no!" He whimpered and stuck out his lip a few times, too. I was 50/50 on whether or not he actually understood any of it.

Babies don't wait around in-utero to make sure everyone on the outside is aware of and prepared for their arrival, though, and Claire came on. Well, as a repeat c-section, she actually came when Dr. Holland said she would, but, like, whatever. Same thing. She would have come eventually, anyway, probably that next Monday morning. The point is, Joe and I dropped Carroll off at daycare on Thursday (March 3) and his grandmother picked him up that afternoon and brought him to the hospital. I was out of surgery, numb from the waist down and still plugged into the epidural and iv and some other stuff. And I was holding a baby. All of this was more or less lost on Carroll, though. Oh, he saw the baby and he saw Mommy. He was glad to see me and gave me a hug ("Hi, Mommy! What are doing? Hi, Baby!") but when Granny and Poppa said "Let's go to the park!" he said "Bye Mommy!" and made for the door. I was just a little jealous…of that damned park.

Now that we're all home, we're still adjusting. It has become abundantly clear that Joe and I need a bigger bed. Claire sleeps with us and Carroll ends up in our bed most nights, too. If any of us gain any weight that bed will be way too small for two adults and two children. I'm losing the baby weight as fast as I can… But seriously, what is the deal with all the children in my bed?! I never thought I would have this problem. I never thought I would be one of those people, one of those moms, who lets her kid sleep in her bed. But I so totally am.

He's mostly okay with the new member of the family. When I ask him to say "good morning, Baby" he will echo me. When I ask him to say "good morning, Claire" he does his best. When I chatter away about what I'm doing with Claire ("I'm changing Claire's diaper," "I'm feeding Claire," "I'm burping Claire,") he listens without comment or reaction most of the time. When he whines "Hold-eee" and I tell him I've got to finish feeding/changing/burping Claire first, Carroll is actually usually okay with this answer and he waits. It is when we go out into public and people we know (but who Carroll doesn't know very well) ask him things like "What do you think about your little sister?" or "How do you like your little sister?" or pretty much anything that uses the words "little sister" that Carroll touches his chin to his chest, frowny-face full on, and acts about as disconcerted as a two-year-old can.

That's the thing. Why would anyone who suspects that a particular subject might be sore for someone greet that person by tauntingly asking them what they *think* about that subject. Here are some examples:

"How do you like being laid off?"

"What do you think about your father being an alcoholic?"

"The new person in your mommy's life is so beautiful! Don't you absolutely LOVE the new person who takes up time that used to be only yours in your mommy's life?"

I guess it's just another example of adults feeling that they are allowed to treat children differently than they would want to be treated. I thought we all knew to avoid subjects that might upset someone in polite, how-do-you-do small-talky conversations. WTF people? Carroll doesn't care about the baby. He doesn't even resent the baby until undue attention is brought to the situation and he feels pressure to perform socially. I don't think I've asked him if he likes or loves the baby. And it doesn't matter. Claire is here to stay so why ask Carroll to reflect on his feelings about it? He's got to grow up and deal with the new baby just like we all do. Don't get me wrong: I love both of my children very much. But a two-year-old's conception of love is just not worth talking about.

It's like the whole give-your-kid-options-only-when-there-are-options thing. For instance, when you are going somewhere in the car you should say "get in your car seat, please" but not "do you want to get in your car seat?" because the kid DOES NOT actually have an option. He's gotta get in the seat. When your kid gets on the kitchen table you say "get down off that table, please" NOT "do you want to get off the table?" WHO CARES what that kid wants to do, he's got to get off the table! So why bother asking Carroll if he loves the baby or likes the baby when it will not change how much a part of this family Claire is? Especially when questions like that seem to confuse him and make him feel bad?

So, I'm not asking them.

And we're NOT calling her "Sissy," either.

G*d dammie!

2011-02-14T13:29:00.001-06:00

My less-than-two-year-old can swear with the best of them. And he should be able to since his mother weaves expletives into her conversations with the effortlessness of a Valley Girl dropping "like"s. Most kids start their swearing off with the go-to expression "oh shit." I did, anyway, and most of the kids I hear cursing or hear about cursing do the same. There's just something about a tiny tot exclaiming "oh shit" that really disarms adults, sometimes makes them smile. Many adults remember "oh shit" as their own first curse. It holds a special place in our adult hearts.

But not my kid. He ignored the obvious default and went for a more prohibitive choice of words. The f-bomb he hears his mother utter every time the Honda won't accelerate to her liking? No! Too obvious! Although most of us consider the f-bomb the "worst" of curses (and the only one followed by a "bomb") we must admit that there may be one that is worse. Or, at least, worse when you are at church. The delightfully lengthy, multi-syllabic swear that weaves together blasphemy and swearing into a wonderfully compounded blasphemous hell-bound curse, that's right, my favorite, god dammit.

Of all the cursing I do around the house, he chose to emulate the double offense of GD. And, as my title indicates, he says "dammie" instead of "dammit" which makes me laugh...and encourages him. Why not "shit"? Why not the f-bomb? His father and I just finished watching the complete series of HBO's "Deadwood" during which there aren't two minutes that pass without heavy f-bombing. Why not learn his cursing from TV? I know it was me he picked it up from because I am the ONLY PERSON I know who uses that word so often. I don't think anyone else I know ever uses it! He can't even tell me if his diaper is dirty for gods sake! HOW am I supposed to make him understand that there are such things as "words we don't say"? Better yet, how am I supposed to stop myself from cursing? What euphemisms could possibly suffice?

I'm hoping to fix this before his sister is born in 2.5 weeks. If he feels like throwing out a "god dammie" when I turn his favorite cartoon off just imagine what he'll feel like saying when Claire is monopolizing his mother. OMFG.

Bad mother

2011-01-26T10:22:00.001-06:00

I used to think I was a good mother. Actually, I thought I was a great mother. That was all before the child hit his terrible twos. Here we are, two months shy of his second birthday, and he's entered that dreaded territory. Whining, crying, throwing things - all at both expected times and at unexpected, inexplicable times.

"Go away, Mommy!"

"Mommy, that's MY juice/book/paci/kitty/shoe/etc.! Go away!"

"No! NOOOOOOO!"

"Stop! STOOOOOP!"

That's all normal. The terrible twos are normal. I'm not a bad mother because Carroll's going through the throes of this rite of passage.

I'm a terrible mother because I laugh at him. I LAUGH at him. When he's screaming or crying and he's not hurt, nothing is actually wrong, I just crack up. Seeing my son in distress over the realization that he cannot control all aspects of his world with his whim cracks me up. Essentially, I'm delighting in the dawning of the human condition on Carroll's life. And that is cruel and wrong. I just can't stop myself from laughing.

And that is why I'm a bad mother.

Time to vent

2010-12-13T12:09:00.002-06:00

Here I am, sitting in my "home office," not writing my paper that's due tomorrow a-minute-shy-of-midnight, stewing about the most recent bullshit in my day-to-days. And I use the term "bullshit" to refer to both stupid, trivial shit I shouldn't waste my time thinking about as well as wrongs the world and humanity have committed against me and which I (or someone who loves me) should somehow avenge. Collectively, though, it's all a bunch of bullshit.

I've decided it's high time I use this blog for what people *really* use their blogs for and not make any two ways about it. It is time to bitch. I know my bitching is pointless. I know it publishes into the void and that, like the lone tree in the forest, no one will hear my bitching. I don't care. I don't technically have time to do this bitching anyway, but typing it is faster than writing it down in the diary I'll probably never write in again anyway (and which I'll probably burn soon) so there you go. Let the bitching commence.

I hate being asked by acquaintances "How are you?" I HATE IT. Why can't we all just say "Good morning"? Or, "The weather is nice today," or "the weather sucks today," or some other meaningless inane stupid bullshit like, "Mondays, huh?" I'm fine with relatively content-less socialized interactions. I can deal with that shit. But "How are you?" isn't meaningless for people who have been really shitty. So, when I say "I'm fine" it means something. EVERY TIME. Plus, the majority of people who ask me this question, I suspect, are asking it with some kind of strange underlying passive-aggression. I'm not talking about strangers, you know, like the person running the checkout at a store or whatever. I'm talking about people I see just often enough to know a few things about them but not much at all about their personalities or their childhoods or, like, any of the formative important information about a person you know when you REALLY know a person. I think they are asking the question with a "haven't seen you in a while" or "you are late to X appointment" or "I don't like you but I'm going to interact with you" or "I hate your stupid hair" cut to their jib.

Not to mention that "How are you?" is about as subjective a question you can ask. As open-ended a question. And as pointless. If I am having a problem what the hell does the acquaintance care? And what does she plan to do about it? And why is she asking me in the first place? Prying!

It is just such bullshit. I hate it.

Commenting on the weather is not the same at all. It isn't personal. It is still subjective, but who the hell cares? Here's an example of how a bullshit social exchange about the weather might play out.

P1: Nice weather we're having.

P2: Yes, and I hear it will continue for the rest of the week.

P1: Nice weather we're having.

P2: Oh, it is too humid for me. I just melt.

P1: Not me. I like the humidity. But it should pass by next week. It's supposed to rain.

P1: What awful weather!

P2: I know! I'm staying inside the rest of the day.

or, for the less gentile,

P1: This weather blows.

P2: Fuck this weather.

The most important thing about conversations about the weather is that YOU DON'T HAVE TO LIE because the conversation gets uncomfortable. Because it won't. And guess what else? If you do lie it won't matter. Nobody cares what you think about the weather anyway. Conversations about the weather are simply vehicles for light social interaction. And I dig that, and I'm fine with that, and I understand that social graces are necessary for the cohesion of society as we know it. I just hate being asked by acquaintances *how* I am. It's none of their gd business.

Enough for now.

Do The Voices

2010-02-26T17:30:00.001-06:00

In lieu of an actual bloggery, I provide some schoolery. The following was written in response to a class assignment to "share your history as a reader; explain what kind of reader you are." I know there are stylistic and other problems with it. And I know this is too long for a blog. Just posting something.

_________________________

Do The Voices

My history as a reader begins early, from a time before I actually could read. My mother, Carol, read to me every night when I was little and she often read the same story twice or more in one evening. Despite the fact that she was reading to me I still count this as the beginning of my reading history. Carol fully invested herself in the reading of the numerous hand-me-down books we owned. She did the voices, sometimes in shouts, sometimes in whispers. She sang along with the text when appropriate. When we read an illustrated Children’s Bible she stopped to ask me if I knew what certain words meant or what the point of the story was. She allowed me to interrupt and ask questions and she was patient with me when I asked a lot of what probably seemed to her to be (and which themselves were) inconsequential questions. I adored The Pokey Little Puppy. I always begged her to read a book about the Genesis creation myth at least twice in a row. I remember thinking at the time that the illustrations of all the numerous and various animals God spoke into being were amazing. I wanted to transport myself into those illustrations and see the zebras and antelope in the flesh. I also remember that our particular copy had several pages ripped from the middle as evidenced by the pathetic scraps still clinging to the spine, the occasional paw or tree just visible close to the binding. I believe the missing pages were about tigers and cheetahs or some other big cat, no doubt the work of my mother’s sister whose name was crayoned in shaky letters inside of the front cover.

My mother, sister and I (and my father for some time) lived in the same rock house my mother was raised in. My mother’s mother had been raised in that house as well and her father, my great-grandfather, had commissioned its building before my grandmother was born. It was a large, drafty old house out in the county near a one-stop-sign town called Wooster. Our television got six channels and my mother discouraged us from watching any of them much at all. We didn’t play video games. My sister was – and still is – seven years older than me. We had no close neighbors and because Carol taught tenth grade biology at Conway, I went to elementary there. Meaning that all the kids I knew from school lived at least ten miles away. With no one to play with, nothing to watch, nowhere to go and nothing stopping me I fell into reading. I had a hammock in the front yard – hanging it was one of the last things my father, Steve, did before he dissolved into general drunkenness – and in the spring and early summer I would lounge in it and read. I killed time in that hammock with an astounding commitment to slothfulness. Jo March, I concluded while attempting to read Little Women while reclining under the shade of the trees, would envy my hammock.

I remember getting on a serious Babysitter’s Club kick and reading ten or twelve of the books in the series in a relatively short period of time. I was surprised at myself, both because of the speed with which I devoured the books and by the fact that I, a supposed tomboy, would read such girlie trash. Carol knew that I read them, of course, but I hid them from my friends in the second grade. Mrs. Carolyn Bruce, my second grade teacher at Ida Burns Elementary, assigned The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe as the class book. She expressed her amazement that C.S. Lewis could, by utilizing the technique of punctuation, extend a sentence across the span of an entire page.

“And it’s one sentence!” she would say, “The entire page is filled with description and it is all contained in one sentence! What skill!”

I distinctly remember thinking that she was being silly and that a page-long sentence gets boring and disorienting after about the third line down. Nevertheless, the fantastical world Lewis introduced to my young mind was attractive in an adult way. I liked the story not only because it contained talking animals and magical beings but also because the stakes were life and death and the conflict was between good and evil. Though I knew the book was a work of fiction, there was an element of Truth to it that I found very compelling. After we finished reading it in class, Mrs. Bruce told the class that it was the first book in a series. I believe I received the series in a boxed set that next Christmas, probably when I was in the third grade.

It was during my third grade year that any preconception I had of the kind of life I would live began to fall apart. A week before my birthday in December, Carol finally reached her breaking point with Steve and her father asked him to leave. Three months later, we found out Mom had cancer. After her first surgery to remove what turned out to be a large melanoma, she underwent both outpatient and home treatment. She was constantly exhausted and far too weak by the end of the day to read to me at night. So, after she had administered her nightly injection of interferon to herself, I would read aloud to her from Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. In the beginning, she could easily make it through the few chapters I would read, then she’d interrupt.

“It’s time for bed, Katherine.”

After a month or so, though, she never stayed awake very long. I doubt that she ever heard more than half a chapter before drifting off. I know, because of the several times I had to explain it, that she was unable to follow the plot. She fell asleep to my voice almost every night. After I noticed she was asleep, I’d stay up and read silently to myself as long as I wanted.

Time passed and our shared time of reading diminished then disappeared. I began to grow into a teenager as Mom declined in health. I was fourteen when my mother died. My father had been sober for four-and-a-half years and I went to live with him in Conway. He came home from work long after I had returned from school and so I spent a lot of time alone in our rental house. I began reading used issues of National Geographic I bought at the Goodwill store downtown. I read a good deal of the library’s copy of The Complete Works of e. e. cummings. I read most of Edith Hamilton’s Mythology. I read country singer George Jones’ autobiography. I read a southern-humor book my father owned by Lewis Grizzard, though I no longer recall the title. I read Desperation by Stephen King and its mirror The Regulators by Richard Bachman, though Richard Bachman is actually Stephen King. Both were my father’s copies and they scared me to death. After I finished them I slept with my light on for at least a month. For a while, I tried to read the Bible in an attempt to mimic, and in a way remember, my mother. It never did come naturally to me, though, and I gave it up for texts I freely gravitated toward.

It is difficult to fully disentangle any thread of personal history from the tapestry of which it is a part. This seems especially true of those early years of personal history that are, at best, rendered somewhat opaquely in our memories. That is how I experience my memories and my knowledge of myself, anyway. My earliest experiences with reading coincided with many of my experiences of love and I still feel a certain quietness of spirit when I read that I can only describe as being an echo of a shadow of a former memory. That is, because the act of reading held the place of sacred ritual, in a way, during my childhood I still experience a tinge of the original comfort and security I associated with my mother reading to me, and later, with me reading to her. In that way, reading is a very personal endeavor to me. I take my time. I re-read. I skim and read backwards. I ask questions. I read how I want to read and go back and do it again another way that I want to do it. I take all the liberties one might take when engaging in a conversation with someone one has a close relationship with. Conversations of this kind are both inquisitive and intuitive. I listen for what the author is saying as well as what he is trying to say. I listen for what he inadvertently says. I listen for how what he says will affect his audience at large.

Although I have not actually heard Carol’s voice in over eleven years, in my mind I can still hear the way she read. I hear how her voice shaped the meaning of the words as she read and how the context of the words shaped the tone of her voice. I hear the way she would explain the meaning of a term to me, how she would read it to me in context and lead me to a comprehension of it. Her voice resonated with a genuine will to understand, to comfort, and to truly communicate in a lasting way. When she did the voices she taught me to connect with a story. Moreover, though, she instilled in me a desire to connect and a desire to understand. To me, that is what doing the voices represents: a chance to communicate and to comprehend that for which there are no words.

Time moved like a slinky...

2009-11-03T18:17:00.001-06:00

...when it walks down the stairs, expanding and contracting, then expanding then contracting until it just falls over at the bottom.

That is a Katherine Lamb original analogy.

I just could not stop laughing. I can't wait until Carroll starts to misspeak.

A post!

2009-10-15T18:32:00.000-05:00

Time has flown by. I've let it, I suppose. The past month has been hard to keep up with and I've gotten much less sleep than I did the month before. Now that Carroll can crawl and pull up and walk around while holding onto things he has been waking up at 4 a.m., presumably to play. I started saying "buh-buh-buh-buh" (the "b" sound) over and over to him about two weeks ago, I think. Anyway, he wakes up at 4 a.m., pulls himself to a standing position, squeals and says "buh-buh-buh-buh".

So, time has flown by because I am sleep-deprived and my mental state is therefore compromised.

This is going to be a quick and light post.

I took the Myers-Briggs type indicator test again, this time for a class activity. I am still an INTJ, the best one.

I have had a cold for three weeks. So has Carroll.

I went to see David Sedaris at Pulaski Academy last Sunday night. He said that the two most frequently used words on the billboards from Memphis to Little Rock were "Jesus" and "catfish".

Rewatched "The Blair Witch Project" last week. I still find it very scary. Carroll slept in our room that night.

My new favorite phrase is "BFD" and I say the letters. Is that an acronym? Initials? What is that? Whatever it is, I think it's funny.

Time's up.

Hey, it's the '90s.

2009-09-09T20:12:00.002-05:00

Johnny-come-lately. Back in the early 1800s, British sailors called any new or inexperienced hand Johnny Newcomer. American sailors apparently adopted the expression, changing it to Johnny Comelately. The first recorded mention of the term -- in an 1839 novel set on the high seas -- uses it in this form in referring to a young recruit. The expression soon came to describe newcomers in all walks of life, changing a little more to the familiar Johnny-come-lately.

Henderson, Robert. The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins. Checkmark Books, 2008. p. 461

(Okay, fine. I don't know if that is MLA or any other official style of documentation. But I did get the definition from that there book and I should expect that anyone could Google it. The Google people will know. And if they don't, Maryalice Hurst will.)

I cannot describe the look on my anthropologist professor's face when I brought up an episode of Seinfeld as an example of American orientation to gift giving and gift receiving. I brought up "The Soup" episode. Not to be confused with "The Soup Nazi" episode.

An excerpt reads thus:

Bania: I just got a brand new Armani suit -- doesn't fit me anymore. You want it?

Jerry: Well I don't know if I ...

Bania: Oh come on. Why should it just sit in the closet?

Elaine: An Armani suit?

George: Take the suit.

Jerry: Well ... ok, I guess (voice trailing off)

That voice trailing off is a spot-on, perfect example that the receiver of the gift KNOWS full well that he will be expected to reciprocate in some way. Which is the whole basis of the American "let's-agree-to-not-buy-each-other-presents" culture. We don't know what to do with reciprocity. Just fuck it up.

I'm the bane of the classroom. I'm the Johnny-come-lately. And the '90s don't matter there.

My (new) permanent file.

2009-09-04T17:48:00.001-05:00

Which I suppose at the very least indicates that I had an old permanent file. Which, of course, calls into question what it is that I mean by the word "permanent" since I am obviously not totally serious about it. Having all these old and new permanent things. Like I don't even care about what the word means, or what the phrase represents.

It was originally a joke. My own joke, to myself. Based on something my dad said to be funny when he was my primary caregiver...you know, back when he was trying to drag me back to the sixties with him.

"You better watch out. They'll put that in your permanent file!"

And now that I've started thinking about the title of this b-log, I can't help but point to all the creepy appropriateness. I had a blog, once. I erased it. I've been destroying notes and letters and photographs in the past year. And I do feel like I erased, burned, buried all my old permanent files, disguised myself in my dead mother's clothes and makeup, and slipped a creaseless and perfect new manilla folder with a new name that's still my name on it back into the big black cosmic file cabinet.

What is permanence, anyway? Something we hope for. Something we dread. A state just as fleeting as any other, only our perception of it warps it into what we really want it to be? Or does it exist? I mean, within a person's singular lifetime does permanence exist? Or does it erode so slowly over time that the person who claims permanence can fool most of the people most of the time, even himself?

Holy shit. I've just made my permanent file my goddamn diary.