Black Tuesday

Will this day live in infamy?

The other side of the desk

Four weeks into my community college teaching gig, I felt like a professor today. It wasn't so much the standing before the class and lecturing with authority, (though I'm getting better at that part; I only forgot what I was talking about twice today,) and it wasn't imparting my wisdom and experience to the students one-on-one.

No, what made me feel like a member of this most honorable profession was looking out over the sea (small pond, in fact) of blank stares when I asked my students about the assignment they were supposed to have completed for today. Of the half who actually showed up for class, only half of those had actually done the work, and one girl tried to make me feel guilty after class for not having at the ready an extra credit option for her to make up the points she had lost by neglecting to do the assignment two weeks in a row.

After reminding myself not to take any of this too personally, I was more amused than anything by their failure to do the least of what I ask of them. What kills me, though, is that the ones with the most talent are the ones with the most excuses, and those who are actually making an effort - the ones I'd like to reward - don't seem to grasp the basic concepts.

I can just see all my old teachers laughing and nodding at the thought that I'm seeing this whole dance from their perspective. I guess I'm finally finishing my education.

Thanks, Grandma

Taking care of a kid all day is a lot more exhausting than spending a day on the slopes. This is the thought I had while riding a chairlift up Mt. Hood on Monday. It was about 3:30 - The Boy would be napping - and I was ready for my umpteenth run. The snow was fresh. The sky was blue. I would be sore as hell in the morning, but right then and there I felt gooood.

AR and I had spent the morning snowboarding - or trying to snowboard if you want to be picky about it. We had our beginner's lesson and then spent an hour or so trying to make it down the 50-foot bunny slope without falling. By 2 o'clock I felt like I was getting the hang of it. AR had already headed back to the lodge for a nap, but I was ready to trade my board in for some skis. I wanted to see the rest of the mountain - preferably at high speed.

It had been at least a decade since I'd been skiing, and my body was fairly beat up from the novice boarding, but I slipped right back into the old rhythm as if I'd last hit the slopes the day before. What a delight to fly down the mountain with no fear of falling! The conditions could not have been better; there was plenty of snow and no one on the lift lines. The few people I did run into were pretty mellow, in typical Pacific Northwest fashion. In fact, Mt. Hood itself is pretty mellow: nothing terribly steep and almost no moguls. Did I mention the blue skies? It had to be at least 50 degrees and so clear I could see all the way to Mt. Jefferson and the Three Sisters.

Sure, we missed The Boy, who was at home with Grandma and the Once and Future Stepfather. I can't remember exactly when, but I do recall his name coming up at some point. Perhaps it was over cocoa, as we sat with our backs to the fire in historic Timberline Lodge, (where they shot the exteriors of The Shining,) looking out the picture windows onto a mountain vista. Yeah, I'm I'm pretty sure we mentioned him while talking about how much he'd enjoy a day of skiing when he's old enough, and how much we enjoyed our day of skiing, maybe because he's not yet.

If you need us . . .

. . . we'll be on the mountain. Judybat and I are headed to Mount Hood for a semi-romantic (I'm not sure we remember what that means) and childless mini-vacation. We'll be gone a few days, so until we return I'll give you some topics to discuss: Can anything derail the Alito confirmation? Why do birds suddenly appear everytime Judybat is near? What are the odds I blow out my knee learning to snowboard? How much time will I actually spend outside in the cold when I could be inside reading my books and sitting by a fire?

If I were Bil Keane, I'd leave you some cutesy posts supposedly written by TheBoy. But since he can't actually write or read yet, they'd look like this snm,zxcnm,w[[]l;iooqwerqopwerssszzzzzzzzz. So I won't.

Rebuttal

The only good reason I can think of for paying for cable is Jon Stewart. Everything else that's worth watching we can get on DVD, but I do miss The Daily Show.

The thing you notice about television when you've been away from it for awhile is, basically, it sucks. Even the stuff that's supposed to be good is crap. I was in a hotel flipping channels a couple months ago and stopped on Everybody Loves Raymond - a show I liked in my pre-cable-free days - and I couldn't help noticing that, while the acting was great and there were some undeniably funny moments, you had to sit through a whole lot of predictable set-ups to get to the punchlines: Crap! A few weeks back, we rented the first season of Desperate Housewives, because we'd heard so many good things about it, and even grading it on a curve to allow for the camp-factor, it was still: CRAP!

The bar is very, very low, people.

(Meanwhile the shows that are worthwhile - Arrested Development and Firefly come to mind - get shuffled from one time slot to the next till they're cancelled.)

Here's the scary part: even though we knew each episode of DH could harbor it's own brand of badness, we kept going back to video store until we'd seen all 22-odd episodes. Why? Because even more than gambling or drinking or black tar crack, TV is and addiction. When we did have cable, I could watch it for hours, even if there was nothing on I wanted to watch, because there was always potential, and if I just flipped around the horn once more, by the time I determined that there was nothing but crap featured on all 200 channels, there might be something good on TBS. There never was, of course, but that's entirely beside the point.

So it's nice to have my life back, not to mention the brain space that was formerly occupied by probing questions like who was going to be The Next American Idol. The other thing I've noticed is that without TV and tabloids (I do most of my grocery shopping at Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, whose magazine racks are filled with Mother Jones and the Utne Reader,) I'm blissfully ignorant of what Julia Roberts is up to.

All that for the low low price of NO dollars? Sign me up!

The Great Cable Debate

Judybat recently had the brilliant idea of dumping our expensive, corporate-owned phone service for cheap and high-tech service through Earthlink and our DSL line. On the one hand, I was thrilled because this is yet another sign that Judybat is becoming more and more like me the longer we stay together. Example: I'm a gadget freak, and finally she is too. I'm grumpy and antisocial, and she's getting more so by the day. On the other hand, I was slightly terrified of the switch. Because . . change is hard.

This change has been especially hard. When it works, this thing is great. The phone sounds clear. Our long distance is $20 a month. We look cool and modern to our friends. But once or twice a day, the DSL connection just stops working. There's nothing obviously wrong. The green lights on the modem are still there. But when I pick up the phone, there's no dial tone, and when I go to Television Without Pity to catch up on all those TV shows I don't watch anymore, the Mac yells at me.

It's very sad. And incredibly, teeth-gnashingly frustrating, especially for my poor sainted spouse, the one dealing with customer service at Earthlink.

There is, of course, an obvious solution. We could get our phone service through a cable modem. But that would mean doing two things we're trying to avoid: Giving money to Comcast and getting cable.

It's not that I don't want cable. In fact, I would love it. I want to watch my Tar Heels and my Yankees and late-night soccer from countries where they talk funny. I want black and white movies. And adult cartoons and Jon Stewart. And Larry David and Jennifer Beals, although not, please, at the same time. I miss C-Span. Seriously. I miss it. I used to take such pleasure in programming my TV to skip past Fox News and Pax. And I know that somewhere out there in the ether, there's a cable channel showing "Northern Exposure." If I could find that, I might never leave the house again.

We can get a cable modem without cable TV. But really, we can't. The temptation would be too much. Plus, the cable conglomerates do a wonderfully nasty job of making sure that it's cheaper to get the complete package than just one service.

To her eternal credit, Judybat says I can have cable if I really want it. But we both know I can't. Because I like my job, and my income plays a vital role in keeping her in tofu and corduroy, and we both know what would happen if we had TV reception that was actually watchable: I would never leave the house.

In honor of MLK

I was watching a clip of Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech today on ifilm. I don't know how many times I've heard him speak these words, but they never get old for me, maybe because it's forty years later and I think his dream has yet to be fully realized. And seeing him deliver the speech in front of all those gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial that day - something I don't think I've done before - actually brought a tear to my eye. Then I noticed the advertisement that ran alongside ifilm's video viewer. It had three pictures of muscled men, shown from rib cage to mid-thigh, sporting man-thongs in leopard, zebra and fruit prints. That made me want to weep for real.

Rats!

And what was I doing during Anna's perfect Sunday? That part in the middle where "Judybat took The Boy out of the house" and AnnaRay won the trifecta of staying at home, reading the paper and watching football was the part where I got to attend a 3-year-old's birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese.

Call me crazy, but I was kind of looking forward to it, even though I was feeling grumpy from lack of sleep, having been the one to get up with The Boy and having spent the better part of the night being buffeted by the weirdest dreams EVER (must be a full moon.) The party was for one of The Boy's schoolmates, and I was looking forward to meeting some of the other kids in his class and their parents. Also, I was curious because I'd never been to Chuck E. Cheese before. Also, they serve pizza.

Everything I'd heard about the place made me fear the worst, but it wasn't that bad. Sure it was overstimulation central and every bit of food and drink, including the pizza crust, was laced with sugar. But it was clean and well organized and there were lots of fun games and rides for the little ones. It wasn't even that cheesy. There was only one animatronic rat, slowly pivoting back and forth while it blinked and waved from its pedastal in a shadowy corner, and the dude(tte) in the Chuck E. Cheese suit was fairy low key, moseying about the place and stopping only when called upon to give a hug or a pat or a wave.

Still, I must ask: Why would anybody have a birthday party for a 3-year-old there? Sure, I got to eat pizza, but there was no interaction with any of the other parents or kids. Even the Happy Birthday song was sung from a stage by four or five bored-looking teenage Cheese employees who gave shoutouts to the half-dozen or so birthday boys and girls, who may or may not have heard their names. The Boy was incabable of doing anything more than stare in mute wonder for the first hour, and just as he began to wake up from his wide-eyed trance (could it have been the cake kicking in?) it was time to go, so it was kind of a drag to get him in and a drag to get him out. Literally.

Of course, They Boy's birthday is coming up in a couple of months, and I don't have any bright ideas about what to do for him. We were able to let it slide the first two years, but he's onto us now. He knows he's entitled to ballons and presents and cake. In fact, sometimes he just starts singing "Happy Birthday To You" in hopes that cake will follow. The pressure is definately on.

My semi-perfect day . . .

Began at 7:45, when a tiny little monster crawled into our bed. Usually, he gets right in my face and demands that I wake up. Today, however, he nestled in next to Judybat, which meant that when he was ready to get up, she was the one who had to go with him. Heh, heh. (What I meant to say: "Thanks, dear!")

Once I did emerge, TheBoy and I gave his other mother a break and went out for breakfast. It's always a risk taking him out in public these days, because our liege tends to lose it when he doesn't get his way. But this morning, he was delightful. Chatty, hungry and well-behaved, even when our server forgot his milk. (Fodder for a future post: Portland: The city of outstanding food and universally horrid service.)

Things got even better post-breakfast, when Judybat took TheBoy out of the house, and I got to stay home, read the paper and, at the same time, watch football. Yes, I multitasked like an expert. When they got home, I read TheBoy the requisite three stories, put him down for a nap and then went . . . back upstairs to read more of the paper and watch more football. (The Colts deserved to lose. Their defense choked. Again and again.)

When the kid got up from his nap -- early, which means we get to put him down to bed early -- he toddled up to the TV room and curled up on my chest to watch the end of the game. (Go Panthers. Now that I'm out of North Carolina, I'm suddenly a fan.) That's pretty much how Judybat found us when she returned from another errand, at which point we walked the nine blocks to the neighborhood Mexican place.

If I can watch a little "Firefly" tonight and manage to convince JB to hit the sack by 10, I will have damned near achieved perfection. Because, as you can tell, it doesn't take much.

Banshee Boy

I was going to write about my second day of school, (which went well, thank you very much,) but this morning The Boy threw a tantrum of such epic proportions that it really merits it's own post.

The issue was getting dressed to go to school. We were for it; he was against. It wasn't really the clothes or even the going to school part so much as the getting out of bed to do these things that he had a problem with. "Want to sleep a little bit more," he wailed over and over in that ragged voice of toddler desperation, while AR and I wrestled with his flailing limbs in our own desperate attempt to get him out of his pajamas and into a clean pair of underwear.

The scene was all the more gut-wrenching because, in fact, AR and I wanted to sleep a little bit more too, and how many mornings have we been woken by him and tried to explain (to no avail) that the best thing for everybody would be for us all to go back to bed? (Answer: all of them.)

But there was no reasoning with him and no calming him down either. I think AR bore the worst of it, having to listen to him scream, "go away, Mommy! I don't like you!" and plaintively cry "want Ima," while he reached for me from her arms. She said she felt like the worst mother ever, but she held her ground better than I was able to, and she was the one who managed to get him into the car. Once there, he quickly returned to his relatively reasonable self and the ride to school was subdued, though it took me a while to get over the feeling that someone had taken an egg beater to my internal organs.

Ah, the joys of parenting.

Living large in the PDX

It never fails: Just when I'm thinking about how nice it will be to move back to the East Coast someday, we have visitors from out of town and I fall in love with Portland all over again.

It's the little things: Having a dozen fantastic brunch spots from which to choose. Being able to hop in the car, drive 90 minutes and arrive in a winter wonderland on Mount Hood (along the requisite stop in Sandy for doughnuts, my new favorite tradition). Losing myself, and quite a bit of cash, in the stacks at Powells. Taking a rainy stroll through the zoo, and encountering old friends along the way. Like this guy . . .















Life is just so freaking easy here. Sure, I nearly got blown off the Broadway Bridge this morning as I pedaled to work in a gale, but I'm a better person for it. And yes, I desperately miss my friends back where people are rude and primetime games start after dark. But that's what airplanes are for, right?

Anyway, those of you who haven't come to visit should. Do it soon, before the winter ends and we're forced to endure a summer filled with nothing but sunshine, beers in the backyard and 90-minute trips to the beach. It's a very hard life here in the wild Pacific Northwest.


(An aside: Our distant cousin up there looks happy, but in reality, he and his two roommates all seem severely depressed. They need a therapist and a Xanax prescription, stat!)

Anxious, me??

There's nothing like a little family drama to distract you from what's really bothering you. I thought it was anxiety about my in-laws visiting over the the holidays that had my panties in a bunch since the first week of December, but when everyone had gone home and I was still a bit of a basket case, I had to face the real reason for my sleepless nights: my first day of school.

On Friday, I started teaching an entry-level photography class in the fine art department of a local community college. It took me weeks and weeks to write my syllabus - having never taught a class before, I had no idea how much material I'd be able to cover each week or how to weight the different assignments. I thought I'd be o.k. once I'd gotten it done and had this road map for the semester, (after all, it's not like it's the road map to peace in the Middle East,) but I was still bouncing around like a pinball up until Thursday night, maybe because of what a teacher friend had told me earlier in the week. I think he was trying to reassure me when he said "in order to be a good teacher, you have to be a bad teacher first," but I didn't think it bode well for my students.

I think I did o.k., in spite of the fact that I couldn't get the slide projector to work and realized, as my nineteen students were shuffling into class, that I'd left my notes at home. I spent the next hour and a half talking about f-stops and shutter speeds and some of the other technical basics. At least, I think that's what I talked about. It's all kind of fuzzy, and the only thing I remember clearly is the feeling that I was forgetting to tell them something really important.

After class, one of the other teachers in the department made me feel a lot better about the whole thing. She pointed out that you can't cover everything in a 10-week class, and the students don't know what it is they're supposed to be learning. So as long as you're committed to helping them improve, and your expectations of them are clear and consistent, then it doesn't matter if you leave things out along the way.

It's a lot like parenting, I thought. I feel like I'm winging this parenting thing all the time, and The Boy doesn't seem to notice or be ill-affected by our many mommy mistakes. Sure a shrink may point out to him once he's an adult all the ways we screwed up, but I figure when it comes to my students, I'll be long gone before they ever need therapy.

Insert your own punchline

I'm not one of them high-paid, high-falutin' political consultants, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, but is it really a great idea for George Bush, Condi Rice, Rummy and the Veep to be seen hanging out with Robert McNamara these days?

Just wondering.

The mouths of babes

Funny, 2005 is just a big blur to me. But then again, most of the last 36 years has been a big blur to me. In fact, I would have said 35 years, but AR just reminded me that I am at least year older than that. Then she said, "Ha ha ha - you're closer to 50 than you are to 20 - hee hee hee."

But that was not the most annoying thing said to me today. The Boy has been profoundly annoying of late, making it clear why they make the little ones cute.

The Boy: Mommy, I want apple juice.

JudyBat: If you want something from Mommy, you have to say 'please.'

TheBoy: Why Ima?

JudyBat: Because Mommy is not your servant.

TheBoy: No, Mommy not my servant. Ima my servant.

AnnaRay: Hee hee hee.

I think I will start my new year tomorrow.

Pardon me while I reflect

Some years, it's easy:

2001 -- That's the year I got hitched. Oh, and the year the world changed.

2003 -- TheBoy was born. Say no more.

2004 -- We moved. End of story.

1993 -- My Tar Heels won the national championship. And I turned 21. A twofer!

But 2005? Jeez, where to start.

We settled into Portland. We fell in love with the place. I did OK at my new job. I started riding my bike. Every day. Even when it hit 30 degrees outside. And started raining. (To be listed under that: I grew up.) TheBoy turned 2, with all the wonders (full sentences!) and pains ("Why? Why? Whhhyyyy???) that come with that. My family . . . er, well, let's just avoid that topic for the moment. We put in a new bathroom. OK, Judybat put in a new bathroom, with help from our contractor. I read some books. OK, a lot of books. We watched some TV shows on DVD. OK, a lot of TV shows on DVD. I gained five pounds around the middle that I can certainly stand to lose. I lost five pounds of hair, and it seems I could certainly have stood to lose that too. My Yankees sucked, but not as much as they could have. My Tar Heels did not suck, and my throat is still a little raw from the shouting. I did not get pregnant. And I did not freak out about it. (Did I mention I'm infertile? That's what I've decided.) I became bionic, at least in the hearing department.

Thus, my confusion. A belated happy, happy, happy new year to you all. Well, almost all of you.