Salesguy to table: Anyone else have a high-definition tv?
Cop, husband of overprocessed salesgirl: Haha!, no, my wife is high definition enough for me!
Overprocessed salesgirl to cop husband, quietly: No, honey, I’m high maintenance, not high definition.
Me: [quietly kicking Dave under the table.]
Non-physiological sign:
Yesterday was the first day that we dared have a post-GOF conversation regarding both names and physical features we hope the As Yet Unconceived Hypothetical Kid should have.
Dave: What about ‘Anders’ for a boy?
Gretchen: It’s not…. BAD….
Dave: But not ANDY, it would have to stay Anders.
Gretchen: Yeah, not Andy, because then that would make Andy [my oldest friend] "Big Andy." And he wouldn’t like that, because it would make him sound fat.
Dave: Or, "old Andy."
Gretchen: Or, "Big, Old, Gay Andy." Yeah, no Andy.
Also, we’ve determined that AYUHK should have Dave’s 20/20 vision, metabolism, and lack of allergies, and my smartness and sense of hearing. Of course, any AYUHK will be 100 percent geek. That’s just a given.
And no, no consensus on names yet. He likes girl names that begin with or end with "A," and I think those are too cutesy. I like strong girl names that end in a consonant, but I’ll compromise with a nickname that ends in A. Boy names, gah, he would prefer "anything with an umlaut," thanks to years of listening to Scandinavian metal and reading the liner notes, and the German surname that our kids will have. Any name that I like seems to be rising on the popularity curve, and that sort of bugs me, or, it doesn’t sound good with the surname.
Oh well. Who knows when we’ll even need this information, anyway.
I love that my address has LAUGH at the heart of it.
Last night was the Civil Rights Team sponsored dance at school. CRT is a great group of kids, there’s a lot of crossover between NJHS and CRT (and I run NJHS), and they wanted to have a dance before Winter Break. The CRT advisor was going to be gone, so the assistant advisor — the school guidance counselor — volunteered to be in charge. But, oh, how she wasn’t in charge. Only because I love my kids did I venture into the madness. Here are some of the highlights of this dance:
So. That was my night. On a completely different note, because I couldn’t go home, Dave was spared the attendance of the dance. Kaitlin and Alicia were disappointed, but I danced with them to a Shaggy song and impressed them by knowing the words. Of course, I hate the song is why I know the words (the Angel of the Morning remixy type song thing, with the grating lyric "Closer to my ‘peeps you are to me" which never fails to make me think first of the marshmallow treats) but they were all "Mrs S! You’re so funny!"
And, I love my kids, and they love me. Well, I’m pretty sure of it. When I sat down at a table, kids would sit next to me. At one point, the table filled up with kids. When something happened (a cut lip, the soda explosion, S & A dancing together "OMG, Mrs. S, LOOK!" kids came sought me out. When one of my kids looked upset, I asked him what was wrong. "People keep pulling my spikes, and it’s really pissing me off!" His friend, also one of my kids, said "Jeez, B, you don’t SWEAR to a TEACHER! Nice ‘word choice!’" (I have them both for LA.) I looked at B and said "Yes, that certainly is Striking Language. And I COULD give you a detention, but I won’t, because it would make me mad, too." [B is a self-proclaimed anarchist/goth/atheist or maybe satanist,
whichever creates the most drama in a given situation, but really, he
is one of the sweetest, gentlest kids in my class, and while he loves
to spike his hair and wear black, he was the first one to find paper
towels and start cleaning up the soda mess. Awesome kid.]
So, yeah. The CRT kids were thanking me for helping them out (they knew she had no clue from the day they started planning the dance) and the custodians were thanking me for commiserating with them and being appreciative of their help.
All in all, it wasn’t a BAD day. But I couldn’t help but be thrilled when the GC said "Boy, I’m never doing this again!"
Babyish stuff behind the cut.
[and on the inside — as always, names are changed, and SIC]
*DAVE*
Please come to the dance because we are all eager to meet you and Mrs. S******* will be lonley because she will have no one to dance with except me and Kaitlin.
Please, Please, Please come to the dance, because Mrs. S******* said you have never been to a dance and we want our dance to be your first. If you dont we will be very dissapointed!
(heart) Alicia & Kaitlin
Seriously. My kids rock. Of course, my shy, but loving and thoughtful, husband is freaking out, because he would rather NOT chaperone a dance for middle schoolers, but he doesn’t want to let them down because they took the time to write him a personal NOTE and fold it all football style and made me PROMISE to give it to him without reading it first.
I think we might arrange a compromise of "he drops me off and picks me up and comes inside for the last 15 minutes or so of the shindig" and my kids "get to meet Mrs. S’ husband."
On a similar note, it was 4 years ago today that I met my husband in the brass monkey aisle of Marden’s.
Life is good.
My name, as you may have guessed is Gretchen. It wasn’t going to be Gretchen, it was going to be Erica (or Daniel, if I’d been a boy). My mother was overdue, and they induced her but it wouldn’t take. In the hospital, the nurses discouraged her from naming me Erica, because of "that bitch" Erica Kane on All My Children. When I was born, ten days late, my parents looked at me and decided that I wasn’t an Erica after all — I was Gretchen.
The other Gretchen they knew? My great-aunt’s dachsund. I understand she was a lovely dog.
So, I was Gretchen. It’s kind of hard to imagine calling a baby "Gretchen," but it aligns with my own belief about names, in that an Adult Name will only sound weird for a short time, while a Cutesy Name might sound weird for all of adulthood. And, I was named after a dog. A HOT DOG. (My sister was named after my parents beloved Black Lab that died just two weeks after I was born. I am so not kidding.)
When I was a kid, I only noticed that I had an uncommon name when I checked the racks of personalized pens, barrettes, bicycle license plates, stickers, calculators, and other stuff that every Jennifer and Melissa in my classes had. When I did find something that said "Gretchen," I hoarded it. (Even now, I have a set of "Gretchen" stickers in a filing cabinet upstairs, from when I was about nine years old. I know.) My mom ordered peronalized stuff from Lillian Vernon, and my dad made a sign for my room out of driftwood and washed up rope from the sea, using finishing nails to spell out "Gretchen" in cursive. Even today, I have to check those racks. It used to jump from "Gina" to "Heather," but apparently the name Gina has lost momentum, because it’s not there anymore either. There are very few G names for girls.
I didn’t have many nicknames, as Gretchen is a diminutive, anyway, it’s hard to make it any ‘cuter.’ It did rhyme with "Wretched" and "Retchin’," and as I got older, some kids thought it was in close proximity to "Bitchin’," which could be good or bad. More dangerous for taunts was the fact that I was wearing glasses by second grade, and FourEyes was my Achilles heel. Or eye, as it was.
I love my name. Maybe more than I should. I kept my maiden name for many reasons, but one was that it just goes so well with Gretchen. My full name, which is German, sounds strong and independent. If I ever get that book written, it is a great name. Gretchen Gordon (my married name, had I chosen it)? Sure, it has some alliteration going on, but ew. Not like my maiden name.
I love having a different name. I never, ever, needed my last initial as an identifier. I can tell you who the other four Gretchens were in my county while I was in high school. We all figured out who the others were, because when we went to games and would be responding to someone calling "Gretchen!" only to find it wasn’t US, but another Gretchen. When I meet a Gretchen now, we always, without fail, have a conversation about our name. There’s one at our bank, and there was a four year old when I subbed at the daycare. (I was "Tall Gretchen" there, and it is the only time, ever, that Tall will be used as a descriptor for me.) One of my classmates in the online course I just took had a daughter named Gretchen. It’s a damn fine name, as those of us who have it can attest. I’ve never met a Gretchen that hasn’t loved her name. I am part of the International Sisterhood of Gretchen. It’s a great club.
And, I owe it all to a weiner dog from the sixties. Not bad if I do say so myself.
(PS, thanks for checking in — I knew some of you were here, but I was surprised to see some non-Digsters! Hi, and thanks for reading and stuff. :D)
Just out of curiosity, who are you?
Comment, and let me know. (You don’t have to be specific, of course. And I’m not a stalker, I SWEAR, even if I did just mail out canned bread to PJ.)
I’m just having one of those "Who reads this, anyway?" moments.
Thanks for humoring me.
It feels so good to have my class done. I have one lesson plan to modify, and a self evaluation, but whoop! I’m done. I am now 25% done with my master’s degree. Yeeehaaaww. (And, of course, part of my coursework ended up involving blogs. Heh.)
So, it’s month 6 of the babyquest. This is the month we step up to every-other-day GOF. I explained it at Digs, but I thought I’d mention it here, too. I know that there are only a few days in the month where one can get pregnant, but we’re doing the EOD method for a while. And I thought it would be stressful, being so scheduled, but in fact it feels much more freeing. Before, with the OPKs and such, maybe there was MORE stress put in on those Very Important GOF Days, and now, well, EOD will give it a sense of baseline importance, not so much "THIS is the day."
It’s hard to explain, Hrmph.
I’ve got most of my holiday shopping done, all that’s left is to do is get stocking stuffers for Dave, basically. My sister has shipped her package of gifts for all of us to my house, and I shipped hers today. I can’t remember when she was home for Christmas last — maybe ’01? — but I do miss her at this time of year. I’ve never been away for Christmas (when I lived in PHX, I flew back and surprised my mom on the 23rd) so I notice her absence. Of course, now we’re into new traditions, and I am so excited to be having Christmas in my very own house this year.
The last time we had Christmas NOT at my house was in 1985, because my mother’s mother was dying. We left on the 23rd and drove straight through to Western NY, and my Nana was in the hospital in Erie by that time. She had a little white plastic table top tree, maybe 12", with blue metal balls for ornaments, and my sister still believed in Santa, so my parents had to pull off Santa finding Nana’s house that had no fireplace and a plastic tree. We also spent Christmas in Texas with my other grandparents when I was 6, but other than that, every Christmas morning has been held at the lake, with the big brunch following.
This year, my parents will stay with us. They’ve said they’ll probably alternate Christmasses between here and Beaver Canyon (hee) from now on, because the brunch is too much work, and the people that used to come, don’t, and those that do aren’t close to us. I’m trying to think of some way to keep that tradition, but I don’t know of anyone that doesn’t have family to spend the day with. (The original brunch was because my parents were a young couple with no family around, and there were lots of other people in their situation, so it became a regular event for people far from ‘home.’)
Dave and I will go to Christmas Eve at his mother’s studio apartment (I cannot even IMAGINE how it will be with 2 babies and toddler there this year, eek) and my folks will stay here. The next morning we’ll open gifts, and then what? Just hang out, I guess. Make breakfast, I guess.
I feel like this is a weird stage of life for me. (Total segue, I know) I feel like I’m too old for my friends that are single and still going out on weekends, but I’m not grown up enough for people with families because I don’t have one yet. Because we don’t have a baby, we’re not in that club, but because we’re TRYING for one, we’re out of the young crowd. It’s such a weird gray area. At least I get to hang out in the middle with Dave.
I guess, because I was so sure when we started this process that I would be pregnant right now, I guess it makes me more aware that I’m NOT. I remember thinking last year, in Levant, that "a year from now, I’ll be pregnant" because it surely wouldn’t take THAT long. But it has. So, when I try to picture next year, I just CAN’T. Who knows what will happen in the next month, the next 6, the next 12?
It’s been a great 2004, don’t get me wrong. I just wonder about 2005. I’ll turn 30, and, and . . . then what?
This. Right Here. I got this link from a listserv I’m on for my grad class. I just spent 54 minutes listening to the program, and just . . . wow. If ever I felt vindicated in thinking about packing it in, teaching-wise, it was listening to that program.
The school that they talk about is one that we watched videos of in methods classes. They were held up, even in MAINE, as being the way things should be. But bureaucracy has gutted even that school.
So many of the things that that school did are what we do in my program. We are two teachers in a school, and to hear that not even an entire SCHOOl’s worth of teachers can fight the battle of doing what’s best for kids, and win, well, that’s so fucking depressing.
It was interesting to hear LaLuz in 1994 talking about how she ran her classroom, how she taught, how she believed kids could learn best. Ira Glass calls her the best teacher he’d ever seen. I don’t pretend to imagine I’m the best teacher in the world, but to find that I share the same values and philosophies of a teacher like LaLuz, even to the point of calling kids "darlin," was interesting. Imagine if I had the freedoms that La Luz did in 1994! Imagine the impact I could have, the teacher I could be! How much I could enjoy teaching! But I’m in my second year, not my 14th, and feeling like LaLuz.
I wish there were transcripts available, but there aren’t. To paraphrase, one of my favorite quotes was about teachers being "expected to be professional and make the best decisions, and then being considered workers just following orders." I feel like a worker following orders, and that’s not why I became a teacher. That’s the key, right there.
So, I feel so much more at ease with my discomfort over the direction my school — and most of education in general — is taking (dismantling my program, assessing students in opposition with the curriculum we’re to follow, making everything ‘uniform’ for ease of administration, not doing what has been PROVEN to be best for kids, etc, etc.)
It’s a long listen, but it’s a good one if you have the time. And, at the end, you’ll have a much better understanding of how I feel about my profession right now.
On the Done List: Grades/MidQuarters, my summer conference-for-grad-credit work, and almost all of my telecom classwork.
Left to do: Adapt one lesson plan, create a rubric for my webquest (and yes, the Uni did misspell my name when granting me server access, ahem), have my idea for writing a blogging software review approved and write it (easy peasy, that one), and do a self-eval. And then?
I bake cookies.
First, I sleep.
FRIDAY!