in progress

while sitting at the dining room table, each of us on our devices studying, erk starts to read aloud about social cognitive theory, and i think he is making fun of me in some way, because it sounds like he is reading from the same text that i am

but he isn't. we happen to be reading about the same thing at the same time

and suddenly i realize how sort of crazy it is that we are both in school at this point in our lives (with two kids and two dogs and one job between us) and crazier still that despite his studying dentistry and my studying human sexuality they are both in the field of health and how crazy that is - that i never saw that similarity/overlap.

i know one day we will look back on this time - when we spent our evenings studying instead of watching a show together or endeavoring independently into our own hobbies, or going out dancing(!) , and we will think: those times were hard - good, but hard

but you need some hard times to fully appreciate the easier ones, and i don't want to ever forget that.

stop, breathe, be

stop, breathe, be.

this was a little mantra that i learned in the mindfulness workshop i did in the fall. i have since forgotten all about mindfulness and have become particularly absent-minded and reactful (except that is a word i may have made up.... ) partially due to the hormone shifts in my body from pregnancy, but also because i have recently felt...overwhelmed (the work, the school the new dog?)

after having class all weekend (17 hrs of it) i was sort of looking forward to not having to work on monday. except that m woke up with a complicated mood and spent most of the morning crying and complaining and my patience wore thin. things improved as we approached the afternoon so i thought i would take the dogs for a walk as m enjoyed a nice post-lunch banana smoothie in her stroller. it was a lovely idea.

when we got home i thought i would be especially thorough and brush both dogs before releasing them back into the house since i had done a half-assed (but better than nothing!) cleaning of the floors earlier that morning.

i brushed buster and put him inside the house no problem, m decided to go in with him. then i brushed jett, and even though i noticed as we were walking back from the park that i mistakenly only attached her leash to her harness and not her collar, i forgot this small detail as i took off her harness on our front porch. she realized before i did that she was no longer tethered to anything. she took a couple quick steps away from me before turning around to look at me. panicked, but acting cool, calm and collect, i bent down and called her name as sweetly as i could before she turned and ran right into the street with her clumsy, energetic puppy run.

as she went down the middle of our street a truck turned onto our block. because of the stop sign at the corner the driver wasn't going fast and had plenty of time to see her run right in front of him before hopping onto the sidewalk to turn the corner. as i started to try and calculate whether i was going to somehow go after her and how that might happen without completely abandoning my two year old alone in the house (not to mention my inability to run at the moment anyway...), a woman with a stroller and a dog appeared on the corner.

jett quickly turned back before fully disappearing around the corner to say hello - she can never resist socializing with another dog. i called out a request to please grab the dog, that she was friendly, and the woman with the stroller and the other dog calmly grabbed jett's collar as i hobbled down the street toward them. as i did the truck driver rolled down his window as he passed me to let me know that i "should be more careful". thank you mr truck driver, what a helpful comment in this moment of frustration, panic and embarrassment.

for some reason i had dropped the harness and leash before going after jett so when i got to her, the only way to get her back to our house was to hunch over and grab her collar as i wobbled my 9-month pregnant butt back down our block. did i mention the pain my body is in as i am approaching due date time? none of this was helpful to my already crooked and throbbing right side.

when i got back to my house m and buster were standing behind the storm door having witnessed the whole pathetic scene
-did you catch her, mom?
-yes....sort of.
the good news is that when i finally closed the door behind me, i remembered one of the things i had learned about myself during my mindfulness workshop in the fall.
one of the ways i relieve stress in my life is to just cry, and i hadn't had a good cry in a while.
but today i did.
and i genuinely felt better afterward.

counting down

as i got off the phone this evening with my sister i said, "speak to you in another 12 hours" while it wasn't an agreed upon practice, we have been calling each other a lot this past week.

we are both getting so close to our respective due dates - hers only four days away and mine eleven - that it has made the anticipation of each baby that much more exciting but also that much more surreal.

i haven't had time to stop and think about the reality of adding another person to our family just days from now...between school and work, and our new dog.


oh did i mention that?

even though i have not consciously given this baby enough time, my body keeps trying to remind me with pangs of pain down my right side; the baby itself keeps reminding me with aggressive kicks and turns, "i'm coming! get ready!"

i am starting to hear you more now.
and whether i am ready or not (and chances are we won't be)
we'll make it work :)

crying, training and sleeping in that order

i have always been a disaster around tears. i fall apart completely when i see someone else cry. sympathy tears i guess

so imagine how me, cry baby mcgee, could possibly endure little m getting "sleep trained". first of all the name "sleep training" sounds so dumb.  is she getting ready for the sleeping olympics?
she knows how to sleep, she's just not great at starting sometimes...

i remember having the opinion that sleep training (and let me clarify: there are different forms of "sleep-training" and most of them involve letting your baby cry it out) was fine for other parents. i had nothing against this practice in general, it just wasn't for me. like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. i think they are gross, but i don't usually say that aloud because i don't want to yuck anyone's else's yum. if other people wanted to sleep train their babies and eat pb&js, that was fine by me, i just, personally, wasn't interested in either endeavor.

anyway,  half of our collective families believed sleep training was the way to go; had let their kids cry for hours for a couple of nights and then voila! the babies could go to bed solo with no tears. the other half of the family thought sleep-training was barbaric and awful. no matter how we managed we would be going against someone's preferred method...which is fine, except that everyone loves to share their opinion of what poor choices you are making as a new parent, whether or not you ask for their input.

part of the idea of sleep-training is that a baby learns to "sooth itself" rather than let you sooth them. again i remember thinking, "why does my baby need to sooth herself? she doesn't feed herself, she doesn't walk around by herself...she does NOTHING by herself and i am asking her to do something that quite frankly i wouldn't want to do either" (if given the option of having help when i'm upset or just crying myself to sleep, i would choose getting help with whatever is upsetting me, and i'm a sucker for mimitos...no good translation for this spanish word)

but all of these thoughts and feelings came before a couple of developments in little m's life and our relationship. #1 was riding in the car, #2 was me unsuccessfully "soothing" her to sleep for 3 hours one night.

when m was itty bitty she would just sleep in the car. we drove from philly to north carolina when she was six weeks old and for 7 hours she slept like a rock (there and back). she was a champ. but then as she got older, the car didn't magically put her to sleep. in fact, for a about a week it magically made her cry hysterically. it didn't matter if i stopped to feed her, tried to put her to sleep before getting into the car etc. for that week, she would scream for whatever duration we were in the car for. which made my hatred of driving everywhere even more wonderful...

as awful as having to listen to her cry and be completely unable to help her was, it also trained me to not freak out and fall apart. this of course was after one particularly bad car ride after a particularly long day when i finally yelled "no llores más, carajo!" (loosely translated to "stop fucking crying already!") which made me feel like an awful asshole mom. who screams at a little baby for crying? answer: lots of parents who are human. it forced me to learn to tolerate/block out the sounds of her cries; for the good of both of us...

the other educational moment? one night when i was trying to help little m go to bed for forever; rubbing her back, rocking the crib, picking her up, putting her down. there were moments of calm but it took three hours of crying off and on, and of course one moment of me yelling at a little baby to realize that maybe this wasn't the right method for us. this was clarified and reinforced when one night she stopped crying when i stopped helping her and left the room.

what i'm saying is, you might think you hate pb&j and then wake up one day to realize, maybe its not so bad, especially if you use a certain kind of jelly, or maybe almond butter in place of peanut butter. or just let your baby cry for ten minutes at a time instead of for hours cold turkey.

i've learned that part of doing the "right thing" is discovering there is no right thing, we all just do what we can/what works for us.  like everything else...it's a work-in-progress.

playing the game

what is the game?
assigning and giving out grades to my students

i never had grades until i got into highschool and college, and after that i never worked at a school that gave out grades

until now

and it's amazing how counterproductive it is for some of my students. they literally work ONLY for a grade - missing the whole step about learning...

and i don't remember how much i cared or didn't care when i was in school (about the actual learning part) i don't think i cared...and i turned out alright...

but man is it frustrating to be part of a system that you are trying to work against...

progress

 monday

 tuesday

wednesday

on top

i just read a post on someone else' blog about vacation - how it makes you feel better about life. this picture is from my last vacation; last week at yosemite. erk and i are laying on a rock that is at the top of the tallest waterfall in the country. the hike up was exhausting, but made the experience of laying up there that much more amazing. sort of like vacations in general - you can appreciate them more after working hard. it also helps give you a fresh perspective.

gone

i just spent the last hour working on the audio track for a silks piece i am making with a classmate (entitled: thelma and louise). my computer died (wasn't plugged in) and didn't save any of the changes i made. all the work i did: gone. pretty annoying. especially since sound editing is time consuming and i am not very good at it to begin with. luckily, my computer saved which windows i had open in firefox (because that's super useful). the image above was on one of the pages. i found it appropriate.

do it yourself

after months of looking at the tiles along the windowsill of my bathroom and being disgusted with the state they were in (mold, mildew(difference?), gaping holes between tiles) i decided to do a quick home improvement project. i bought some caulk and grout and tidied up. granted i didn't do a great job - it was a little half-assed; but it's soooo much better than it was before. thanks to my man for teaching me everything i know about tiles. i find myself noticing them everywhere i go now

monday monday

we all have feelings about the start of the workweek. whole songs have been written about this day; it's hard to go from weekend-mode into workweek-mode. this transition has become more difficult for me as of late. the weekend is currently the only time i can see the love of my life (that expression love of my life sounds a little ridiculous/over the top but it's also true/an accurate description).

as much as i now dislike mondays, more than anything else, i feel lucky.

my favorite conductor

i entered the station this morning and looked at my watch. a couple minutes before 7 seems to be the right time to catch my favorite subway at 96th street. if you want to read about what i'm talking about click here, or here.

i guess what i love about this conductor, apart from his humor and high spirits (at a time of day when most of us need both) is that he is a link to the real world, down in the subway one. The subway is always dark, the trains always running - but it is this conductor that reminds us when it is the week of thanksgiving, when it is cold outside and to bundle up (as he did today). he is also a voice of decency. today, as he does many other days, he reminded us to pick up after ourselves - to throw things in the trash and not on the ground. indeed, some of us seem to need a reminder - a voice of consciousness.

today was especially nice because i managed to get towards the middle of the train (one conductor rides in the front, one in the middle) and when i got off at 14th street i had enough time to ask this conductor what his name was and tell him how much he improved my morning commute on the days i was lucky enough to catch his subway. i think it's always good to let people know when you appreciate them.

thank you kevin.

vontrapp family spanish jackson four teachers

the american council on teaching of foreign languages held their annual conference in boston this past weekend. because i am, along with my mother, brother and sister, a spanish teacher, i arranged to attend the conference through the school in which i am employed. each of the other spanish teachers in the family did the same (despite all having the same profession we are employed through different institutions). we each made our own travel arrangements and arrived at different times, but were still able to spend a fair amount of time together at the conference. we even attended some of the same workshops together. during one particularly good one, the presenter referenced a group of students and made a quick calculation dividing the group into two even halves. the number he selected for these half groups did not equal 50% of his original starting group - however, it was clear that he was trying to illustrate a point about the different approaches of completing a particular task (done either all together, or in half groups) and the calculation of what those half groups were was completely irrelevant. despite this obvious fact, my sister and i turned to each other simultaneously, stupidly joked "what about the other 4 students?" it's funny how we speak and think alike, and sometimes at exactly the same moments.

we must be related.

we're doing monday, folks

i typically ride the 2/3 subway line downtown sometime between 6:40 a.m. and 7:00 a.m. to get to work. on my lucky days i catch a particular conductor whose spiel i have memorized for every stop. even so, his participation in my morning commute is like a breath of fresh air in a place where not a lot of fresh air is readily accessible.

at the 34th street stop he welcomes queens and long island to the train: "gooooooooood morning queens and long island! we're doing monday today folks. it's gonna be monday aaaaaaaall day" at 14th street he lists all the transfer possibilities and gives a detailed description of how to make each one; what end of the platform to go to, what train to take to which stop in order to connect with another train etc.

not only does he like to spread his love over the loud speaker, but as the train is pulling out of each station he sticks his head out of the subway window and wishes all the people on the subway platform a good day.

it's amazing how someone's positive energy has the potential to rub off on you. reminds me how huge little acts of kindness can be and how it inspires people (if only temporarily) to pay it forward.

just like my mother

it occurred to me as i was proudly dragging my butt up to the fourth floor of school for the 6th time in one day (instead of taking the elevator) that this silly pride in taking the stairs came from somewhere. and then i remembered my mother mentioning that she made a point of taking the stairs at her school where she also taught spanish- it was her main source of exercise in her almost senior status.

the same is true for me - except that i am not a senior.
but i am, like my mother, a spanish teacher...

it's funny how women talk about not wanting to grow up to be like their mother, and inevitably end up doing exactly that.

there are many ways in which we are different - but i think there are times that i am not only like her, but am somehow channeling her; especially in the classroom when i raise my voice to a student in a way that says both "i love you" and "shut the %*#@ up" simultaneously.

that's why it's called work

today i got to work before the sun had finished coming up.
and i left after it had gone down.
not the first time.
but certainly one of the longest stretches i've done.
no i don't have soooooo much work
nor am i suuuuuuuch a hard worker
i would say that i am extremely inefficient at times
i would even say i am EXTRAORDINARILY inefficient at times
but it's part of my wiring i guess - my brain prefers the scenic route

one of my favorite detours is snacking
after my colleague invited me into her candy drawer at my leisure i have had trouble not stopping in to say hello to the mini snickers, three musketeers and milky way bars several times a day.
i would say that i exhibit very little self-control
i would even say that the lack of self control that i have is somewhat extraordinary.

cookies and wisdom

bicycle, bicycle

i covered more ground today on my bike than i would have in a marathon. for those of you that don't know (most don't) a marathon in always 26.2 miles.

yes, it was exhausting, but it was also very empowering. especially in nyc - biking is the quickest way to get from one point to the other. i like that it's your body's force that propells the mechanism; i like that kind of effort that pays off immediately - if you pedal hard, then you'll move fast.

are you admiring the lovely picture above? i took it on my way to work. ten minutes faster than taking the subway there and a tad more enjoyable than sweating with the rats underground; waiting for whatever train is last to arrive at any given moment.

i didn't fully realize how much i missed having a bike. sometimes you don't know what you've got till it's gone, and sometimes you don't know what you haven't got until you borrow someone else's.