An Open Letter to Future House

Dear Future House,

Please don't have burst pipes.  That seems to be the only thing potentially wrong with you, besides the amazing amount of bird poo on the floor and the fact that you lack all appliances ever.  We can work with those.  We've geared ourselves up for a huge weekend of cleaning and many thousands of dollars' worth of renovations.  We cannot, however, gear up for replacing burst pipes.  Or faulty AC.  Your natural gas, electric capacity, roof, outlets, and heat all seem to have gotten Rar's blessing, which is hard to come by, if you're a house.  But please don't have burst pipes.

We're pretty much ready to buy you, Future House.  The loan will more than likely work out, even though it's a different type of loan than my credit union could offer and got slowed down by an incompetent affiliate of our realtor but now seems to be in the hands of the right woman who supposedly will call us back later today or tomorrow morning.  But it seems promising!  Pending two inspections totaling $1100 (from two different inspectors, both of whom will inspect you with Rar and me present, but not Justin, because someone decided to go on a vacation business conference), we are so Moving Forward with you.

Future House, we love you.  You have an enormous lot, front but especially back, with tons of space for gardens and ponds of all kinds.  You are dog-ready.  Your rooms are big and, with our hookup, will be totally swank in a reasonable amount of time.  Your finished basement is a pretty awesome bonus.  We're going to get you new doors, windows, a fridge, an oven -- the works!  We'll even repaint you.  You're going to be worth double what we're paying for you now!  Wouldn't you like that, Future House?  You will love us!  We are very nice, and we will not trash you.  We will bring friends over to admire you!  You will be free of crummy housemates; just us.  And we're great.  We'll fill you with real furniture!  And not overwhelm you with crap!  We have a very simplistic but classy style.  We promise.

I promise you all this and more.  We're just a few steps away.  We'll even inspect you for termites before we move in.

Just please, don't have burst pipes.

Love,
pam.

All I'm going to do this week

is eat soft boiled eggs and spinach salads, work out and do seminar homework and laundry.  And teach some children, and try not to think about #15 with the bird on it.  (The email answer is clearly from a TNTP or TFA poster child or someone from upper middle class suburbia.  Here in lower class urbania, the children are not BEGGING for SOMEONE, ANYONE to teach them SOMETHING, ANYTHING like I was promised.)

Now that MSA Reading is over, I think I should teach grammar for 45 minutes a day, every day, to my classes of 4th and 5th graders.  Who's with me!

Also.  Charming, quiet, classy, convenient, affordable neighborhood: Please materialize.

Who let me sign up for this.

Ok.  So there's a lot of really wonderful things about teaching.  I just promoted my Bus Patrols to new shiny badges that graduated from silver "School Safety" to gold "School Safety," or, for those who really had it together this semester, "Sergeant" or "Lieutenant."  They were so happy!  Grades 2-3 had their Honor Roll Awards assembly on Friday, and as these children whom I don't even know were called up for their Principal's Award (straight As!), I choked back many tears.  (More on that later, after my own babies get their recognition on Monday.)  I'm about to exit someone from special education services.  More kids than I thought scored "Proficient" recently.  The happiest professions are the most social ones -- how social is teaching!  Very!  So, the happiest, right?  Maybe.  Maybe it'll be even more so the happiest if or when I try my hand at high school English.  Or Psych, or something cute like that.  In a better district.

But in the meantime, I've been missing planning that thar wedding, and control over lots of aspects that turn out beautifully, and that whole 'special projects' drive in me, and, well, universally understood high expectations.  So, I thought, let me try my hand at event planning!  I shall be the greatest event planner that ever lived!  Justin watches me go through a fairly ridiculous cycle of career crisis --> fervent researching --> overwhelmed resignation every so often.  He offers helpful hints or suggestions, kindly attempting to steer me and my crisis in a positive but practical way.  With his empowerment, I spent a night or two on idealist.org, looking up non-profit event planning positions.  Well, they were there, but I would clearly have zero reasonable experience (a fancy party for 40 is not that reasonable, I reminded myself).  But wait!  I ingeniously thought.  I am part of a non-profit!  Surely they hold events! 

And do they ever hold events.  The Rescue Me Gala is WARL's biggest thing all year.  I emailed the one administrative person who might recognize me.  She happily sent me on to the Events Person.  Uh-oh, this shiz is getting real.  Events Person asked if I'd find silent auction prizes, as those are the easiest.  Sure!  And would I help with a different, smaller, but also awesome event, Pasta for Pets?  Also sure!, I flightily agreed.  And my flightiness has stayed its course.  It took all my courage and, like, writing skills to email three people I vaguely know who might vaguely like animals and/or be interested in donating tangible or nontangible items to this silent auction.  What's next, cold-calling companies?  ("Hey, um, you don't know me, but there are these dogs in this shelter...")  I have no connections!  I can't ask people for things!  What in heaven's name made me do this!  Now I'm floundering alone, hoping no one's really relying on me for much of anything.  Ugh.  Someone remind me to stick to things that I'm actually qualified for, not just things I wish I were qualified for.

I am offended by other people who are trying not to be offensive

Guys.  If you know me, which I think both of you do, you know that I'm not easily offended by things.  Or at least I like to think I'm not.  But a trendy example that really gets my goat, and not because anyone else ever implied that I should be offended by this, is the new fad of plus-size women's clothing stores having the subtitle "Woman."  Jones New York Woman.  Talbots Woman.  Other Well-Known Store Woman.  This gets at two principles that are really pretty ridiculous -- the first, much smaller and more specific, that because I don't shop at a plus-size store, I am not a "Woman."  That Women have curves, and if you don't have curves, well, you're not Woman.

The other really ridiculous point gets to the overwhelming amount of tiptoeing we do as a culture these days.  Apparently, somewhere along the line, "plus size" became offensive, so now we call it "Woman," because that's flattering.  I live and breathe this phenomenon at an elementary school with 20% of its grade 3-6 students in special education.  Children aren't "bad" at something, they don't even have "weaknesses," they have "challenges."  Really -- we can't even say at a staff meeting among colleagues that children are bad at certain things anymore, or even that such and such a topic is a weakness?  In my enormous binder for my last certification class, there are sections of strategies to use in the classroom, assuming we have zero curricula.  One of them encourages the teacher to "have the skilled reader model effective reading strategies for phrasing and fluency for the learner.  The learner then echoes the skilled reader."  So, now slower, lower-performing students are called "learners."  Oh, I thought everyone was a learner, IT'S A SCHOOL.  It's the same principle as these new no-one-loses t-ball teams.  Everyone gets a trophy, no one keeps score, snacks and juice for all!  Can you even imagine what would happen if we told children that they LOST?  All this dancing around people's feelings to keep their worse qualities on the DL is making me sick.  When can we as a society go back to calling a spade a spade?  I hear that other countries are way less insane about not offending people.  That makes so much more sense to me.

A spinoff of that is using diseases or disabilites as adjectives.  For instance, it's politically incorrect to say, "he's autistic;" it's politically correct to say, "he is a child who has a diagnosis of autism."  (And don't even get me started on "nondisabled.")  The idea is, people with disabilities are people first.  But, like affirmative action, we're actually calling more attention to the condition when we pay it so much homage.  It's understood as a bad thing.  We don't say things like, I am a person who has brown hair; we say, I'm a brunette.  But that's neutral.  We don't say, she is a child who is gifted and talented; we say, she's gifted (and talented).  But again, that's positive.  My point is, in my ideal society where we call a spade a spade, we cut the crap and just come out with it, and moreover, it's not offensive.  Autism is only recently understood, I know.  We have understood blindness and deafness, however, for centuries.  No one insisted we say, he is a person who is blind.  He's blind!  The Deaf are the most prominent example of my ideal citizens in my ideal society.  They are so proud!  They have their own culture!  They capitalized their 'disability,' for goodness' sake!  We should all take a cue.

2010, 2011

Accomplishments of Varying Import and Gravitas

1. Survived Snowpacolypse '10.
2. Integrated into a new and crazy elementary school.
3. Um, planned a wedding.  A phenomenal one, if I do say so myself.
   
4. Finished my first year of teaching!
   
5. Got married to the love of my life; celebrated with many of those nearest and dearest to us.
   
6. Rode horses!
7. Climbed the Billy Goat Trail!
8. Had my name thoroughly misunderstood the same way by several completely independent people (get this -- "Tambal").
9. SAN FRANCISCO.
10. Sent our first batch of homemade, married couple Christmas cards!
11. Hugged, a lot.
    

Resolutions.  Goals, more like.  You know the drill.

1. Greenhouse.  Duh.  (UPDATE:  Talked to Frank at Janco Greenhouses today!  He is very nice and wants me to send pictures to avoid the estimate fee!  That is the first thing I will do when I set foot back at school!  I am MORE EXCITED THAN I CAN SAY)
2. Moisturize.  I hear that's kind of a big deal.  Especially in winter.  Justin doesn't understand why I just spent $9 (with a coupon!) on a bottle of moisturizer with SPF 15 -- and it's not even the face-only kind that I probably should have gotten! -- but he'll be fine.
   
3. Dude.  (Try to) buy more organic.  Or at least, grass-fed/reasonable conditions type of food.  I always made fun of those hoity-toity types but we just watched Food Inc. and it was pretty ridiculous.  Something simple but profound that they said (at the end, which attempted to be uplifting) was that every time an item is scanned at the grocery store, it's a vote to keep that item on the shelves.  Hm.  Yes.  Yes it is.  I remain blown away by this silly fact.  There was this whole thing about corn being subsidized by the government, and some form of corn is in 2/3 of all items ever, and that's why junk food is so cheap and healthy food is so expensive and it was super dumb.  What a dumb idea.  Also it turns out everyone in the FDA used to work for the very corporations they're supposed to regulate.  Again, crazy dumb.  They are so dumb, they are really dumb, for real.  Sigh.  Anyway!  All that to say, not to be a health freak, but try to buy more organic.  Also, warn Mint that we're about to buy more organic.  Oops.

2011: Bring it.

Like House, I have created a position which I fit perfectly

Now I just need the public school system to fund it.

You guys, is this me or is this me: Elementary Special Projects Manager.  Picture it!  I'll oversee greenhouse repairs, be sponsor of bus patrol, manage the school store.  Right now, for those of you keeping track at home, only one of those things is happening.  The one I'm in charge of.  Greenhouse repair seems to have mysteriously fallen to our counselor, no further comment on my opinion about any aspect of that.

I could literally sit here and spend my days thinking of Special Projects I would Manage as Elementary Special Projects Manager.  SIGH.