Signs That I Have Too Many Kids

The following things send me into a rage:

1. Pee on my toilet seat
2. Pee on my floor
3. Pee on blankets
4. The smell of moldy anything (that is about where I live btw)
5. Drying my hands on a towel and realizing that it isn't clean
6. Toys on the floor (except Meggers who is clearly innocent)
7. Crumbs
8. Unmade beds (especially my own that I happen to know I made in the morning)
9. Anything involving water
10. Spinning office chairs
11. Anything involving the TV or the computer screen
12. Crumbs
13. The phrase "STOP IT"
14. The phrase "I'm bored"
15. Changing diapers
16. Emails that say "are you available for a conference call?"
17. My daughter telling me that she doesn't want to go to play group after I have already driven all the way down there, the one enjoyable time of my week in which I am not expected to work, clean, cook, or be PC.
    

Shout out to those in that group who I haven't seen for more than four weeks thanks to my work and personal life.

Do I sound bitter? I'm not.

Visitors and Gardening

So my most favoritist Aunt Judy is visiting me from Sonora (where I grew up--by Yosemite in case anyone wants to know why I prefer living in beautiful places) along with my awesome Uncle Allan. I lived with them my freshman year of high school btw.

Anyway they come to town and suddenly my dishes are always done and who knows how they pull this off but they actually make dinner and brings it over. They hook up at the closest RV park and then get up early and make us crock pot spaghetti. Who does that kind of stuff? They totally have me inspired to be a more service-oriented individual.

My Aunt came when I was in my final weeks of pregnancy with Meg and got us all started on a great routine for school in case anyone remembers reading that jive.

What more could they possibly do for me? They helped me come up with some ideas and get me started on fixing up our backyard garden. We went to Home Depot and started to clean up the two feet of land behind our place and get it ready. I wanted to make sure and capture the before pics (well this is not really before because we weeded a few weeks ago to get rid of the worst of it) so here we are. The kids were all involved and Uncle grabbed a shovel and literally dug right in. You would never know this guy had a quadruple bypass three years ago. I tried to offer to help but he said that his physical therapy group might be asking him about his physical activity while we was gone so he said this would work.

Here are some pics of the fam hard at work. We will finish up tonight so you can see the results show.

This isn't a great pic, but it was the only one where I could capture the elusive Gillian. She kept flitting around pretending like she was hurt so I only have the pic of her and her silver flip flop. We had to make her change shoes because she dropped the spade and stepped on it and then cried that she was really hurt. Upon further investigation we found it to be dirt, not blood. Casey was really helpful even though he was crying ten minutes earlier of sheer boredom because his friends were out of town.



























Bridget was reliable and helpful most of the time. Here she is digging in with Meg watching on...



























Allan exercising his arm muscles:



























Oh another good before shot that captures the former layout. I can't wait to finish! I would do it this morning but have to work.



























Oh I know you can't wait to see my next post, don't hide it.

But truly, what it is about gardening that just makes you feel good about working the land? It must be our Irish ancestry. Bridget even said "the dirt just smells so good."

The International Birthday Party

Gillian received an invitation for a b-day party at the local park from a girl in her pre-school class. For those who don't know, she attends a class a few days a week at the university pre-school. Her peers typically include a few kids of grad students and then I guess children of professors or other staff at UCSB.

For some reason this party featured six families:

1) An Austrian family with the grandmother along who spoke limited English
2) An Italian family in which the daughter (in Gilly's class) spoke no English
3) A Japanese family (the host family) who had several family members in attendance who spoke limited or no English
4) A Spanish-speaking family (they left as I was arriving)
5) A lady when I asked her "so you guys are about finished here, right?" because I thought she was the partner of one of my neighbors who is getting ready to graduate, answered "and you are?" So I said "oh sorry, I am Gillian's mom" she was like "oh yeah, my older son is about ready to go to kinder". Whew. She was not the neighbor's partner but she WAS getting ready to finish. Close call.
6) Us

So you can see that the communication at this party was to-ugh. I could only handle about 25 minutes of it before I left, BUT I managed to get a few pics of this party. Let me just say that the hosts really, really tried to please the crowd. It was almost as if they had taken one thing from every American birthday celebration they had ever attended and put it on a self-serve table:





























1) Bag of chips.
2) Fried rice and noodles
3) Tortilla spirals—from Costco
4) Box of cookies
5) Apple Juice, White Grape, and Lemonade
6) Pizza. This one was kind of an enigma because they obviously bought pizza for kids but it was combination and Gilly took one look and was like nope. It was a good idea though.

They had ice cream too, and strawberries. They also brought out a couple of salads. The ice cream, btw, came out at the same time as the other food.





























They put some fun stuff around for the kids, like bubbles on the table:



























Other items of note:

• A tent
• A box of capri sun
• A box of fruit snacks

These items were just spread around the perimeter of the table.

No kids activities, just individual groups standing around. The only people communicating as far as I could tell were the men who I think are profs at the University.



























Here was the cutest kid at the party (imo)



























My walkaways:

1) How cool that my daughter goes to preschool with these international kids!
2) How cute that these people bought absolutely everything under the sun for their daughter's birthday party. They were the sweetest hosts and when I left I saw the father of the family walking down the stairs with more food and a couple of 12 packs of soda. He seemed disappointed I was leaving and I wish I knew what the etiquette was in Japan for staying at a party.
3) I need to come up with better small talk for people who speak limited English
4) If I am not 100% sure I know someone, assume I do not.

Good times.

Every once in awhile...

someone makes your day. Taught this kid for a semester in 2003. Got tagged this morning:

Favorite Foto Friday

Guess who got a haircut?



























Then she wanted to play beauty parlor with the neighbors:




























Isn't she cool?

Órale

Last time I post on race, sheesh. Anon.

So on to bigger and better issues: Food.

What are the most important tools in your kitchen? I cannot live without:

--Whisk
--Immersion Blender
--Offset Serrated or some other AWESOME one-stop shop knife NO multiple knives.
--Small cutting board (so I don't have to clean off my counter)
--Double Boiler
--Peeler

I am sure there are other things I use regularly but these are the items that I just can't live without.

Tribute to Mikel with a K, or How I Learned About Race

I grew up in a lily white town. I think it might have more people of color now but at the time it was totally red-neck. There were a handful of non-white kids in my high school:

Henry the black cowboy
Ayesha who had recently moved from the Bay Area
Ese whose family was from Tonga
Jesus the dishwasher

I went to BYU and I think I maybe met two people who were not white from the US (I met several people from Latin America, Africa and Asia but they were all international students).

I shared some of my LA experience which was predominately black and hispanic but there were such class differences that race didn't even enter the equation.

Fast Forward to Sactown.

First day of school I meet this sassy kid in my 9th grade Geography class. Within weeks he quickly rises to the top of my list as a management issue (constantly talking) as well as one of the brighter kids in my class. His favorite thing was to be the self-appointed "marshall" in which he would keep others on task

"Hey he went to the bathroom ten minutes ago--kid, where are you going?"

"Hey you--why you asking such dumb questions? She already said that."

"What? You said it was on page 15, it was page 16."

I hated to love this kid. Kind of like landeelu.

Anyway he was a total pain in my arse for a year and then halfway through his sophomore year (I had him for both his 9th and 10th grade humanities courses) he was suddenly one of my better students. He was clever, innovative, sharp, and had toned down (sort of) in the cop dept. Because he was a creative thinker he did better in our school model (I think) than he would have in a regulah boring drill and kill environment. I didn't have him his junior year other than the group described below, but he would stop by periodically and complain about a teacher, a project, or a social injustice.

What does this have to do with race? So Mikel was in my advisory, a little 30 minute "rap session" in which I had a group of about 20 kids each day. The point was supposed to be to make connections with kids and provide them with a place to talk about issues, speak out about school problems, etc. Build culture and all that.

For whatever reason I had more black students in my advisory than other teachers and my group really loved to talk about race. Mikel was selling newspaper subscriptions one year and shared with the group the way people treated him at the door sometimes--it was always done with a comedic edge and I was really surprised each time to hear what his potential customers would say or do at the door . He was funny and smart, good-looking and well-spoken. The fact that he had dark skin apparently really was an issue for him and for others around him.

Now, I am not naive. Before teaching, if I saw a group of 18-25 year old black men standing on the corner it would have scared me more than a group of white kids wearing the exact same thing. People who look different than us are initially scary to us. I can imagine to a black woman a group of 18-25 year old white men standing on the corner scares the snot out of her if she does not have experience with adolescent males. A lot of Americans would now be fearful of a crew of Arabs wearing backpacks on the corner.

Having said that, the one-on-one racial experiences my kids shared with me enlightened me about a lot of fear of skin color. I think Mikel's older brother was falsely accused of committing a crime and though I am not sure of the outcome, he certainly was not aided by his brown skin in a jury of his "peers."

Mikel once said something that has kind of hung around my brain for the last four years:

"Everyone wants to be black. That is the race that the most people want to be like. The best-looking race are the *Mexicans and whites are the most hated race."

He was always saying crap like that. But this one idea stuck around in my head forever. I am not saying he was correct-- but it makes me think anyway. We had conversations about cultural differences on an almost daily basis and that is the only thing I can really recall from memory. Perhaps the fact that as a nation, only 14% of our population is of African-American descent yet the majority of our discussions around race are black/white, we have a black president, and the majority of court cases around race involve black individuals is something to consider.

Regardless of the veracity of Mikel's statement or whatever other thing he said or did, I feel like I actually can contribute legitimately to conversations around race because of what I learned from him and his peers. I called him last year and asked him a question about race which undoubtedly sealed in his mind the utter incompetence of white teachers everywhere but I realized at that point that he had been my racial compass. When I had a question about something, trying to discern between my own personal prejudices or lack of experience, I could take it for granted that I had someone who I could trust and believe and who would answer honestly without wondering why I was posing these questions. I hope one day to find another compass with as true and comical of a north.

*I once asked if he meant Hispanic and he told me "there ain't anyone here but Mexicans."

PS Renters paid up today. Hallelujah for the prevention of eviction.

You Can't Live for Free.

So my renters are now about to be served up another "pay or quit" notice. This is something that is really bothering me.

I heard that when you have ghetto renters who don't pay you should offer them money to vacate because the process can be really painful if not. There is something called "unlawful detainer" that I have to file and that sounds like a headache and kind of meanie too.

I don't want to be responsible for sending a family with a child to live in the streets. In my heart I am not a good capitalist. Can someone give me a better reason than "because you can't live for free?" as to why I should bother to go through the eviction process?

In the Name of Food

So I went about six months sans refined flour, sugar, and chocolate. I had three days of that time that I went on hiatus.

Now I understand what people say about the fact that abstinence as a method really doesn't work.

I did lose some weight--down about 10 lousy unnoticeable pounds from pre-pregnancy now. But I still am way out of shape and have added going to the gym to the list. It is tricky to find time so I am heading down on the way to pick up the kids every day. I started Friday so I am one for one tyvm.

I did pick up a few habits though--plain unrefined flour still gets the thumbs down (makes me feel dirty) and white sugar makes me want to brush my teeth. The chocolate bit was lame but demonstrated enviable self-control and all.

Back to the gym--I was wondering why the kid's center was closed from 1-4 everyday since it could have been cool to drop off the two girls and give Steve some extra study time but then I went to the gym at that time and, well, no one in my demographic is down there at that time. Who is down there?

Single people. Young people. Unemployed people.

There were a lot of grunting sounds from weightlifter types and some young girls wearing short shorts with messages like "tough" across the back. Blonde girls I think mainly though for some reason I try to avoid eye contact or really even looking at people at the gym.

I walked into the baño and there was a woman completely stark naked blow-drying her hair. I found it odd that she would be fixing her hair prior to getting dressed, particularly considering the location (front and center view of first entry) but I was glad of my previous no eye contact policy and just steered away.

I was glad for the ipod which helps me look focused and busy and I still get nervous when I approach those machines like people are going to judge me for not knowing how to use all the stuff. I did experience a bit of glee when one of the blondies left the "hip abductor" machine on 50 lbs. and I could move it up to 70 no problema. I am still paying for that 70 a few days later though, and hope that in four month's time I can say that it was worth it.

In case you were wondering about who we had over for Sunday dinner: Casey's teacher who is one of the most incredible educators of her time, and her lovely husband. Good times (soup in homemade *bread bowls) and Boston Cream Pie for dessert. They brought edamame and carrots with some yummy hummus.

*100% whole wheat duh

Obama on Education

This is a REQUEST so go ahead and tune it out. But the times they are a changin.

Or not.

But here are Obama's thoughts on education and my response:

• Reform No Child Left Behind: Obama and Biden believe teachers should not be forced to spend the academic year preparing students to fill in bubbles on standardized tests.
  
  DUH on this one. I really believe people meant well in creating accountability but whoever came up with the number crunching for "progress" is, um, no bueno en la cabeza. They also want to actually fund the law. I have probably mentioned it before but did you know that the State of California took over 1000 low performing schools since the inception of NCLB and guess what America? The state had no clue what to do thereby proving that no one actually knows how to fix it (well of course except for me and my people but they didn't ask us). I would be in full support of NCLB if the "enforcers" bothered to pay attention to research in education but that is asking WAY too much. They want to support schools but I would like to see what kind of "support" they are thinking will make a difference.
  

• Support High-Quality Schools and Close Low-Performing Charter Schools:
  
  Yay! Who doesn't love choice? Charters are a great answer to a lot of the people demanding some sort of weirdo voucher system and also for people who want to save the public system. The only concern I have about this is I need to know what "low performing" means. If it is about test scores (which it surely is) then I need to know how those kids are going to do better in a different school. Goes back to the "support" options they will offer.
  
  
• Make Math and Science Education a National Priority:
  
  Okay how is this different from what people have been saying since Reagan freaked out over the Space Race? This time they are advocating for training teachers on "real world" science and math. Love it! Teach the people in the classroom that the quadratic equation is completely useless unless you can apply it to a real situation. Trust me this is a MAJOR paradigm shift that is not going to happen overnight. You can't even really blame the math/science teachers because they were trained in the same isolated, discreet factual world that produced the current crisis. If you doubt me, ask yourself where in the real world you would add logarithms. If you don't know what a logarithm is, that means you forgot it because you never understood how it works so my point is proven either way.
  

• Address the Dropout Crisis: Provide funding for things like personal academic plans, teaching teams, parent involvement, mentoring, intensive reading and math instruction, and extended learning time.
  
  Ooh those things sound fancy. Not. While some of those things make a difference (parent involvement is a correlating factor, not a causation factor) these things are bandaids if you don't improve the actual engagement in the classroom. You can try to do all these little "catchup" things if you like but in the end of the day if they get all caught up and then go back to the super boring lecture-based classroom then they are going to dropout anyway. My response to this is complicated, but it really is about having teachers focus in on the interests and needs of their students matched with industry standards.
  
  
• Expand High-Quality Afterschool Opportunities: Obama and Biden will double funding for the main federal support for afterschool programs, the 21st Century Learning Centers program, to serve one million more children.
  
  This sounds more like babysitting. But whatever. If people need afterschool care fine but I wouldn't categorize it under education as much as boredom prevention (ie crime prevention) for youth in America.
  

• Support College Outreach Programs: Obama and Biden support outreach programs like GEAR UP, TRIO and Upward Bound to encourage more young people from low-income families to consider and prepare for college.
  
  Again, fancy stuff. We could also ask teachers to prepare them for college by exposing them to different occupations within the context of the curriculum. But wait let's spend more money on other programs instead.
  

• Support College Credit Initiatives: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will create a national "Make College A Reality" initiative that has a bold goal to increase students taking AP or college-level classes nationwide
  
  This is good. I like providing more college courses but AP is kind of a waste--only a small percentage of kids get the credit and it drives teachers to homogenous grouping as well as direct instruction. If we could work more towards early college-level courses where high school juniors and seniors got college credit I would be totally 100% down with this initiative.
  
  
• Support English Language Learners: Obama and Biden support transitional bilingual education and will help Limited English Proficient students get ahead by holding schools accountable for making sure these students complete school.
  
  Because schools right now are not trying to help these kids graduate? What does this mean "holding schools accountable?" What new strategies do they have in place for ELL kids? Even a bilingual school doesn't have the answers for this... BUT I admire that they acknowledge that the achievement gap exists. Good for them.
  

Overall? I would say that their agenda is much more closely matched to what I want to see but I am not sure that they are going to make it happen with this legislation. Good start though. I would be happy if they wanted to throw our org a bone or two to let us really run and make it happen and I really do like their emphasis on 21st Century and real world stuff. Any questions?

Faces and Places in Reverse

While on the road I took a few fleeting pics to share. I took off the app that took better pics because the apps blocked the geotagging for some reason. If anyone knows how to keep the geotag plus one of the phone apps let me know kthanx.

I am missing my babysitter from the last day because I didn't take a pic but many thanks to him too!

So thanks to Auntie Lissa for babysitting lil Meg in Napa for me while I was working for a few days:




























When I got home from NC a few days previous to leaving for Napa this was awaiting me. Bridget apparently grabbed the King Arthur Flour Baking Book (all Hail!) and decided she would make pancakes all by herself. Pretty awesome and they turned out to be splendid!




























She not only wrapped the pancake to keep it in the fridge but also saran wrapped the note for me to accompany it:



























This is Jaye, my babysitter in NC. Her mom actually is the one who watches Meg but Jen got the flu and Jaye stayed home from school to pinch hit! She is wow amazing and even after alllll day with the baby she was asking to hold her and take care of her in the evening. I felt kind of guilty keeping her home (her mom's idea) but I didn't have a plan B all the way across the country. Good thing Jaye is so super smart she is wayyyy ahead of her class.




























Here is Jen, the hero of my week-long visits in NC. In spite of taking care of her 5 yo who had the flu, and getting it herself she really did take care of all of my needs and even made an amazing pot roast. My only complaint about Jen is that she stays up too late and then tires herself out. Here she is up too late:

Political Aspirations

So I have returned from a three day stint in my office and hope to stay home until late April. Unlikely but I am hopeful.

I love working from home because I interface with people according to my own availability. While in the office you can only work so long before someone interrupts your task to meet with you or to question you about something.

It was also interesting to experience office politics at a new level. I can't get into the specifics of course but things have been different lately.

I have learned a lot about crafting words carefully and "messaging" of particular issues in ways that are less offensive but still send a strong signal. However, I have a really long way to go. For example I said something fairly innocuous that for some reason wasn't taken the way I intended it and I have been churning it over and over and over.

When I first started this job I wanted to be the Secretary of Education--to take this amazing knowledge I have been given and make permanent change at a higher level. But now that I know how carefully one must go about becoming involved at a political level I think that it isn't right for me. I think there is merit to being a soldier on the frontlines of change--when you talk to a WWII veteran, which impresses you more: "I wrote the proposal that allowed soldiers to have the necessary equipment to be able to defend themselves" vs. "I ordered the soldiers to evacuate and their lives were spared" or "I shot the man with a gun in his hand aimed at my companions"? I would say the latter though sadly, it is really the guy who wrote the proposal made the difference. Russians ended up abandoning WWI having lost more men than any other country because the czar's administration couldn't get their act together and provide proper equipment or training--Obama is finding himself in this situation right now as he does these town hall meetings and is being confronted by some very disgruntled Americans wondering what he is "doing to fix it all."

I kind of feel sorry for him as he gets a 7 year old little boy dressed in a suit and tie who says in his cute little accent "Um I would like to know why my teacher is getting fired and a lot of the others have pinkslips." Wow. What do you say to that? He has been in office for about three months now and people are demanding answers. You gotta admit it is gutsy to stand up in front of those people and say "we are doing all we can."

I am a teensy bit enraged over these bailout scandals regardless of who the Chief Executive Officer of this country is and while I can never ever be compassionate towards those who served themselves up a million in an offshore account with taxpayer dollars, I do understand that people are desperate.

My renter still owes us $1000 and is now officially late for her second rent check installment. Maybe we should move back to Sac.

In short, while I haven't given up on the hopes of being able to make positive change for a large number of people, I am rethinking what my role should be.

I might even just become a crazy reformer parent and ditch the work angle focusing exclusively on the schools where my children attend.

Traditions

Every St. Patty's day we do Corned Beef and Cabbage with yummy potatoes. We dye the milk green to celebrate.

Last year AND this year my beloved husband has gone to the store and purchased the items only to realize that his wife would be out of town. This year we at least had some of it on Sunday in advance.

I love him and his name, and his black irish genes.

Does anyone else celebrate this non-holiday?

On Politics

I love to hear what people think about various topics in politico. As someone who was raised in an extremely liberal political environment with hippie parents/step-parents and total absence of religion, I have a lot of sympathy for the left. The left is often accused of being "immoral" by the right and the right doesn't understand how this godless, unmotivated and shifty crowd of criminal illegal-immigrant loving city-dwellers can justify their existence. I find this to be simply untrue--many liberals are religious but private about it. Many liberals are also among the most educated in the nation so the unmotivated bit doesn't seem to apply unless we are classifying higher education as for the unmotivated and lazy? Also most liberals belief in reform, change, and giving a hand to the needy as education can change the cycles of poverty and violence which is why they are more likely to stick with a local school and give it a try to help change the larger system.

As someone who belongs to a church with reportedly high numbers of republicans (Utah is the only state where Clinton came in third) I also am sympathetic to the right. The "liberal media" and Hollywood types accuse the right as being uneducated, greedy, and uncaring about the plight of the poor. This is also untrue. Republicans give a much larger percentage of their time and salary to charitable causes than do Democrats--by some astounding numbers even. The accusation of greedy in that case is untrue and in fact most Republicans are not looking out for "big business" but "small business" owners as the right is very protective of the ideals of the American Dream. This does not make them greedy but hopeful. As for the uncaring about the plight of the poor, they are really much more involved in trying to create laws to protect the poor according to their own ideals.

Both parties have some ugly pundits--Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter--who are funny, but irreverently unkind. The right have Bill Maher and Jon Stewart who both have great comedic timing but say some pretty offensive things as well.

Both parties have some heroes in history and currently who do amazing things for mankind and are trying to change the world in their own way.

I want to coexist peacefully so in the blogosphere I tend to keep a low profile. I like to summarize my political views by sharing a conversation a group of students had about me a few years ago:

Student 1: "Come on Ms. Fleming, who are you going to vote for?"

Flem: "I do not share my political views as I want you to develop your own ideas about politics without my influence."

Student 2: "But just tell us--we won't tell anyone."

Flem: Silence

Student 1: "She is a democrat. All teachers are."

Student 2: "But she is a Mormon! All Mormons are republicans."

Student 3: "Ahhh! What are you?"

Flem: Silence

If you can't tell, I won't tell.

Layover

Is it bad that I have to refer to my time at home as a layover?

But it is. I got home yesterday and leave tomorrow evening to go to a meeting for work (Napa).

My trip yesterday went a little something like this:

Wake up 3 am to crying baby. Decide to leave hotel as sleeping is fruitless.

Drive 24 minutes to find store open to buy her some tylenol or benadryl or some other travel aid.

Nothing open.

Buy children's tylenol at gas station and hope a half dose in a cup works for infants.

Drive 23 minutes to find "early return for car rental" since the flight, scheduled for 5:30 am, did not allow me time to return it by their opening in the morning. Find place, run late, barely make my flight.

Upgrade to first class on both the flight to Charlotte and the second flight to Phoenix. Whoo Hoo! Frequent flying apparently pays off periodically.

Me, exhausted, Meg, exhausted, both of us awake for both flights. Sleep 25 minutes on flight to SB and then Meg starts crying for last 40 minutes of flight.

Land. Kiss ground. 70 degrees.

I have to admit that if this was my worst day of travel ever I am pretty lucky. It was bound to happen one of these times, working on the road with a baby.

I am still thankful I could take her with but, no joke, I am the most tired I have ever been in my life. Ever.

Its The New Style

See cool article outlining what is happening in Indiana and the upcoming work I will be doing there.

Also, a Top Ten for youse who don't like reading my academic mumbo jumbo:

You Might be a Teacher if...

1. You walk by a group of 18-15 year-old males wearing low-slung pants with bandannas out their back pocket and you actually try to get closer to see if there is anyone you know.

2. The term "copyright" has little or no meaning.

3. When you read something you feel like correcting grammar and spelling.

4. You think kids should put their cell phones away but don't feel bad text messaging during training meetings in which you are supposed to be learning yourself.

5. Acronyms make you angry: CSTs, NCLB, BTSA, CEUs, CBEDS, and anything that ends in USD.

6. Everyone around you cites theory and research but no one actually changes practices according to those things.

7. You both love and hate scantrons all at once.

8. You both love and hate the teacher's union all at once.

9. You feel like you should write a book about what you have experienced but you don't have time.

10. Every movie you see, every tidbit or fact you learn, every article you read and every person that you meet becomes a potential lesson plan for you.

Time for a Top Ten

I vow never to write a post on education reform again.

Until I get back on Saturday.

I am down in Norte de Carolina for a trip and I thought I would give y'all my top ten list of the friendly southern state...

TOP 10 thing I Heart about NC.

1. Sheer number of Chick Fil-A stopping points. I had no idea how ingenious this place was until my most recent trip. I grabbed it almost daily in one form or another. I have no idea what they have in that chicken but it is aMAZing. Truly. Plus they are closed on Sunday! Bonus points for them.

2. No one on the road when outside the cities (downside, speeding tickets ouch)

3. My people. I get to spend some time with my extended family who I love a ton. Specifically Jenny who is like a sister to me. She is the one who makes my life super duper easy when I come out here.

4. New música. Jen hooks me up with the latest but we have also been known to go out to live music. Meg has of course slowed this down a bit but we still exchange music so I can keep my itunes lib in tip-top shape. I hope she considers my contributions worthy but she really is the maestra on this stuff.

5. Accents. I am a total sucker for a southern accent and NC really does have a nice one. Caya-line-a. The smaller the town, the bigger the accents--and the poorer the town the cooler the slang. So since I have a school in one of the poorest counties I get to hear all kindsa good stuff.

6. Shopping. Mucho Targets etc. In fact I save my shopping needs for these trips because I have multiple choices or places I can go to get my goods.

7. No guns allowed in restaurants. Some even have a sign at the front door as a reminder that you should not pack heat when you are dining in a fine establishment.

8. Piggly Wiggly. I love that any town can support a grocery store with this name. What kind of products are available at the Piggly Wiggly? Just regulah ole stuhf like grits.
9. Restaurants. I have traveled in a couple of states and spent time eating local cuisine so feel like I can truly say that NC serves up a better plate than most of the country (at least four other states). NC offers traditional southern cuisine but in addition they have some Carolina BBQ (which we would call pulled pork) and a couple of freshwater fish dishes that are pretty incredible like almond crusted trout. Also peanut butter pa (pie for us westerners) is absolutely delectable. DEEE lish.

10. Country Music. I have heard such tear-jerkers as Cheater Cheater and been amazed that people not only make this kind of music but listen to it as well. Also ran: Christian Evangelical but sometimes the lines bleed and I am not sure if I am on Christian pop or Country stations (Jesus Take the Wheel?)

How to Change Your School...

1. Ingratiate yourself with the administration. Do some service for the school or donate something but make sure that they know that you care about the school. If you don't have time for these things, just periodically drop an email expressing appreciation or say something nice (that you mean) about the school.

2. Talk to other parents about what their vision is for the school. Don't complain, just ask questions and listen carefully. Not just any parents, ones that are worker bee types and actually have ideas (lame complaints like "the school won't let me bring treats for parties" don't count). You can then say "I have heard parents are concerned about..." without sounding like something is your idea.

3. Befriend the custodial staff--or anyone else of the classified that have master keys. Cafeteria ladies count even if they are weird or psychotic. Actually, especially if they are weird or psychotic.

4. Remember Secretary's Day and drop off a card or flowers in the office on this occasion. If you miss it, just drop it off on a random day and let them know that you are aware that without them the school would fall apart.

5. Drop off a Jamba Juice, Vanilla Bean Frappuccino (no coffee for those who have not had this heavenly treat) or a Cliff Bar/Luna Bar periodically and a "thanks for all you do for my child!" Homemade treats count but in our case they have a hard time lasting that long to get them wrapped up and delivered.

If you are happy with the school you still ought to do these things but if you want to make change I promise you this is the path to least resistance.

Which one of these things are you going to do next week?

My Family Ate My Dinner

I bought dinner at Trader Joe's last night on the way home from scouts.

At the checkout stand a woman handed me last minute a box of buffalo wings that are made of some tofu soy thing or something. I bought it because I had a baby on my hip and a shrieky and tired 4 year-old making requests to my side. The trusty TJ checkout boy said that he was a meat eater and even he was surprised how amazing they were.

Apparently they were so good that while I was feeding Meg the family demolished the wings. Reportedly quite good, made by the Gardenburger folks. Anyway when I asked if they saved me one the answer was that they forgot about me. Since in our 700 sq ft apt. I am never more than 2 ft away from the dinner table I was shocked and awed.

This is really not a big deal but what is surprising is how much it annoyed me. Who cares if a 7 year-old is thinking of her own hunger because the teensy weensy pizzas I bought were so minuscule that it couldn't satisfy?

All that kept going through my mind were phrases oft heard such as "I am not the family maid" or "I can't have nice things" or "No one appreciates me" until it dawned on me that those sentences uttered aloud help no one and just make me feel mean. So I tried to keep it to myself, made myself up some red-skinned parmesan potatoes and shared with them. Love those that despitefully use you, even if it is your children.

I will say Steve felt bad about it at least. He is way nice like that.

Midwest

I will most likely be working with three schools in Indiana and one school in NY. Oh and a school outside of Chicago.

I need to buy a winter coat like the awesome one I borrowed from Jeannie.

If I moved to the midwest, then I would have to live there. Look at the picture on this blog--how important, really, is weather to one?

Have people handled the winter well? I thought Utah was cold but apparently, it is only national average so I have not actually experienced a real winter.

Upside:

• I love scarves.
• I like small town America--makes me think of Little Pink Houses and Authority songs.
• I like people who live in this segment of America--seem very family-oriented and caring for their neighbors. Also potential of meeting Dwight Shrute-types.
  
• 33% cheaper

Downside:

• Everything else. I am especially worried about :
• Eating-- I am kind of a food snob as many of you know, in that I love to be able to buy fairly fresh fruits and stuff that doesn't contain white flour. Will this be possible in the midwest? Am I stereo-typing the hunter and underestimating the gatherer?
• Cold weather times infinity

I will be spending 40-60 days in these places in the upcoming year so regardless of living there or not, it will be happening.

On Being a Housewife...

So after yesterday's very thought provoking set of comments (thanks to all of you for your questions/comments that really made me think!) I have wondered about what it means to be a woman with women's rights.

I think it is a woman's right to be home with her children.

I think it is a woman's right to have a career.

I try to do both and strive for mediocrity at both. I am content with a very low bar on housekeeping and while I have periods of time in which I feel like I work too much, I also am happy to be able to go to a play group periodically and/or parent teacher conferences midday without feeling the pain.

I want everyone to know that I am only coincidentally a career woman. I was an at-home mom for the first nine months of my son's life. Rest assured that had I lived in a suburbia near any of you we would still be sitting at your table playing scrabble and drinking diet coke while rehashing American Idol last night and periodically breaking to feed babies and/or chatting up a new mom in our playgroup. But living in a cockroach-infested apartment with homicidal and/or Jamaican cheating-on-wife neighbors in Los Angeles did nothing to encourage me. The only other at-home mom at church was a lady who I would periodically take to her welfare or WIC appointments and who complained that her husband was too fat to climb the stairs (that is a direct quote, not anything I said since I don't like the word "fat.")

So I was stir crazy and decided to go out and substitute teach--you already know the rest of the story (RIP Paul Harvey.)

While I believe that teaching and saving the world is coursing through my veins now, it was all providential (yea, inspired) that I took this course.

I married a man who does not mind this pathway. If I would have married a lawyer or engineer. Doc., etc., who had different ambitions, I would likely not be working either. If I married a rich man I would probably be trying to travel overseas and do cool charity work (Cindy McCain style) or more importantly I would be buying nice shoes. I would also get the entire line of the le creuset cherry red as you know.

As it is I married a man whose number one priority in life is his wife's happiness and having a lot of kids. It is hard to reconcile both of these things for me. Once someone asked me to teach an enrichment group on "How to get your husband to let you go to Europe." Steve commented "well, about once a year my wife looks around and says how she doesn't like her life. I figure if she goes to Europe once a year she is less likely to do that." (Total miquote btw but he reads this blog and if he wants to correct it he can do so in the comments below. He says blogging is for girls but he totally reads blogs all the time. He claims he has nothing to blog about but he periodically says to me "you should blog about _________" to which I always respond "blog it yourself.")
So yeah, I have a career. I have a family. I have it all. And I do it all at a lower standard than all of you people. But I figure that I would be lousy at housework and raising my kids anyway, at least now I have an excuse:

I work.

Side note: The shift I was mentioning might have to do with the way feminism shifted in this country, or perhaps that the church got so big that we shifted our locus inwards instead of playing such large roles on a national scale. Perhaps the ERA might have ended maternity leave, or branded staying at home with kids as less important, or perhaps it was just a good idea the church didn't support, who knows? The 70s were a hard time as is evidenced by the fact that both of my parents died as a result of unsavory activities during that era. Plus, disco? Be real.

RS History

There was a major shift in the female leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the 20th century.

I know this because I have investigated it for our Relief Society Birthday deal tonight at Church.

I am not a pioneer person, I have never expressed much interest in the history of any church, and though I was a history major, I have very little interest in the genealogy aspect of the church to which I belong.

Did I mention my husband is getting a Ph.D in Religious Studies?

Anyway so as I read about the history of these women I am amazed at what I am reading. The women who serve as the general presidents of the RS (for those who don't know, it is the women's organization at church, often referred to--by ourselves--as the "largest women's organization in the world.")

Still reading?

So I consider myself a feminist, not in the sense of the "women's rights issues" or anything of that nature, I simply live a feminist life. My husband has been the primary care giver for my children longer than I have, we share household duties to a much higher level than most people, and my career takes precedence over most all other activities (hopefully besides my family).

I am not in favor of "reproductive rights" because I believe that making choices and facing natural consequences is fair and perceive abortion as the ultimate bailout of responsibility (and having four chillin's myself consider it trés sad) I don't really care if the salary of women is consistently lower than men (though if I ever worked for someone who practiced this type of "Gentleman's Club" tactics it I might change my tune). Get what I am saying here?

I consider myself a practicing, not theoretical or political, fem.

Much to my surprise, most of the presidents of RS the early days of my church were powerful women who were on the cutting edge of feminism looong before their time. Examples:

Emma Smith was the first woman to administer to other women in the temple.

Eliza R. Snow started a sericulture (silk) industry for the RS women. She also started the grain saving program in the church.

Zina Young was the VP of the Utah National Council for Women in 1891 and she attended the Women's Conference in Buffalo and National Suffrage Association convention in New York.

Bathsheba Smith was on the Board of Directors for the Deseret Hospital

Emmeline Wells was an early advocate for women's rights and used her publications to support suffrage and educational/economic opportunities for women. She hung tight was Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony and one of her great quotes is "I believe in women, especially thinking women."

Louise Robison was a delegate to the Tenth World Congress of the International Council of Women, held in Paris. She also headed the first effort of the Church to mark historical places in Nauvoo.

Clarissa Smith Williams was one of 9 US delegates to the International Council of Women in Rome. She also was responsible for creating healthy, maternity, and child welfare services with money from the closing of grain storage at the close of WWI (the US gov. forbade any group or individual from storing large quantities of food so the church had to sell grain they had been saving since 1876).

Amy Brown Lyman served in the Utah State Legislature in 1922 and helped push through the federal Sheppard-Towner Bil, which provided infant and maternity care nation-wide. She was also the first director of the welfare program of our church during WWII.

In 1968 Belle Spafford was nominated to be president of the National Council of Women. She said no because of her RS commitments, but the president of the Church (David O McKay) counseled her to accept the position.

Barbara Smith opposed the Equal Rights Amendment. She felt that it would "cause women to lose previously hard-won rights" and "lock us into a system that did not provide for the emotional, physical, or biological difference between the sexes." <<---shift.

I will not get into a discussion about why I think this shift occurred or the "therefore" but let me say that in looking at this pattern, women long before our time were doing so much to expand the rights of women. Did you know the state of Utah was among the first to extend the right to vote to women (along with Wyoming who was really desperate to increase the female population in the state). And then Utah women lost the right to vote for THIRTY years when the state was incorporated into the Union?

Amazing.

So sorry if you were bored but I was fascinated by this information. Does anyone want to come with me to this??

I never thought I would let it come to this, but I am officially hooked on the history of Mormon women. I guess I have no one to blame but myself.

Advice Please

1. Bridget called me from school: "Is this Lee?" Yes. "Can you tell daddy to bring my pillow to school? Today is Dr. Seuss' birthday and I forgot to bring it?" Um. Why do you need your pillow? "Everyone has theirs!!! I need it, can you just please tell him to bring it?" Why are you crying? "Can you just tell him to bring it?"

School is 15 minutes down the road. Should we really bring the pillow? Would you?

2. I really need to schedule exercise. I need advice on how to do this. I hate running. Can you offer me any suggestions? Or at least motivation?

3. How bad is it to drink Diet Coke? It tastes like poison but it is somehow refreshing. I feel guilty but I really like it. Should I break down and buy some or should I continue to drop by my neighbors when I want some and periodically give her a couple of dollars?

4. Why am I gaining weight? I am not eating sugar, eating a very limited amount of simple carbs, and no chocolate. I am nursing this baby full-time and though I lost all the weight from the baby, over this last week I gained five pounds. FIVE.

5. How important is housework? I really think I should pick exercise and playing with my kids over the housework but then my husband ends up doing it and I feel really guilty. Specifically, dishes. Any advice here?

6. Should I move to the midwest? I can.