garcon!

Got a funny little phone call a couple of weeks ago.

I came into work on a Tuesday morning following a Monday off. Nice.

The previous week I'd been at a seminar, out all week. I'd checked my messages through Thursday, my normal working week, and then left them alone.

Anywho, I came into work on that Tuesday back to work, looked grudgingly at the phone and decided, What the hell. So I went ahead and checked my messages. Normal stuff, nothing new, then suddenly, a message from someone I wouldn't know if I crashed into her on the street. Someone named Lucinda Moreno. Calling from Country Club school in my district. I don't work at Country Club school. I work at Second Cousins school, down the street. I also work at Country Club Jr. school (which is only the primary grades and feeds into Country Club school), but I have never worked at Country Club school, and though I may have had aspirations at an earlier point in my career, I don't particularly like the current principal at Country Club school and I am just fine thankyouverymuch at Second Cousins school. Anyway, apparently Ms. Moreno at Country Club school has a student who just entered her classroom. And apparently, this student used to attend Second Cousins school. This student is in kindergarten. In fact, this is already his fifth kindergarten this year, meaning he stays about a month at any place before his family moves him on. Poor kid. Anyway, this is how her message went,

"Hello, this is Lucinda Moreno at Country Club school. I have a student, Little Johnny Not Fitting into my Class, and he used to attend Second Cousins school. You observed him when he was there. I'm going to need you to come over to Country Club school and get me that diagnosis now. Please let me know when you will be able to do that."

I was gobsmacked.

In fact, I still am.

And lest you think I'm just an unhelpful cretin, let's dissect my perspective on this message. First, even though I do not work at Country Club school, I'm more than happy to answer any question that may arise at Country Club school on many many topics--a child I've worked with, a topic I've inserviced on, a policy or procedure I've helped put into place. However, Country Club school has it's own school psychologist who is quite competent and able to get her "that diagnosis" she seeks. If it exists.

However, that's one of the issues I have with it. So maybe this student is quirky. Well, he's definitely quirky, that's not particularly open to debate. But the more burning question for me in terms of diagnosing him is, "Why?" Can he function in the classroom? I'm not sure. He's been to five schools already in this, his inaugural year of school. I'm thinkin' Little Johnny may have more pressing issues--like stability--that are impacting his ability to be not quirky in any situation. When I saw Johnny, he needed some space. He needed to be sitting in back of his peers where he could do a little floor rolling when necessary so that he could once again pay attention. By sitting at the back, he can do this with minimal impact on his neighbors...note, it is difficult to floor roll when you have peers on all sides of you. You are bound to accidentally kick somebody in the face...Also, Johnny apparently has bowel and bladder control (seriously, when you work primarily with moderately retarded preschool and kinder aged students, this becomes a really big deal to you in terms of peer comparison) and fairly age appropriate language skills (see last aside). And this is, after all, kindergarten! I mean, for heaven's sakes, I ate paste throughout kindergarten!

Yeah yeah, the standards and all that. I'm NCLBed up to my eyeballs and I quite frankly don't really give a rat's ass because we all know who Georgie really wants to succeed and it ain't the population in my district!

So anyway, I question how much Johnny really needs to learn this year, other than don't pick your nose in public...always pee in the bathroom and then wash your hands, preferably with soap...don't hit or kick other people. If he learns a little reading and math, that would be nice too.

A third issue for me is that we have procedures in place for this type of issue. I spent more than a year drafting these procedures and when used correctly, I think they work. I could point to ten cases off the top of my head where it has all worked as it should. I can point to a current one--teacher at Second Cousin School asked me to come in and observe her kindergarten student. I went in and said, Oh yeah, you've got a point there. We're getting that diagnosis for them (different diagnosis, same principle, same grade). I think Ms. Moreno needs to start following those procedures.

Lastly, I don't think I have ever been more condescendingly summoned in my life. Worse than that, poor little Johnny, who has no chance of fitting in and succeeding EVER since he's already needing a "diagnosis." Actually, he probably really could have one, and I think I know what it is, but still, at least work with the kid a bit!

As politely as I could, I returned Lucinda's call and said, "Hi Lucinda. I received your message about Little Johnny Not Fitting into my Class. I observe lots of kids at Second Cousins school, and while I think I know who you're referring to, without more contextual information, I couldn't possibly make any recommendation (note; this was kind of true. Even though I was pretty sure I knew who she was referring to, I couldn't exactly remember Johnny's name at that precise moment). I don't work at your school, I only work at Second Cousins school. Thus, I won't be able to accommodate your request. You have your own psychologist, Morris, at Country Club school, here is his name, and I think he's there on Tuesdays. Maybe you can discuss Johnny with him today. Good luck!"

I did let Morris know about the message when I saw him later that week. He kind of guffawed at me about it all, shaking his head knowingly. I feel kind of sad for Little Johnny of course, but I'm sure Morris will ultimately take care of it all for him. He has a soft spot for the little guys. And I get kind of a smug, self-satisfaction thinking about Ms. Moreno getting my voicemail. 'Cause I imagine when she left that one for me, she had a kind of a slapping-your-hands-together-like-you're-brushing-off-flour-dust smug little There! That takes care of that little mess! thing going on. Passive aggressive I know. But hey, I paid a ton of cash to learn just how that works and sometimes, dammit, I just want to use it!

The Mommy Wars

Read a post yesterday on another blog (see blogs I favor) that talked about The Mommy Wars.

A few years, okay, maybe just one year, ago I began an essay on The Mommy Wars. I had just read The Price of Motherhood by Ann Crittenden, in my book group. The book was chosen by me with some help from another woman in the group. This meant that I hosted that monthly meeting. Now, I work--we'll get to the details of that later--and here we were, sitting in my home, discussing the book. We have a very linear way of working through our group and it was not yet my turn. One of the women said something along the lines of, "Women who work and put their children in daycare should not have children." (Of course, this was said in the presence of her mother, also in the group, who is a working mother) I blurted out, "Hello! You are sitting in my home!" Somebody else quickly said, "Well, you don't have your kids in daycare at 6:30 in the morning." "Yes. Yes I do." That's our schedule. Kids in at 6:30 a.m. And honestly, from all that I can see, this judge-of-all-working-mothers isn't doing such a bang-up job raising her kids while she stays at home with them...just saying.

I work part-time. Thus, I actually consider myself a part-time stay at home mom (SAHM). It's an interesting mix and I think I'm in a unique position to really see both sides of this war. Sort of a secret double agent, if you will. Sure, I work four days each week. But this is September through June. Okay, okay, that's really most of the year, I know. But I work with the schools. So don't forget I get almost a week at Thanksgiving. Two weeks over the Holiday season. Another week around Easter. Multiple three-day weekends in addition to my weekly three-day weekend, actually making them four-day weekends. All told, I work 157.6 (go figure, some personnel thing) days per year. You do the math. I actually stay at home with my kids more often than I work. I'm a SAHM who does some WOH (working out of the home) during the year. It's all work. But for me, it really is less stressful work to be at home with my kids, in comparison to working and having kids.

During the work week here is my schedule;

4:55 a.m., alarm rings. Hit snooze two times.
5:09 a.m., get out of bed, into shower.
5:20'ish, out of shower, into other bathroom, note which children have moved into my bed for future reference.
5:45'ish--make-up completed, hair dry, lotion on, out of bathroom into kitchen, turning on many lights to wake up children and spouse.
5:50'ish -- begin making lunches for children, self, spouse, while attempting to cajole the children into eating breakfast and trying very hard not to coerce them.
6:05'ish--lunches complete, on a good day, kids are racing toward the bathroom spouse is in to brush their teeth. Go pick out their clothes, throw them on my bed, put on whatever pants/skirt I'm wearing that day. Pack my car with lunches of child/ren being dropped off by me.
6:15--brush teeth, pull female child into bathroom to brush/style her hair, pull male child in to douse his hair with water and comb it, wishing for the umpteenth time that spouse had not simply given instructions to "trim it" and walked away in the salon, leaving haircutting lady to cut off all his wavy surfer-boy locks. *sigh*
6:20--giving sock reminders now, looking at the clock, finishing my hair, clothes, jewelry.
6:30--out the door, drop child 1 off at school daycare, head toward child 2s daycare


Here is a non-working school day.

6:20 get into shower (spouse is already up and showered at this point, kids are usually rolling around in the bed with me, giggling--leave them to watch Zoboomafoo while I shower).
6:40, out of shower, kiss spouse good-bye, set kids up to eat while I dry my hair and get dressed
7:00, kids get dressed, brush teeth
7:30, one more homework check, pack backpack for child 1, make lunch in the event he wants to take lunch today
7:45, leave house, send child 1 across street to pick up neighbor child who enjoys walking with us
8:00, arrive at school, head toward playground, chit-chat with various teachers and parents, head home with child 2

Much less stressful for me all around. And I have a spouse who really does pitch in. He irons, he cooks, he cleans, he picks up, he starts homework, he's good.

I like staying at home with my kids. I really enjoy it. I can see why it becomes stressful for parents who do only that. No matter what we do, I think we tend to become embroiled in the day-to-day drudgery and politics of it. That creates stress and decreases our perspective on things. We begin to feel that anyone not doing what we do is not doing anything at all and thus, ripe for our judgement. I like working too. I think I've chosen a good career for myself. I enjoy my job, although it becomes stressful, and I hate having a deadline and a sick child at the same time. That stinks in a way no SAHM could ever appreciate if she has not been through it herself. I hate hate hated when my sister used to say to me, "I stay at home! I can't call in sick!" Uh, and you think I can? Not only can I not really call in sick to work (because I have to save those days for the illnesses of my children), but my children do not magically disappear when I work or when I'm sick. They still live in my house too. They still require love, humor, education and periodic bathing. They clamor to be fed and watered, taken to playdates.

Interestingly, I no longer seem to run into the SAHMs I used to feel judging me. Maybe because my kids have moved beyond Gymboree and other Mommy and Me things. I belong to the PTA, and yes, it seems to be dominated by SAHMs. But many of them are part-timers like me, and more and more seem to be entering the workforce...likely as a result of this shitty economy our SAHM loving conservative government has forced on us. If they're judging me, they sure aren't showing it. But maybe I also care less. When the issue is moved into my thought pattern, it makes me angry. I don't understand why we spend time following the shiny instead of focusing on the issues that really matter. The economy. Adequate early childhood resources. Adequate respect for mothers in general! Good maternity and paternity leaves akin to other countries in our world.

Anyway, I eventually lost the focus on my Mommy Wars essay. I planned at the time to send it in to a very non-mainstream mothering (hint hint) publication in the hopes that it might jumpstart some kind of true discussion (because that's how powerful I am). But I lost interest. It felt less real to me I guess, less current. Maybe summer vacation hit and I stopped being worried about being a working mom. I can't remember now.

But I hate The Mommy Wars.

glimpsing my future self

I have 8 cousins. Two on my mother's side and six on my father's side. On my mother's side, one looks exactly like me. Or, rather, I look like her. I'm the youngest cousin of them all, so I guess I'm always the copycat here. On my father's side, I look exactly like one. Enough so that when I see a picture of her at my wedding--every single time--I think, "What the hell am I wearing a blazer for?" before I remember that it is not, in fact, me, but her.

She's older than me. Oh. I said that already. But she's older than me. I'm not sure how much. When I was young she lived in Japan. By the time she and her family returned to my part of the world, I was a child, not even a very young child anymore, but a child considering a double digit age and she was definitely in the throes of adolescent puberty. Not remotely interested in her youngest cousin, and for good enough reason. Now, I certainly have friends who are ten to fifteen years older than me. So in theory I could be friends with my cousins who are ten'ish years older than I am. But we didn't grow up with that kind of family, so we're not.

So today, Everard and I began a three-day seminar on working with Autistic kids. Our colleague LaRue went with us. I love LaRue. She's a little on the obsessive-compulsive side...wound a little tightly...someone I can totally identify and work with. In fact, I think LaRue and I were mostly sent to police Everard, who will be expected to implement in his classroom what we'll be learning this week.

So LaRue and I carpooled. We got there early (I already mentioned the OCD thing, right?) and were sitting, chitchatting when I looked up and there was my cousin (on my father's side). I thought. I mentioned it. And looked again. Then mentioned it again. Then craned my neck. Then found her name tag. Yep. That's her.

So she sat with us. Turns out, she and Everard have the same job. Turns out, she already has her classroom set up in the manner the seminar teachers suggest (natch). Turns out, she has similar lines around her mouth that suggest to me she also smokes. Well, I don't smoke anymore, but I recognize smoking lines around the lips. huh. So much for that Southern Baptist thing...

So, essentially, she's a stranger to me. We share ancestry and there was some small talk about our families. There are many things in her family right now that really are shitty. Brother in law with metastatic cancer. Mother showing the signs of Alzheimer's. Not much going on over here in comparison. But we both know each other's business. Our dads talk. And we both feel a little exposed, but really want to love our family and have no ill will toward one another. I think she found me unsettling. I tend to dominate Everard (believe, he needs it), as does LaRue, and we had several (helpful?) comments for him regarding his current students. My cousin seems to be functioning quite well without my insights and was likely a little befuddled to see me as an adult with opinions and education. I mean, to me, she's always been an adult. There was no paradigm shift for me. This is life as it should be. But it is harder to see our children grow up I think. So I'd guess it was slightly more startling for her to see me as a responsible, reliable adult. I, on the other hand, was simply startled to realize how similar we look. Again.

I can see me ten years from now. All those crinkly lines around the eyes. Hands, always slightly dry, needing lotion, with large lines, large cells, puffy and wrinkled. We have similar movements. We have similar reactions to things. Laugh at the same jokes. Her colleagues joined us and one said, "You're really cousins?" Uh, yeah. Notice the similarities? He didn't. Although, truth told, he could pass as our brother if his hair was a little more blonde than red. I'm not sure who he thinks he's kidding. Thankfully I don't look ugly ten years from now. I just look older. Wrinkled. But not in a bad way, more in a....erm...quiet, proud way. Having earned every line. Plus, now I can see that if I go more platinum (hiding the grey of course, as I'm sure she is too), it doesn't look half bad. I think I need to do the eyebrows though.

I suspect she has tender feelings toward me, as I do her. Driving home, LaRue and I discussed how not close my family of origin is, as opposed to the family into which I married, and her family of origin. It's sad. I have these nice people, living close to me, who could be sources of comfort, people to confide in, who share my experiences, and yet, we are virtual strangers to one another. In a sense, more cut off because of our forced shared experiences rather than closer because of a close family. Too bad. But maybe this can be a turning point. I doubt it. I think my cousin has her established life and I have mine. After all, her children are all adults--of legal voting and drinking ages--whereas mine are not even near the upper grades of the elementary school system yet. So different. So similar.

I'm glad our paths are crossing this week. It's nice to see me.

Mama's a little bit loaded tonight

So today I finally had my day off. I am still in the recovery process from last week's marathon work schedule. I handled my four big meetings with aplomb this last week although truth told, by Wednesday afternoon when the autistic three year old wandered into my office with his mother I was really only able to stare and blink at him, wondering why my intern wasn't jumping off her duff to actually interview the parent to complete the interview I'd suggested she complete. sheesh. So glad nobody watched me as intently as I watch my graduate students...

It's a scary year when the thought of a work week commuting to a conservative, narrow-minded, homophobic, segrationist city to attend a conference on a topic with which you are well-acquainted and really only attending so that you can later point out to dear old Everard that he's not actually doing his job sounds really inviting.

That's where I'm heading during the week of Valentine's Day. Missing the class party for my dear son--truth told, not such a big sacrifice, that--and driving a good 90 minutes each way plus the time involved in picking up and dropping off a colleague for carpooling purposes. And I can't wait. I just have to get through the five new long meetings during the upcoming week so that starting next Thursday I don't actually go into the office or step foot on a campus again for another 11 days.

Bliss.

Not that work is bad. It's just stressful. Terribly so. I remember the first couple of years out of graduate school, when I'd drive home, anticipating the cigarette (still smoked in those days) and thinking about how I really needed a small tape recording device to record my memories so that I could write a book about my experiences--I planned to call it something along the lines of, "In the Trenches; a School Psychologist's Fledgling Years." I dunno. Now I realize I would have breached about fifty million confidentiality rules and I could never go back to those times anyway now. I'm old. I'm jaded. I know exponentially more than I knew then, and that was still more than my current graduate students know. Geez, what kinds of training programs are they running these days?

But I digressed.

So today was my normal Friday off. And my daughter seems to maybe have finally figured out that I'm really serious when I tell her that complete tantrumming meltdowns in stores are simply inappropriate and not to be accepted. Because several times today she pointed out to me that she hadn't screamed one time and could she please have a squirt of whipped cream when we got home? I happily obliged, even though it took about three requests for me to figure out what the hell she was referring to. Which brings me to another point of digression--we really do ignore people who are doing what we want them to do and generally only attend to the shitty stuff, and this explains why so many people really only do shitty things. That's all they ever get credit for doing! We really need to start remembing to notice the good stuff instead of the shitty stuff. Thank you, dear daughter, for reminding me of that today.

I feel wasted, exhausted and as if maybe Sunday is the day to be recovered. There were errands to be completed today and a few more tomorrow morning, along with some kind of cleaning effort. By Sunday, laundry should be completed, shopping contended with and kids should be happily screaming in the street as they ride their bikes hither and yon. I plan to sit out there on my camping chair for at least four hours, book nearby, unread (because quite frankly, even though I am supposed to be enjoying it because afterall, I am a brilliant intellectual, I cannot stand this month's selection of my book group), some kind of (probably nonalcoholic) drink nearby (oh yeah, I'm loaded, aren't I? I forgot to tell you how that happened), chit-chatting with various neighbors except for the new ones who appear to be nice but who I secretly believe are pathological liars and not to be invited into the circle. We'll see if I'm wrong in the end, but in these scenarios I usually am not.

So just to finish with the initial point of the post, which is that Mama inadvertently got drunk early on in the evening, today I picked my dear son up from his school day to find him a little more oppositional than usual. So, after a little scuffle involving a scooter and a school yard, we had a tussle over a karate uniform and beating the tar out of a younger sister. Then we had an incident while waiting in line for karate class to start which ended in me very delicately (I swear to God, that part is not embellished in the slightest) taking him by the hand (out of the karate line in front of everybody so that he actually missed karate today) and walking him out to the car while informing him that he would be spending the rest of today in his room while his family had fun. Then my spouse irritated me by wanting to drive off on his motorcycle instead and I had to take both children to the grocery store. That ended up being not so bad because my calm demeanor in the karate line scared the heck out of both children and when we arrived home, husband was sitting out in the front yard on the bench. After setting up son in his room to address and sign valentines, I headed outside with a beer (see, here it comes!). A little chit-chat ensued, less irritation, I relented and let son out of his room to play, another beer, the neighbor came home, tossed her daughter into our yard, handed me a cup of wine and left to pick up her son, and next thing I knew, Mama was a little loaded and all was right with the world again while the kids played happily, there was chit-chat amongst the spouses and neighbors and once again, we were on a weekend evening. I think I actually might be recovered by tomorrow morning. That is, if I'm not hungover.

Have a good one.