February comes to a close.

Well, it's the end of February, and I've managed to keep myself as busy as ever. Z will be four in a month, which is amazing. Four seems like, oh, not my baby, not my toddler, but a complete little person. But she's a really interesting person and I'm glad to know her.

We've added a few chores to her repertoire -- she now takes her laundry basket to the laundry room and picks up the things in her room, mostly shoes and books. She does them pretty happily; this weekend she did the laundry before I asked.

She really talks in a sophisticated fashion. She's always peppering her conversation with little phrases like, "Well, for instance," and "I'll bet," and "I suppose." She sounds like a teeny adult a lot of the time.

One big difference between her and me when I was little was reading. I wanted to read, by myself, a lot. I could read already and I did. She can't (although she's getting there), but she LOVES being read to, and she wants to read books that are way advanced for her age. She finished the first Harry Potter and is now on Matilda. She's also expressed interest in A Wrinkle in Time and The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. It's funny, because I forget how many stories are about caregivers (often parents) who are mean, abusive, absent, or otherwise terrible. She wanted me to read to her from Huck Finn today, which I was reading, and it was all about Huck's Pa drinking himself into a stupor and complaining about the "govment."

She just eats it up, though. Funny girl. I'm trying to figure out the line of what I do and don't want her exposed to just yet. In Harry Potter, I guess I'm okay with the idea of evil, but I am not that fond of how often they use the word "idiot." She's already asked about that and "shut up," which appears in Matilda.

We've talked her into a "put a bird on it" birthday, and I just ordered photos to use as the invitations. I'm excited.

She outgrew her bookshelves. They were little Ikea ones with pressboard that rested on pegs, and one day she tried to shove just one more book on the top shelf and it collapsed onto the second shelf, which collapsed onto the third. I decided to get her sturdier ones, so we went to Ikea last week, and I assembled them yesterday.

Before: (also before cleaning up)




After:




Even though there's more shelf space, once we brought in some books from the living room and put some toys on there, every inch is taken up again. At least I am not worried about these collapsing.

Last weekend we also went to Toys R Us. As part of an ongoing sneaky campaign to get her to learn about money, we give her an allowance, then occasionally take her to spend some of her money with a parental price-matching scheme. She had $20, and we encouraged her to save half, so she could spend up to $20 total. She wanted a number of things, especially a $19.95 fashion coloring thing that I thought would be frustrating (you had to be able to trace well), and I finally pointed out that she could get only the tracing thing or three other things -- a pink wig, a Barbie flashlight, and something that slips my mind now. She went for three things, and here is the video of her using two.



In other news, our little homestead is doing alright. We're not that apartment-dweller who manages to come up with six bushels of tomatoes grown vertically on his balcony or whatever, but we're making progress.

Here's lavender and rainbow chard.


Our lemon tree is flourishing after last year's pruning.


Our raspberry is showing signs of life.


And spreading, and I believe that's arugula that I planted last fall!


The blueberry looked pretty touch and go this winter, but it is coming back to life, too!


Our strawberries were so lovely to have last year that I think I'm going to plant about a billion more.


The parsley and chives overwintered.


We harvested the first peas yesterday.


And our very next project on the long list is filling this with dirt and herbs.


I believe that about covers it. Take care, all!

The saga of the house

So, as it turns out, that other house sold already. But I had come to the realization that, if we ever wanted to, uh, expand, we were going to need a bigger house. So I was looking at our place critically and thinking about what needed to happen. New counters in the kitchen, probably, which was a bummer because the materials I had been considering probably wouldn't appeal to buyers. We'd have to cover up all our lovely paint colors, including the room we did just last summer. The yard needed work -- it was perfect for our budding eco-friendly urban homestead, but most people would want a lawn. We'd have to rip out the decomposed granite and the planter beds and put down sod. And the bathroom... We were planning already on doing some things, but we'd have to do more. Could I paint over the pen marks on the doorframe of Zadie's room showing her height? No. If those assholes wanted to do it, they'd have to do it themselves!

In retrospect, the moment I started thinking of the potential new owners of my home as "those assholes" should have been a clue that I didn't really want to give up this house.

When I bought my first house, my gut feeling that told me to buy it was something like, "This will do." But when I walked into this house, my first thought was, "home." I love this house, and I love the neighborhood, and I love the neighbors. In fact, I spend more social time with my neighbors than I do with any of my friends. They're among the few people I hadn't mentioned thoughts of moving to, because I had no idea how I could tell them.

A realtor came by last Monday. He's the guy who helped us buy this house, and I've always trusted him. I run into him sometimes and he always remembers me, asks about our family, etc. Nice guy, and he knows the market. I wanted him to tell me what we needed to do most to the house in the next couple years to make it more marketable. (We couldn't sell it now, because we're underwater.)

But he looked around, made a few suggestions for making it more marketable, and then sort of changed his tune. "Of course, if you wanted to stay here, you could get a lot more usable dining room area if you just popped out this wall. And... does the garage meet up here on the outside? You could extend this half bath into the garage, add a shower, and have two bathrooms. And if your husband needs a man-cave, but you need another bedroom too, you could hook up the laundry in the garage and turn this laundry room into a little cave. There's even a door to close it off. And of course, you could convert part of the garage into office space..." He had a lot of ways of looking at my house that I'd never considered. "I say, if you love this house and this neighborhood and you can make it work, you should try to stay here." We talked a little more, and on the way out, I thanked him. "You know, this is the first time I've ever had a realtor try to talk me OUT of buying a new house." "You just have to maintain trust."

And he drove off, and the proverbial weight was of my shoulders. We COULD stay! We could close off a door and have more space in one area. We could do the bathroom thing. He mentioned that if we actually did expand the dining room, we'd lose a window in the kitchen, so we'd probably have to remove a cabinet to get some more light. But then we could add more cabinets over here... and then I'd have the kitchen space I'd been wanting. Sweetie didn't like the idea of the man-cave, so I'm already decorating it in my head as a mom-cave! A desk! Storage for my fabrics and yarn and crafty stuff! We could use the materials we want without worrying about who would or wouldn't like it. We could keep expanding on the edible garden -- hell, we could add grapes and more berries!

It was like the sun came out on a cloudy day. I don't know why I couldn't see the things he saw. I know I'm not particularly spatially oriented, so it was so interesting to see someone who is thinking about my space. And I'm not saying we'll take every suggestion or in just the way he suggested. I'm going to call up a contractor and ask for some of his ideas, share some of the ideas the realtor had, and start making a (long-term) plan for some of those changes. Some of them may not be made at all -- There's a better-than-average chance Sweetie will never need a different office space. But there are a lot of ways to make this place work for us, and I am so happy for being able to see that now. In fact, I'm re-energized in terms of getting this place in shape for US.

Well, I meant to be brief, and I wasn't. I meant to save room for some Zadie pictures, and I haven't. I have to get to bed. But take care, y'all, and thanks for listening.

Being a teacher

A little over a week ago, a former student posted on my Facebook wall that she was glad I had taught them about magical realism -- she was the only student in her college class who didn't look confused.

On Monday, a different student commented with a similar sentiment -- she found my web site so helpful that she was still using it to write college essays.

On Wednesday, I got in the middle of a fight between gigantic football players. It turned into somewhat of a brawl, with other kids jumping in every time we got one or two kids under control. It finally got settled, but left me with my heart racing and a minor bruise. And of course, the kids in the period immediately following found it very difficult to settle down and get back to learning.

The same day, I had to write a kid a referral because he just would not shut up and let me teach. It was my first of the year, because I can usually handle shit myself, but he went into it knowing where he intended it to head, and there was a point at which i had no choice but to send him out. It pissed me off, though. And I was already pissed at him because I'd planned a lesson specifically designed to help kids pass the exit exam. In my other class, there are 6 kids who have yet to pass, but in that class, it was just him. I was trying to help him personally, and he could give a rat's ass.

On Thursday, the principal stopped me to ask if I was okay after the incident the day before. I was in the middle of answering when we actually heard another fight start around the corner. We both jumped in and grabbed a girl each, but they were hard to get apart because one had a handful of the other's hair. There have actually been four fights in the last two days.

I posted about it on Facebook, because it was personally on my mind, but ever since, I rather wished I hadn't. My school has a largely undeserved bad reputation, and I always try to speak of it in positive terms in public.

Yesterday after school, we had a department meeting in which one of my colleagues argued passionately against adding more books that marginalized our students of color. I was so proud of her for speaking her mind. Of course, at the same meeting we were informed that we should be discussing ways to address the achievement gap for African-American males at our school. I asked, knowing full well the answer, whether that was the same achievement gap they were having all around the nation. The answer was affirmative, and I said sweetly, "Well good, I hope we can solve that, then."

Friday I had a lot to do, and I needed to make copies. (English teachers at my school have to copy 30 page packets for every student every 3-4 weeks. It's a lot of copies.) We have to use these things called Rizograph machines, because it's too much of a load for regular copiers. I replaced one master roll, rewound one other master roll twice, peeled off and threw away two masters, replaced one ink cartridge, and dealt with two error messages, and ended up using a machine that SAID it was on auto-process, but really wasn't, so I kept having to stop it so it would make a new master. It took my whole prep, so I stayed an hour after school to get the rest of my work done.

That morning, just before school, a student asked, "Do you remember that letter you wrote for me for the scholarship?" I said sure, thinking perhaps she needed another copy. No; she wanted to tell me she'd gotten the scholarship. I risk losing cool points by admitting that I pumped both fists in the air and my feet flew off the ground.

I don't think all these things have anything in common other than that teaching is a very different job than some other jobs. I know there are others with great rewards and with great risks and frustrations, but it feels like a unique endeavor sometimes. I guess that's why it hurts my feelings so much when newspaper commenters insult us. They could never understand.