Hearts Michelle

Dear People who Schlepp Through My House,

First of all, I know there are faults to this house; I’ve lived in it for 5 years. I know that the flooring needs to be replaced, that there is an ugly apartment complex across the street, and that my shady yard results in large patches of dirt where grass does not grow.

I also know that the current wisdom in real estate is that the house should look like people live here, but not really. What I mean by that is…our house should look immaculate and “sparkling”, our closets should be sparse, and personal effects should be removed. At this point, however, I am rebelling against conventional real estate wisdom. My house is clean and tidy. My closets are packed with the clothes we wear or the toys Allee plays with. Every room contains pictures of my life with my family. I’m sorry, potential buyer, but we are real people living here. I have a real life 4 year old who likes to play and make messes.  I don’t have the time or energy to make my house a vanilla palatte so that you can come back and put color and life where someone would have me remove it. Maybe I will find a burst of energy or become desperate enough to purge us out of this house…but not yet.

Can’t you see through all of this and picture yourself in this adorable house? I know I spoke of the defects before…but let me tell you of some wonderful things about this house: the back yard is always filled with beautiful birds…families of them…and every single time I got outside I see a butterfly. If you are a biker, you can literally jump on the trace and ride for miles. Our neighbors, even the apartment dwellers, are amazing. Everyone looks out for everyone else.  The interior of the house is comfortable; it keeps us warm in the winter and cool in the summer. It has witnessed the lives of two people merge into 3. It has hosted many gatherings of friends and family. It wants a good family to come and love it like we have. This house will make someone really happy one day…can that someone be you?

Many major events happening…too overwhelming to write much…

• Jimmy’s new job: it’s closer, pays more, and will allow him to learn more about web development. the benefits rock!
• We have lost our minds and put our house on the market
• Allee turned 4, OMG!!!
• Summer is over half way over: sucks!

Briefly:

Jimmy’s new job is a happy coincidence. I think the process started years ago and ended last week, when the company offered him an outstanding job opportunity. We hope it is a sign of many great opportunities to grow and move up in a big company.

Our house: I’m sure there will be more posting as the months go by and nothing happens…but basically, we decided to see if we could sell our house and find a larger space. Could we choose a more horrendous time to do this? No…however, we could end up purchasing a much larger house for a relatively small price tag, if we can unload our house.  I didn’t anticipate how stressful this entire process would be…ugh. In the span of a week I have been on an emotional roller coaster…feeling hopeful, resigned, optimistic, pessimistic, exhausted and back to resigned. It’s really okay if we don’t sell the house right now but it is so easy to get caught up in the hope of moving. I’ve looked at a few houses on-line but I’m trying to avoid getting too hopeful that one of those could be ours because who knows when/if we will sell and what, if anything worthwhile, will be available to purchase.

One thing I do know about all of this is that our house has never been so clean on a daily basis. Exhausting

Allee is 4:I have so many thoughts…I look at my beautiful daughter and marvel at how lucky I am. For all of her willful stubbornness, there is kindness and love. For all of her bossiness, there is generosity. It’s been amazing to watch her grow and learn and to teach us how to be better human beings. I love her quirks. I often think about how neat it is to see the personality traits that were evident at birth morph and grow with her. It makes me think that these things will always be with her as she continues to grow..how crazy is that? That the core you is there from birth…there will be additions and subtractions, but who you are is already there…CRAZY.

I have a 4 year old.

Summer: How can it be that my summer vacation is closer to ending than beginning? Where did it all go?? Wait, I know the answer to that…to work, to worrying about whether to put the house on the market, to cleaning, and traveling…to being a mom and wife…that’s where my summer has gone.

My sister takes the bar in a week. She’s nervous but I’m not…she’s going to do great…Go get ‘em, Claire!

Allee has several imaginary friends:2-T (a tiny girl who can fit in the palm of Allee’s hand) and Tree (2-T’s brother–also a small person) and more recently: Taffy, Taffy, and Taffy (all 3 siblings–2 girls and a boy).

2-T and Tree have been with us now for about 2 years, off and on. The Taffy siblings arrived last week because 2-T went on baycation (vacation) –I think to the beach or Disney World–definitely stayed in a hotel.

So, last week Allee and I were playing a lively game of Zingo and who should arrive? Two of the Taffy kids. So we invited them to play with us. We played 4 games. I lost every time–legitimately lost (not just playing nice so others can win, lost). Guess who I lost to EVERY single time? One of the Taffy’s. Now I ask you: How does one lose, I mean REALLY lose, to the imaginary friends??  It’s okay, though. Jimmy played with us after work that night. He lost to a Taffy kid too. HA!

Allee and Alison had their first swimming lessons last week, with Anna (a former student of mine).  The girls had fun…until the dreaded underwater part came. You see, neither of our girls particularly cares for going under the water. Since they’ve been old enough to be in water Ren and I have been cautious (probably overly cautious). We’ve always made sure that they understood the dangers of pools. In retrospect, this was dumb. Now, rather than having a healthy fear of drowning, they have an unhealthy fear of ever going under. Poor Anna, she has her work cut out for her. Every time she put Alison under, Alison would shreik (in tones higher than the highest Soprano opera singer) for long periods of time, then she would do that whole gasping deeply for air just so that she could punish us again in full force shreiking. Allee wasn’t as emotive but she definitely did NOT care for water dripping in her eyes.

The second lesson was better for Allee. If you recall, I’ve spoken of her competitive nature and so I just challenged her to show Alison how to be a ‘big girl’ and go under without crying. It’s really wrong to tap into her raw competitive spirit like that, but it worked. Allee was very pleased to show off.

This weekend Jimmy, Allee, and I were invited to a 2 year old’s birthday party.  The party was at my aunt’s house…a pool party. Anyone who knows me knows my unencumbered revulsion to wearing a swimsuit in front of people who love me. Imagine my thought process as I swam around the pool surrounded by STRANGERS. To make it worse, they were BEAUTIFUL strangers. Very beautiful strangers. These women were the type who fit into their size 2 jeans a week after giving birth. But they weren’t just toothpicks, they glowed. They had perfectly plucked eyebrows, coiffed hair, shiny lipstick, and manicured nails.  Many of them could’ve easily been a featured mom in Mommy Vogue. It would’ve been really easy to hate these people, but the more I listened to them interact with each other and their children, the more I realized that they were equally beautiful on the inside too. It was a nice revelation.

Rewind about 4 days. I’m walking out of PAC (a gym) and I see these two little old ladies. I would guess that they were both in their mid to late 80’s. As I walked past them I had to grin. They were both headed into the gym wearing slacks and ironed blouses, tasteful makeup, styled hair (the kind that you have to sit under the dryer to achieve), and long red nails. Before I reached them, I smelled them. A delicate, floral scent.

I loved the idea of them. 2 gals going to work out at the gym. Most likely they were there catching up on the gossip with their fellow Y.E.S. (Young Energetic Seniors) friends, and maybe scoping out the cute male members. I loved that they were dressed nicely, even to go to the gym. 

Something about women of that generation is so special to me. Those women, or women like them, saw so much change in their lifetimes. They lived through wars, the Great Depression, hippies, technology, and maybe even their husbands. I know all of the old movies I’ve seen romanticize that era, but I want to believe the stories those films show and tell.  I want to believe that an era of kindness and morality existed. I want to believe that there was a time when people were hopeful and not jaded. I want to believe it was a time of innocence and sweet dispositions.

This week I saw people at the beginning of life and people at the end of life. They were beautiful.

I’m not sure who is more frustrating:

• our legislators who voted in a 100%+ raise OR
• the govenor who is too scared to piss them off by vetoing it.

Puhlease. Can someone in government just GROW some and learn how to say no? Ugh. I love all the rhetoric flying around the capitol right now. I love how politicians think we are too stupid to see through their shenanigans. What I hate is that they get away with it every stinkin’ time. How is that? It’s not like this pay raise went under the radar. We ALL knew about it, protested it, and yet nothing really happened. It pisses me off. Who do these people think they are working for, exactly, and what do they think they’ve done to merit this type of raise? AND!, where do they think this money is coming from?

The more I think about politicians and their empty promises, the more furious I feel. I know government isn’t perfect. I know that I idealize the way things should be. I know that legislating must be more complicated than I could ever know. HOWEVER, I would just like, FOR ONCE, a group of HONEST, THINKING people to use some COMMON SENSE and do the right thing when it comes to governing our cities, states, countries and world. We can’t ALL have EVERYTHING all of the friggin time.

UGHHHHH.

I’m too much in my head. Like, all the time.

For instance, for about a million years I’ve pondered, dreamed, discussed, bemoaned, accepted, and rejected ideas about our housing situation. I invariably go from feeling grateful for having a home to feeling frustrated with its small quarters. Anyone who has ears has heard me discuss my hopes and fears about what I want to happen with this house.

At the end of the school year I decided it was time to DO something, ANYTHING, about our housing. I’ve taken very small baby steps and I know that if I don’t move a little faster the school year will be here and all the momentum I have will grind to a halt. I know this and yet I move at a snail’s pace.

For months now I’ve dreamed up every scenario possible about what could happen with our house–we could ready the house to sell and it doesn’t, or we could sell it and have no place to go, or we could pour a lot of work in the house and only have buyers who want us to do x,y, and z before they’ll sign a contract…I could go on and on, but you get the picture. The weird thing is that I’m okay with renovating what we have if we can’t sell it…it’s not like we’re in desparate straits or  we have 90 days to move or anything like that.

All of these overwhelming, anxiety producing, cyclic thoughts have hindered my forward progress, I think. So, yesterday I just unloaded them all on Jimmy and felt so much better. It made me think, though, about how many times I’ve let fear or ‘what ifs’ completely stop me in my tracks. I used to think my ability to think through things and try to look at things from all sides was a helpful tool in my decision making process, and to some extint it is, but I’m beginning to realize how many moments I’ve missed because I’m too anxious or afraid to make a spontaneous decision. I know myself well enough to foresee that I will never be a completely spontaneous decision maker but I do hope that knowing how paralyzing and momentum-stopping all the ‘what ifs’ can be, will allow me, every once in a while, to just go for it.

Today I took Allee to the park. It was blisteringly hot. Within SECONDS we were both flushed with the heat that was steaming off the play equipment. Allee didn’t seem to notice but I did. I was scouting out shadows and shade and as the sun moved the shadows, I moved. After about an hour of feeling the sunscreen lose its battle with the sun, I decided to move our fun elsewhere. I thought hard about a place that would be equally appealing (to Allee) but with more shade. I took a deep breath and began with the best place first: “Allee, it’s HOT, how ’bout going to the bookstore with me?” 

Minutes later we were in the car and on our way.

I knew that suggesting the bookstore would probably cost me something…but that was okay, I had a gift card. What I didn’t realize was that an hour and half later I would STILL be in the children’s section because Allee was paralyzed with indecision–”But Mommy, I can’t decide which one I want…” I kept trying to convince her that we could always come back later for other books…it didn’t work. I finally had to threaten to leave without ANY books and that did it. 5 children’s books later and we were on our way home.

Somehow I managed to walk out of there without a book for myself…because I couldn’t decide which one I wanted. I convinced myself to peruse the dozens of untouched books on my nightstand that are in need of a good reading. What I want is a good beach read…surely amongst the summer reading for school, the education books, and the daily blogs, I have something to read that is light and fun, and satisfying, right?

My husband is pretty amazing. 

Last night, he took Allee on a walk so that she could find Roblynn and me walking in the neighborhood. I know he was tired, hungry, and probably desiring a minute of quiet solitutude, but instead he put on tennis shoes and walked a 1/2 mile, with Allee on his shoulders, so that she could ‘walk’ with the girls. Then, he brought Allee home, prepared her dinner, and made her a delicious chocolate shake for dessert.

Later he washed the dishes and wrangled Allee into bed while I caught up with our sister-in-law.

This is just a fragment of one evening. He does crap like this all the time. I often refer to him as Mr. Wonderful because that is who he is. He is so kind and generous and considerate, funny and smart. He’s such a good dad.

I know there must have been a few people who questioned my decision to date a boy with blue-green hair, in a band, not attending college, who appeared aloof (but was really just shy). I’m so glad I did. He’s got a heart of gold and he shares it with us every day.

Lucky us!

The thing about teaching is that I’m a slave to it–partially because I have a craving to know more about my job–how to do it better, more efficiently and more effectively (and because of this, I am constantly reading, thinking, discussing, dreaming about how to do my job), but partially because even though I make more this year than I made last year, I still work for slave wages, IMHO. Because teachers in Louisiana get paid so poorly, I feel forced to earn my keep by doing extra teaching stuff on the side. This year my extra stuff consisted of teaching a video conferencing class, being a LaTAAP mentor, and, currently, recreating my AP class for an online version that will be used next year. My summer, thus far, has consisted of avoiding work on the online class and thinking about how I’m avoiding the work–with a little actual work thrown in the mix.  It’s not that the work is all that difficult, it’s just time consuming and annoying to have to think about work when all I want to do is hang out with Allee or just read and catch up on all the shows on our DVR.

I’ve probably worked a combined 10 hours in the last 2 days and I have at least that much more to do before I can proof it and submit my time sheets.

I shouldn’t complain–it’s money.  I guess I just resent the idea that many people think of teachers as worthless, or that we are people who can’t do anything else.  I also grit my teeth when I encounter the old ‘well you get a lot of time off with summers and holidays’ argument. Um, hello, I had nothing to do with the way our year is planned out (what employee does??) and would work (for more pay) whenever they told me to.

I happen to think that my profession is one of the most important jobs there is to have. Ever. In the world. We wrangle 100+ teenagers into desks, provide them with an opportunity to think about concepts they might never have been exposed to if not for a teacher, and cheer them on as they blossom into productive citizens of the world.

Unfortunately our government does not see this as a career that deserves financial compensation. Unfortunately a few yahoos on every school campus can ruin the reputation of every teacher everywhere because of poor decision making, lack of intelligence, or the lack of desire to be the best teacher on any given day. These assholes create a perception about my job that pisses me off –not only because it creates a generalized misperception about most of us, but also because I end up having to fight that misperception in every class, with many parents, and with most people out in the community.

And, so here I am. Pondering my work. Loving my work. Wondering if those nonteachers of the world will ever get what this job is and what it means to do it.