Clarification

For those of you (ahem, John) who were confused by my previous hints and allusions... I blog here now. pseudostoops.wordpress.com. The end.

Lies, damned lies, and statistics

Did you know that 65% of bloggers who say they're quitting really don't? And that 90% of statistics are made up on the spot? Hope you'll come on over.

snurfle

When I was working with kids, I got sick a lot. Any germ, virus, or bacterial infection that wafted into the 5th grade classroom would, without exception, find its way into my body. It got to the point where, from December to April, I either was developing a cold, had a cold, or was recovering from a cold WITHOUT A SINGLE DAY OFF. I remember coming to law school one of the happiest surprises was discovering that I could, in fact, stay well! For weeks at a time! It was amazing! But with this new-found healthiness comes the corresponding feeling of utter wretchedness when you are suddenly sick after you've gotten used to feeling well. When I had The Cold That Would Not End I just kind of got used to it- you can't very well lie in bed and moan about your sorry state for four months, after all. But now that being sick is a rarer occurrence, I am a total full-fledged sick wimp. After John's bout with strep throat a couple of weeks ago I suppose I should have been expecting it, but I have been absolutely knocked flat by an EAR INFECTION. Seriously? Who gets ear infections as an adult? Me, apparently. Two days before I'm supposed to fly to L.A. for the holiday. The doctor made a very pinched concerned face when I told her I was flying Saturday morning and said "well, take this nose spray and a sudafed before the flight and pray it goes okay." Reassuring!

I think I missed some key junior high peer learning phase

I am phenomenally lazy when it comes to certain things about my appearance- makeup especially. I'm able to muster the will to put on mascara maybe three days a week, and powder/lipgloss/eyeliner are even rarer. To give you an idea of how seriously limited my makeup use is, my sister gave me a Bobbi Brown lipstick for Christmas ("you could look so pretty if you wore makeup!) in 1999 and I still use it. (Please don't tell me that's gross. I know it's gross, but have you seen how expensive makeup is at department stores? Highway robbery!) Sometimes, though, seemingly at random, I'll feel an impulse to put on makeup before I go somewhere. I just can't determine any pattern to it. I definitely forgot to put on a stitch of makeup, even concealer to, um, conceal my racoonish undereye circles, when I went on my most recent job interview. When I went to teach a high school class about contracts, though? You'd better believe I wore powder. And I went on our anniversary dinner to a nice restaurant totally au naturel, but Friday? Friday I put on full makeup- mascara, powder, carmex- to go to the DENTIST. The dentist! The man who propped my mouth open with a contraption involving several wires, a metal hinge, and several wads of cotton so he could drill my tooth! Because apparently, no matter how deformed I look with the dental apparatus in my mouth, I'd better make sure the man can't see my enlarged pores. Sheesh.

Not surprising, exactly, but still funny.

Diversity in education is a slippery concept sometimes. I taught in a largely Mexican community, where we dutifully celebrated Cesar Chavez along with Martin Luther King. I grew up around Chicago, where we celebrated Casimir Pulaski Day (for the war hero, not the Sufjan Stevens song) in addition to President's Day. Black History Month was an annual observance in both schools. We tried. And yet, for all our efforts at supporting racial and ethnic diversity, schools have an awfully hard time giving up Christmas. As a kid I sang my heart out in an elementary school musical version of "The Nutcracker," and where I taught, our "Winter Program" was filled with singalong versions of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" and (for diversity's sake,) "Feliz Navidad." (Because I'm an elitist separation of church and state jerk, my class sang the 50-state song. Because it was such an accomplishment that they had learned all 50 states in alphabetical order and they were so freaking cute when they sang it. We drew maps to use as props. There were also jazz hands. It was awesome.) I can sort of understand why it's tempting to keep Christmas alive in public schools. Particularly for younger kids who observe the holiday, it's a wondrous time of year, and teachers are suckers for seeing wonder on kids' faces. Plus, the crafts opportunities? are amazing. But the fact of the matter is, it's exclusionary. The "but 95% of the kids here celebrate it so it's not a big deal" argument is, in my book, even worse, because it's saying that it's okay to exclude as long as it's just one or two kids who have to be "different," and really, isn't that isolation the worst kind of left-outedness? It drives me a little bonkers every time I see a school decorated in all Santa and candy canes, or hear about a Christmas pageant being performed at the elementary school. I understand how it happens, and I'm not taking this up as a personal crusade, but it gets under my skin. I am not a scrooge, however- I do actually enjoy the celebrating of Christmas in non-state-sponsored ways. So driving through utterly heinous traffic yesterday, I switched the radio over to the "all Christmas music all the time" station in the hope that a little "carol of the bells" would allow me to forget that I had been sitting on the same patch of asphalt for 25 minutes without moving. Right as I switched over, I heard the deejay say this: "And I know I just have to give a warm holiday hello to the Diversity Office at the Chicago Public Schools, who emailed me to tell me that all they listen to, all day from Thanksgiving to New Years, is the Christmas Lite- thanks for listening!" Ah. So "religious diversity" must be handled by a different department. I give up.

gifting is strange

When you have found something to give to someone on your holiday list that is within your target spending range and which you think the recipient might really enjoy, and then you go to the store and discover that it has been marked down 50%, is your reaction: a) joy, as in "wow, sweet, I got exactly what I planned to get for this person at half the cost!" or b) a pang of ambivalence, as in "hm, I now I feel oddly obligated to go find something additional to give to this person so I'm not spending less on them than on my other family members"? Because I had reaction "b" today, and try as I might to fight it I find myself surfing amazon to try to find something in the $20 range to add to what before I would have considered a perfectly reasonable, even slightly generous, gift. Odd. Does this happen to anyone else?

Ugh. Help?

Sigh. It seems that the combination of posting every day in November, taking finals the first week in December, and finding out I didn't get the job I was hoping for last week has left me feeling a little deflated. And out of material. Things I actually considered blogging about: - Clementines. (I mean, yum, but seriously not worth a blog entry) - My new garlic press. - Getting all our Christmas shopping done in one! afternoon! - Scheming about how I can get my in-laws to love me by cooking The Most Delicious Christmas Dinner Ever. (Roast chicken, parmesan mashed potatoes, green beens, tarte tatin with salted butter caramel. Classic, but with a twist. Love me in-laws! Please?) - My need for a hand cream that lasts longer than 20 minutes. - crunching my car against a post in a cringe-inducing, many-body-panel-scratching, terribly-expensive-to-fix kind of way Yet none of these seems to capture the imagination enough to merit a several-paragraph entry. But! But! I need advice! Since I didn't get this job I was hoping for, I am faced with two choices: a) continue looking for public interest jobs, which may or may not be fruitful, and may take quite a while, with the very real possibility that John and I would both be not bringing home any bacon for a period in Summer-Fall 2007, but which also presents the possibility of soul-fulfilling, meaningful, underpaid work, OR b) taking the open offer at law firm, which has the advantage of being both secure and lucrative. Thoughts?