Last week I stayed late at school to answer questions about the final exam. Like every single study session I've ever been to, this one evolved into a big chatfest. I didn't mind, though, because I hardly ever get a chance to know my students well. It's interesting finding out about all their different backgrounds.
All three of the last remaining students married young. Melissa and Dana married their husbands at age 20, while Andrew married his prom date because she got pregnant. Years later (10 for Andrew), they're all going strong. Take that, divorce statisticians!
I don't know how the subject came up, but - oh wait, I remember now. Melissa was talking about how her religiously conservative parents gave her grief when she eloped with her non-Christian husband. They wrote horrible letters to her, made her cry, practically disowned her. Thanks to them, she now equates all religion with her parents, which is to say she utterly loathes it. Andrew is also scornful of religion, possibly due to his wife's Catholicism. He thinks it's only good to help his kids have a moral foundation. But he thinks pretty much all Christians are hypocrites. He can't understand why they've come down so hard on gays and oppose welfare increases. They summarized their opinions of Christians as "judgmental bigots."
Now that hurts. I didn't tell them I was one of those so-called bigots because I didn't want them to feel bad and then try to kiss up to me afterward. But it's distressing to see what an impact our failures have on people we never even knew. We have distorted Jesus and God so much that they see us in place of Him. Jesus was all about love and forgiveness; we're all about criticism and strong-arming. Jesus protected, helped, and changed a prostitute instead of putting her in jail or kicking her out of town.
Now, thanks to us, people who need Him most don't even want to take a fair glance at Him. Usually it doesn't register with us because we don't know them. But when they're sitting in front of you expressing their hurts, you realize just how much more we need to do through Him and for Him. And there are many more out there just like them. Forgive us, Father, for we know not what we do.
It's never too early to become addicted to the computer.
Even if all you do is "color" by moving the mouse around.
His favorite phrase of the week: Weeda Wabby (Reader Rabbit).He's been saying otay a lot, like I tell him to turn off the light (his favorite chore), and he says,"Otay, Mommy." But then the other day, he copied his sister and said okay.
I immediately corrected him, and when it didn't take, I made the whole family say otay over and over again until he finally copied them and went back to otay. Whew, disaster averted.
Last night, after I said something to the husband, my older daughter said,"Mommy, why do you call Daddy Babe? He's not a pig." "All men are pigs, dear."
Good to know I haven't lost my touch.
The big news here in Orange County is that it's finally raining. Not just a few drops but a nice drenching rain. It's been a glorious weekend. Friday we went to Chuck E. Cheese with our best friends. By the time the kids are grown, I will be a Skeeball Master. Saturday we went to our friends' house for dinner and The Dark Knight while the kids watched Tinkerbell. Is it just me or are movies getting more violent? Even if the actual scene is not shown, just the thought of something like a knife cutting through a face is so grotesque, I had to hide my eyes. I don't know if it's because the Joker was so overhyped or what, but I didn't really find his performance that amazing, just extremely murderous. Disturbing characters are a regular feature of popular fiction books (who wants to read about the average Joe?), which is one reason I stopped reading them (the other being no time), but I'm not used to them on the big screen. Really, I'm not used to anything on the big screen except Disney characters and Pixar animation.To top off our weekend, we went Christmas caroling last night with our neighbors. We all gathered at someone's house with a bunch of cookies, fortified ourselves with cookies and cocoa, then went around the neighborhood knocking on people's doors. The kids had a lot of fun singing and running around with their neighborhood friends. The baby, who really did not know the lyrics, basically went for an evening stroll, jumping on fallen leaves and lagging behind whenever possible. Caroling around the neighborhood made me feel like we stepped into an Andy Griffith show or something. I can now honestly say, ah the good ole days.
Afterward, we went back to the same house and played some Guitar Hero. Then we collected our share of cookies and hiked on home.
This week promises to be even better: helping out with school parties, hitting Toys R Us, sending out a bunch of cards to people we'll probably never see again, giving final exams and grades, and finally starting on gift shopping. Oh Joy!
Recently I experienced an unexpected burst of ambition for work. I've never been very driven regarding my career (what career) so it took me by surprise. I am surrounded by full-time faculty who teach the same classes every semester and only need to put minimal time in for prep. That means for their full-time salary, whatever that is, they only have to work 20-30 hours a week. On top of that, they have very flexible schedules. I know this one guy who only has classes on Mondays and Wednesdays. Granted he has to teach from 9 am to 10 pm with only short breaks, but he's got 3 whole days off, and it's not like the work is very strenuous. Nice gig if you can get it, right?
Even worse, I interact mostly with the other part-timers who are mostly young and hungry. They've just graduated, are unmarried or childless, and are looking to work their way up to a full time position. They actually want to do time-consuming things like build their own website, grade extra credit reports, and search online to see if the reports were plagarized. Being around these people got to me. I started thinking, maybe I should do more, maybe I should sit in on the Anatomy class so that I can teach it (never mind that I've never taught it and Anatomy is notoriously hard). And how hard could it be to be a full-timer?
It's odd that I would dread all the work I already have to do and then want more of it.
Right in the midst of this obsession, I had an interesting conversation with a friend. She taught elementary school in an excellent school district for 10 years before quitting to stay at home with her kids. She told me that her most well-adjusted kids were almost always the ones who had a parent at home. The other kids were not bad necessarily; these kids were just a little more secure, and it showed in the way they handled themselves at school. After a few years, she could predict fairly accurately which kids had working moms and which ones did not.
These days I'm still very ambitious about my work. In fact, I'm willing to put in everything and anything for my work. Lucky for me my work subjects are so cute, fun, and huggable.
Dear Santa,
How are you? I can't wait until Cristmas. I hope I can see you on Cristmas Eve Night. I have a book about you. It tells me a lot about you. I wonder how the reindeer, the elves, and Mrs. Claus are doing. I would like to be a elve. I bet it is fun but also hard work. The book told me that. There is going to be a few more letters under this one. One for each reindeer, one for Mrs. Claus, and one for every single elve. Please take all the letters home. Please read the elves letter and the reindeers letters to them.
Your friend,
R
It's not a worm nor a snake. It's not even one of the kids' toys. It's an amphibian called a caecilian. They're found on and in the ground in tropical regions. It's sad that hardly anyone knows of them, which is why I'm sticking this picture up.
