Wednesday, December 28, 2005

iPod Update Please


These are the CDs I got for Christmas. I am listening over and over to get my bearings and figure out what I like best. I also got Heaven Must Have Sent You From Above, The Holland Dozier Holland Story which is essentially the story of my adolescence.

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Addendum to Christmas

Click here for an action shot of Mr. Vacuum's favorite gift.
(this is an excuse for me to try out a link to a short quicktime movie.)

Monday, December 26, 2005

Merry Christmas



It was so warm that we needed to open the windows to have this fire.




Funniest kid gift. Mr. Clean was crazy about the vacuum cleaner.




Most fun adult gift. People read out loud from this all night.




It was a calm and quiet cocktail hour.




Stephen reads Neruda in Spanish in remembrance of our nephew, Andrew, whom we lost this year.

Saturday, December 24, 2005

No, No, No, No, No

Day 5 and 6 of anti-vacation sort of epitomize my issues with the holiday season. Enforced cheer is oppressing me.
Yesterday was VERY bad.
Daughter Mactechwitch was trying to buy a house on my block. I would have loved this, really, to have baby Mactech around and so close all the time. We all spent the ENTIRE day yesterday on the phone with despicable real estate agents and kookie owner and owner children-in law.
Outcome: They decided they (the sellers) were "more comfortable" with the other bidder, a doctor, even though daughter Mactech's bid was higher and she probably has double the income of this "doctor." I don't get it?
This will be very hard for me when these "people" move on my block. God help them if they have children who attend The Burpie Cow Wow School.
I didn't get dinner on the table until very late and it wasn't very good. My heart wasn't in it. At the table, my mother talked for two hours about her white-water rafting trip in September. It's a good story but it's about the fourteenth time I've heard it. Didn't get to bed until midnight. Baby slept over but he was up at 4:00 AM. For two bleary hours we scuttled around the kitchen making a big mess and watching Sesame Street videos as he intoned "No no no no no..." to all of my suggestions in every voice over which he has command. I got him back to sleep at around 6:15 in my bed with a bottle and we both slept until 9:00 but I'm feeling unrested and restless.
Everyone is out shopping now and this is how I'm wasting my time...writing this.
Tonight the family rounds begin and probably the fifteenth and sixteenth telling of the rafting trip story. We decided on catering from La Villa – so no cooking tonight. Tomorrow I get up early to start the prep for the big feast.
I think I'll try to bake some cookies right now. Maybe that will be the antidote.

Thursday, December 22, 2005

The Anti Vacation: Day Four




And Transit Strike: Day Three.

8:00 AM, Fifth Avenue, Park Slope.
A Volvo SUV carries seven passengers rather comfortably. Some of us have had the good fortune of hitching a ride in this neighbor's vehicle for the past three days. It's a different combination of travelers each day, which is interesting – a different pressing need to get into town. The flip side is that everyone has been able to forego work for all or part of at least one of the last three days. So how important is the work we all do? Obviously not so important that we HAVE to be there everyday.

Things to do today:
• Buy some food today as the family begins arriving tonight.
• Make sleeping arrangements for the guests. (I can't find my Aerobed. Did I leave it in the summer house?)
• Wrap the presents I have.
• Hang a sign for FedEx and UPS with delivery instructions for all the packages I'm expecting in the next 24 hours. The chances are about 1 in 10 that I'll actually be in the house when they arrive and both my doorbells are broken anyway. I've already made one painful trip this week to the UPS depot on Foster Avenue where I waited on a long line in a cold facility (needing to pee the entire time) for a package whose delivery I missed.
• Go to the bank and withdraw an obscene amount of cash to get through the next four days.

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

The Anti Vacation: Day Three


Mr. MacTech... left at 8:00 AM again this morning with six other commuters in a friend's SUV. The traffic was worse than yesterday but they still made it to midtown in a reasonable amount of time. I spent about two hours shopping on the internet after they left. I was pretty pleased with the fact that most of the things I needed to buy offered FREE last minute overnight shipping. I'm expecting a pile of stuff tomorrow! After "shopping" I took myself up the street to Barnes & Nobles (instead of Amazon.com) to buy some books. I had them wrapped in the store because, hey, no lines. I ate lunch by myself on Seventh Avenue. Passing a toy store near 11th Street, I spied a toy Miele canister vacuum cleaner – perfect for Mr. Clean so I bought that too.
Daughter MacTech... has her office party later at Top of the Rock. Mr. MacTech... plans to just work late tonight and then call it a week. I can sit for grand-baby MacTech...while his father crosses the water to do the Manhattan pick-up around 10:00 PM.
I like this anti-vacation so far. The only real wrinkle is this: My mother planned to take a bus from Toms River, NJ tomorrow for her annual "Christmas visit extravaganza." If the strike is still in effect it looks like I'll be wasting a day driving down there, picking her up and going to the Chinese buffet at the shopping center (she'll insist) and then driving back to Brooklyn.
I'm not complaining.

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

The Anti Vacation: Day Two




6:55 AM When the ringing phone is what wakes you in the morning it's probably not going to be a great day. OK transit strike.
I could keep my plan to shop in SOHO. I don't really mind the walk IN but I don't want to schlep packages back over the bridge. I will have to cancel my check-up appointment at Sloan Kettering this afternoon. Again I'm sure I could get in but I don't know about getting home. East 68th Street is a long way from Park Slope.
Mr. MacTech... is still in bed in denial but the phone call gets him up. The call is our daughter. She has a ride into Manhattan with room for one more.
8:25 AM The car with 5 passengers had no trouble slipping through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. The traffic on the West Side Highway is not bad at all. The Brooklyn Bridges, on the other hand, are jammed. Maybe they can hitch a ride downtown at the end of the day and I'll just drive through the tunnel and pick them up.

Monday, December 19, 2005

The Anti-Vacation: Day One

I have a whole week (sort of) off. I have a few meetings at school and two January workshops to plan but other than that I'm free. Free to stress out about the things I need done by Saturday.
The week before Christmas is a real pain. No matter how much I try to get things done ahead of time I'm always down to the wire. Another thing that bugs me is that I have never been capable of choosing the "one perfect gift" so I always resort to purchasing several "not quite perfect" ones.
I thought that Unwellness's tip about the Things I Want website (which I immediately commanded my nearest and dearest to employ) was going to save my ass this year but only my son has the tech skills to do a decent job of putting together the list. My daughter 's list had no pictures (she couldn't figure that part out and she was composing it at work so she didn't want to spend the entire afternoon on it) She did manage to list an Apple Store link but when I clicked it– it had timed-out. The only hint as to what she meant to ask for was the price $299. Must be an iPod, right? Well, I hate to break the news to her but she'll really need a personal computer to go with that iPod. You know the old saying, "The shoemaker's children never have shoes."
My son's girlfriend's links (and her list is huge) didn't always go to the right items but before I realized that fact I had bought her the bottle of perfume I thought she wanted. Correct brand – Trish McEvoy– but wrong fragrance – Blackberry Vanilla instead of Snowdrop & Crystal Flowers. She's getting the Blackberry Vanilla because it's already here. I guess I could run out and purchase a case of Sugar Free Red Bull – that was on her list too (can you believe it?) She also had about seventeen pairs of boots. What do you suppose that's all about?
My mother let me know that she wanted a large jewelry box. I bought one, but our taste is so different I'll be shocked if she actually likes it.
My husband? He'd never do the list. But that's OK because I actually got him the perfect gift – a swiss coffee maker that works incredibly well. It makes a single cup of coffee, expresso, cappuchino at the press of a button and it uses (and grinds) regular beans so you don't have to use those detestable coffee pods. The only problem – I already gave it to him so there's nothing to put under the tree.
The baby's getting a table and chairs and a cashmere sweater.
His father, my son-in-law, I have NOTHING for him so the rest of the week I'll obsess about this. He did not do "the list" – I have no window into his aquisitive soul. I may resort to slippers and underwear. Pathetic.

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Why Teach?

Sometimes I just have to step back and remind myself how I got into this game.
As a kid, I liked school, I was good at it and so I figured I'd enjoy it just as much on the other side of the desk.

I like kids (in a good way, not a sick way) and kids like me.

I have a fairly high tolerance for noise, messiness, compromise and change.

I have leadership qualities but not necessarily STRONG leadership qualities (because then I'd either be an administrator or managing adults in a totally different job)

The vacations are good.

My school is a few short blocks from my home.

With really very few exceptions, I work with an overwhelmingly professional, talented and supportive group of people.

I have quite a bit of autonomy in my own classroom and I like that.

I don't need to worry too much about someone trying to steal my job.

I have a sense of humor. Kids are funny (usually a lot funnier than adults) and that can be very enjoyable.

I like the feeling when I see kids enjoying learning and doing things for themselves and knowing I had a hand in that process.

Things I have had to accept about this line work
The money will NEVER (in my lifetime) be good. If this is a problem one needs to develop (or marry) other sources of income or try for a job in a higher paying school or move to a less expensive place than NYC.
Very few school buildings in NYC are spacious, comfortable or well appointed. If this was very important to me I would find those schools and try to get a job there.
While the importance of teaching "you shape the future hog-wash" is always paid lip-service, I have never felt exactly respected, as a teacher, by society in general.
There will always be children in my classes whom I cannot reach, save, cure or make everything all right for. I have gotten over it. I know I'm just not that special. I can still work to create a positive productive environment for those "special cases" for at least part of every day or week.
Difficult parents are a real pain, more than difficult children. But I know rationally that very few parents create problems for me. Humor, avoiding defensiveness, avoiding resistance and just plain "avoiding" work well enough.
Every year there is at least one seemingly intolerable situation – but the great thing about school is that however bad it may seem, it ends in June.

I admit, I advised my own children NOT to become teachers.
One got an MBA and is a financial analyst the other is a corporate lawyer and while they make a significantly large amount of $ and perhaps (just perhaps) they are more highly valued by society they suffer all the other difficulties that I have "accepted" and they suffer them in spades. They have little of the autonomy, fun, (messiness and noise) that I have. They have far fewer days off. They can't walk to work and they deal with many truly insane and/or despicable people.

Sometimes you just have to step back and remind yourself.

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Gallery of Drinks 5



On Thanksgiving (at my sister and brother-in-law's house in NJ) I took several pictures. We then drove back to Brooklyn without my camera. I had left it on the dining room table. Things being as they are this time of year, it took more than a week to get the camera back. I had to wait for my niece to bring it into the city as she was coming for her third interview at the New Yorker. (I'll let you know if she gets the job)
Without my camera, my posts definitely lack punch.
It seemed pointless to do the turkey photo essay (I loved Listmaker's) at this point in December So I simply offer this one picture (and please click it to get a big close-up for the full effect) from my Thanksgiving, as a promise of what's to come as the alco-holidays descend upon us.
Peace on Earth and Cheers!