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>During the school year I use my crockpot at least once a week. It gives me a chance to cook from scratch, avoid preprocessed garbage, and add a few vegetables into our diets — all without struggling through a complicated process after teaching all day. I’ve added to my collection over the summer with help from Stephanie at A Year of Crockpotting and other crockpot aficionados in the blogosphere. The original version of this recipe came from Chris at Ordering Disorder, her blog at Work it! Mom. I’ve added a few twists to it, of course. (FYI: I don’t teach straight from the textbook, either.)
>I want to be at school working in my room. Instead, I’m stuck here.
Phone tag! I left messages for local pediatrician and for specialist in Milwaukee. Now I need to wait for their callbacks. My cell phone is nowhere to be found – I think I left in in Husband’s car when we came home from Miller Park last night. That puts out the trip to school and any other errands because I can’t. miss. these. calls.
So I wait. And wait. And get more and more restless.
I scavenged enough late summer rhubarb for rhubarb upside down cake, which led to adding lots of goodies to the compost bin. Upside down cake is delicious; compost now has a layer of eggshells (crushed), banana peels from lunch, and rhubarb leaves on top of half a dozen corn husks.
I cleaned the kitchen (again, still, again) and ran the dishwasher.
I want to weed the garden and pick beans, but I can’t leave the house for too long because the doctors’ offices might call. If I miss either call, it’ll take hours to get back in touch.
Errands that remain undone: post office, mail books for paperbackswap.com. Walgreens, to buy strapping tape because I used the last of it to mail the paperbacks.
Outdoor chores that remain undone: Pick beans. Pick tomatoes. cut off spotted leaves on tomato plants before blight spreads. Water hollyhocks and rhubarb and anything else that needs it. Weed south side of the house; clover is taking over. Harvest spinach. Clean spinach. Prepare spinach for crockpot or for freezer.
>While watching swimming:
Me: Who’s that?
La Petite: Michael Phelps.
Me: I didn’t recognize him. He looks like an ordinary guy.
La Petite: I recognized his torso.
Me: chokes on coffee
Amigo: It’s road racing now. I think it’s motorcycles.
Me: It’s actually bicycles.
(Remember, he’s visuallly impaired, can’t see the tv well)
Amigo: It sure sounds like a motorcycle.
Me: Oh, now they’re showing a different angle. The camera following the bikes is on a motorcycle. That’s the motorcycle you’re hearing.
Amigo: Okay, I knew there was a motorcycle.
>Getting kids ready for school requires a lot of errands, a lot of preparation. Getting a teacher ready for school requires a lot of errands and even more preparation.
So far, I’ve talked on the phone with the principal and my partner teacher in fourth grade. We can’t get into the rooms yet because the cleaning service hasn’t moved the furniture in after the Big Summer Clean. I’m moving into a new room, so it’ll take them a little longer to move mine. For the time being, I’m stuck working on things I can do at home.
I renewed my professional membership to the state reading association so I can continue to receive (and contribute to) their journal.
I bought the materials for my reading grant aimed at motivating less able readers (J. P., eat your heart out. This is the real world of motivating readers).
I organized a collection of materials for cut-outs and collages.
On a trip to Party America store, La Petite helped me pick out a few additions to my classroom decor. The theme is Treasure Your Learning, with an emphasis on treasure maps.
Tested vocabulary words are difficult for a lot of my students, so I created puzzles to help them practice and review these terms.
While watching Packer preseason football and Olympic swimming, I punched out a collection of bulletin board letters. I’ve owned these for years, and they’re still useful, even in this day and age of computer generated banners and Microsoft Publisher.
And when the cleaning staff is done and the furniture is back in the rooms, I’ll get my real “first day of school.” I hope it’s soon; there isn’t much time left before the kiddos show up!
The topic “The First Day of School” is a suggestion by Parent Bloggers Network in conjunction with Hanes.
And don’t forget to check out MidCentury Modern Moms; we’re posting on the Back to School theme as well, and our kiddos aren’t little cuties in ruffle socks and buckle shoes; they’re more likely to wear Old Navy jeans and Converse All-Star Sneakers. Well, at least mine is.
>We are the sandwich generation. I mistyped that the first time, and it came up on the screen as “sand wish.” Maybe that was a Freudian slip; I wish this “new normal” would settle down some.
Husband’s father, my father in law, has been in steadily declining health. He is now on a pump for painkillers, uses a wheelchair when he can and a walker when he can’t, but needs essentially 24/7 assistance. That assistance, of course, falls to his wife, my mother in law.
Husband and his brother are working together to help their parents handle the move to a senior living place, a set-up where both can live and FIL can get more of the help he needs. We really want them living closer to us so we can help out in an emergency; they now live two hours away. They seem willing but they’re stalled, so Da Boys and their wives (me and sister in law) are diving in feet first to get the move, well, moving.
On the other side of the sandwich is school starting. Amigo needs to get ready for the start of his school year. His new backpack sits in its unopened package while the old one with the broken zipper sits in the hallway waiting to be shipped for repair. La Petite, on the other hand, needs to pack and move to her apartment before her semester starts. We anticipate this will take two trips: one with the majority of her belongings, and one final move with her rabbits.
Making the whole thing stickier (PBJs are always sticky) are our workloads. Our jobs, remember those? The occupations that bring in paychecks, pay the bills, keep us from becoming another statistic in this recession of ours. Yes, those jobs. Husband’s job gets crazier with the onset of football season, mine with school starting.
In conclusion, the timing is awful.
Add to that Amigo’s health and basic living chores such as laundry, cooking, cleaning, and maybe sleeping now and then….
We’re the sandwich generation, and sticky or not, we need to get used to this situation as our New Normal.
This post is my entry in MamaBlogga’s Group Writing Project for August. If you’d like to enter, the entry form is here. Her theme this month is “The New Normal.”
And don’t forget that Thursday is my regular post at MidCentury Modern Moms. This week is Back to School Week with posts about our not-so-little darlings and their often atypical needs.
>Mystery #1: With such thriving, growing, spreading plants, why is there no squash? Scarcity of pollinators? Late development due to June storms?
Mystery #2: Who stole my green peppers? There were three almost ready to pick. I waited two days, then went out with my bucket, and found no sign of them No seeds, no half-eaten scraps, no toothmarks in the plants, nothing.
Mystery #3: This one I can solve. The peas are just not growing well. This picture shows why: the beans have taken all the sun and very effectively block the light from the poor little pea plants. Note to self: Next year, learn from this.
This is a daylight photo with flash. Um, yeah, the beans are dominating. I found this easy dessert recipe last week and decided to try it. The best thing about it is that all the ingredients are already in my kitchen! I didn’t have to rush out and buy anything special.
Quick and Easy Fruit Cobbler
1/2 stick butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup flour (or 1/2 cup all-purpose and 1/2 cup wheat flour)
1 1/2 tsps baking powder
1 cup milk
1 can canned fruit, undrained
1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
2. Melt butter in an 8×8 baking dish (can be done in the oven or microwave).
3. In a separate bowl, mix together sugar, flour, baking powder, and milk.
4. Pour batter over melted butter in baking dish.
5. Pour fruit over the batter.
6. Optional: For added crunch, crumble granola on top.
7. Bake for 45 minutes.
The only problem is this: I can’t find the original source to provide a link and give credit! If this is your recipe, please let me know in the comments or send me an email. I’ll make sure you get a link. If you know who originally posted it, please follow through so we can give credit where delicious credit is due.
>I still remember the day my principal asked to read the final project for my Masters program. She told me how impressed she was and how much she had loved reading it. I glanced around me to make sure no one was within earshot in the school hallway and then confided, “I enjoyed the research.” She laughed out loud and said, “I knew you would!”
When Mothertalk offered me a chance to read and review Mama PhD, I checked my mailbox eagerly for the advance copy. I knew I could share experiences with the professorial moms with essays in this collection, even though my “campus” is a fourth grade classroom.
Mama, PhD is not gender neutral, nor should it be. The women represented in this collection of essays have faced challenges because of their gender: because they were pregnant, because they were breastfeeding, because they were chief caregivers for their babies and children. The university teaching life is not designed for adaptations and accommodations. Its structure is strict, based on goals and requirements that in many cases were set up decades ago with men in mind.
Four sections sort the essays by focus and theme. “The Conversation” discusses a common dilemma: to have or not to have children. Essays in “That Mommy Thing” gather around balancing motherhood and work, specifically academic work. Part three, “Recovering Academic”, is the shortest of the four with stories of those who have left the fold, while “Momifesto” finishes the book.
The contributors to Mama, PhD write with clarity and passion. Essays are easy to follow, and despite (or perhaps due to) the advanced degrees of the writers, easy to understand. Emotions are never far below the surface; readers will feel the pain and the divisiveness the writers encounter.
The collection of essays relates the personal stories underlying the statistics: families affected by discrimination and bias. This makes reading Mama PhD both difficult and rewarding. I felt for the moms who couldn’t bend their families to meet academia’s rigidity, and I cheered for those who could bend academia to work for their families. I commiserated with those who struggled to find balance and ultimately gave up their careers for their families or decided not to have children in order to maintain their academic careers. Even as I identified with each writer, I found myself glad to be in K-12 public education rather than a higher level of teaching. Union representation helps avoid some of the pitfalls these mothers suffered. I get recognition when I publish, but the publish or perish pressure isn’t in my job description. Teaching effectively can be my focus and my sole accomplishment.
I hope that Mama, PhD will spread the word through the bastions of higher education: policies that marginalize women also marginalize our children, our future, and our present. The glass ceiling is cracking in the business world; the marble ceiling has shattered, but gender equity hasn’t cracked the ivory tower yet.
I received an advance copy of this book to review it for Mothertalk. I do not plan to keep it; I know it’ll make the rounds of my colleagues at school!
>Husband’s parents should move into a more accessible apartment.
Reality: FIL can’t handle moving chores physically, MIL remains in denial and won’t take any action until he “recovers.”
End result: Husband and his brother will end up shouldering the emotional burden while brother’s wife and I help out with the practical end of things.
The ‘rents should take the initiative and sign the papers on the senior condo.
Reality: Their denial has kept them from acting.
End result: We’ll have to confront them directly.
The parental units, as the situation gets more and more dicey, should prepare power of attorney with at least one of their sons.
Reality: Denial.
End result: We plan to sit down with them and ask some hard questions and push for answers, including papers. They can revoke these powers after the move if they wish, but for now at least, it would make paperwork and downpayments much easier.
We can’t control their actions or attitudes.
We can control our own reactions.
We can work together, brothers and wives, to come up with a plan, but we can’t control the parental units’ reactions to it or their choices. Here’s where the wisdom to know the difference will come in handy.
