I LOVE MY JOB .... SORT OF

I love my job.  Wait.  Let me rephrase that.

I love teaching.  Believe me, for all the shit teachers take from students, parents, the community, the media, and politicians, the only good thing about teaching is that so many of us suckers actually love it.

When I was little, my grandmother came to live with us.  A retired school teacher, she brought reading and music books with her.  Up until sixth grade,I dreamed of being a teacher.  I played school, made up rosters, pretended to teach classes in the guest room by passing out make-believe papers and scolding make-believe students.

I loved school until a few weeks into seventh grade when we moved from New Hampshire after six years back to Massachusetts.  I made friends here, but the school system compared to the one I attended in NH, didn't live up to its hype.  I regressed two years in math and two years in foreign language.  The  one advantage the Massachusetts schools did have was that they did not require French, as my elementary school did.  Lest you think I went to school in the boonies of North Country where French Canadian is a common second language, I attended school in southern New Hampshire where people speak English without any trace of accent.  We pronounced every letter of the alphabet and said words like "Parrrrrrk" and "Carrrrrrrrr" and "Packey."

When I moved back to Massachusetts, a place I last lived in when I was barely six years old, it didn't take me long to develop an accent, a distaste for school, and the choice of throwing out two years of French with Miss Pichette for Spanish with a teacher who put red nail polish in the centers of her nails like a racing stripe.  By the time I hit tenth grade, I had both of my parents' signatures and skipping school down to a fine art.  I skipped just enough days to avoid the state-mandated no-pass law, and I graduated four months early my senior year because I hated school so much.  I didn't hate the people; I hated the confinement.

I spent years at other jobs, other careers, but I volunteered constantly in the schools, then fell into substitute teaching eventually, and then that led to graduate school.  Before I knew it, I had my own classroom.  If only I'd started this when I had a chance, younger and normal college age rather than in my thirties, I might be looking at retirement in two years.  As it is, I'll die at my desk before I see a dime of pension money.

The best part?  People I went to (skipped) school with are in shock by what I do.  When I tell them I'm a teacher who never calls in sick if I can avoid it, that I go to school every single stinking day, they laugh and ask, "No, tell me the truth.  What do you really do?"

Teaching is a great gig because I get to have fun.  I tell the kids all the time, if they're not having fun learning, then I'm not having fun teaching, and that makes for a very long day.  But still teachers get kicked around.

Face it.  Teachers are easy marks.  Even though we are salaried and work many unpaid hours above and beyond our contractual time, we still get shit on.  Firemen who work double and triple overtime and make $175,000-plus a year don't get crapped on half as much as lowly salaried teachers.

I don't usually post links, but in this case I must.  This is for people who say dumb shit like, "I'm a taxpayer and I pay your salary."  Guess what?  I'm a tax payer, too, and I pay for your frigging kids' educations, too.  Bite me.

Jimmy Kimmel gets it.  So, tongue partially but mostly in cheek, here's a little something that has as much truth in it as it does laughs. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T8ovblvQM0

SLEEP IS A WONDERFUL THING

I usually wake up several times a night with weird dreams, outright nightmares, or because I think I can't sleep (although I have actually been sleeping and dreaming that I am awake).  For the last week or so, I have been sleeping five hours uninterrupted then returning for a little bit more sleep. 

This is highly unusual for me and leaves me feeling more tired than if I awaken five times a night.  It probably means that I'm not sleeping enough, and this is my body's way of trying to play catch-up. I have also been running a crazy schedule, over-extending myself, getting to bed late, and generally running my own bad self into the ground. 

So this morning when I awaken on my own, I am kind of hoping it's maybe 2:00 a.m. so I can sleep for three or so more hours.  I try to focus my eyes.  It is not 2:00 a.m.

It's 4:59 a.m., and my alarm will be going off in sixteen minutes.  Almost not worth going back to sleep at this point.  I get up, hit the bathroom, grab a drink of water, and debate starting my day.  I decide it won't hurt to snooze for another fifteen minutes.

I look at the clock now that my far-sighted eyes have been open for a bit.

4:09 a.m.

Score.  I'm asleep again before the digits change.

SATURDAY -- PART 3

Saturday, still, and I've survived Wicked Creepy Napkin Guy and met the photographer whose pictures are amazing.  I left my thesis partner, or, rather, allowed her to leave first so she wouldn't see me take a different turn, and I am heading north on route 1, away from home, away from Newburyport, and up toward the New Hampshire coast. 

As I cross the bridge, still in Massachusetts, I catch sight of a sign that I think says STRIPPERS.  Nothing would surprise me -- I am in Salisbury, after all.  Turns out it's STRIPERS, a restaurant.  Recommendation:  Change the name or make the sign clearer.  Further up the street I pass KITTENS, which does not actually have baby cats, but it does have STRIPPERS.  Maybe Stripers and Kittens can switch signs.  Just a suggestion.

The radio station keeps slipping from one to another.  I must be in a strange bandwidth because suddenly I am listening to oldies.  As I pull up 1A and into Salisbury center, the strip that is still anchored by the Discount House and Tripoli's Pizza, the oldies station is playing There's a summer plaaaaaace…. Today it is barely in the 20's with wind chills in the single digits.  If there is a summer place, it sure as hell is not here.  It's so damn cold up here that even the salt marshes are frozen solid, as is a good portion of the Seabrook inlet as I travel into New Hampshire.

I pull over at Hampton State Park to take pictures of the impressive ice that is the parking lot.  Wish I had my skates with me.  A woman in high-heeled boots is, for some reason, walking the icy edge and clinging to a fence for dear life.  I have absolutely no idea why she doesn't take a step sideways ten inches and put her feet down on the tarred surface.  I guess that would make too much sense, and the woman is clearly insane.  I pull up near her, laugh at her through my windows, and continue north on 1A. 

Driving along The Strip I realize that Hampton has changed.  A lot.  And yet it has barely changed at all.  There are new bath houses and rebuilt buildings all along the shore-side of the road, the eastern side of sand that opposes the boarded up western side of the street, the side that is lined with decrepit shops and the aging Casino Ballroom.  I wonder how long it has been since this place was rebuilt for tourists like this as I haven't driven through Hampton center in years.  I always bypass the center and go straight to North Beach or Jenness State Park.

A helicopter flies by, creating the illusion that summer is here and he is patrolling the beach and giving a traffic report.  Truth is that summer is not here and may not be here forever.  Based on the air temperatures and the amount of sea ice there is up here, I'm starting to doubt if warm weather will ever return.  Exposure on a day like today is intensely dangerous, and my hands and face freeze just popping out of my warm car to take pictures, which I snap all the way up to The Wall.

The Wall isn't exactly a wall, and it's not exactly not a wall.  It's a man-made concrete and boulder barrier against the elements for the immediate neighborhood.  At high tide most of the sandy beach disappears, crashing the waves against the southern part of The Wall. The northernmost part of The Wall remains a small sandy beach even at the highest of tides.  I stop to snap some pictures and to grab a few beach rocks for myself and friends to remind us all that someday, somewhere, summer is coming.  I also take a picture of our favorite parking space, #1913, because 13 is a good number, the space is close to the meter, it's a short distance to the bath house, this part of the beach never disappears at high tide, and it's so close to the stairs and beach access that we can be on the sand and sitting down less than one minute after shutting the car doors.  None of that trekking across broiling macadam and slugging through scorching sand like at the state parks (cough … cough … Salisbury … cough…).  This beach is just a parking space, a patch of sand, then the ocean that stretches to another continent.

Heading home I avoid The Center of Hampton and go my usual way, crisscrossing back to route 1 and cutting over by the nuclear power plant to access the highway ramp at 107.  I am surprised at how backed up the traffic is, and it almost looks the same way it does on a beach day.  It is noon time, and the Hampton church bells are ringing.  There is a bottleneck of people like me who decide that Arctic conditions and high tide make for sensible coastal viewing.  So many cars roll down route 1 that the sheer volume of us sets a strange backdrop as we pass a large pond with one lone hockey skater, gliding faster and farther than seems safe.

I have seen the last of the beach for today.  I drive home, content with my progress at the thesis table and also with the rejuvenating effect my side-trip has had on me, and completely satisfied that we finally have one sunny, albeit very cold but sunny still, day.  As I back into my driveway, I notice that the radio has long-since stopped playing games with the stations and is still pulsing out oldies radio.  Very old.  So old that Louis Armstrong's voice and trumpet come through:  Life can be so sweet, on the sunny side of the street…

SHORT INTERRUPTION

Taking a little break today.  I have been away from my computer and my house for almost 16 straight hours.  I do have to add to the Saturday story, but there are a few things happening Tuesday that are newsworthy, so the rest of that weekend story can just hold its own damn horses. Here's what is so important:

The first is that my friend is getting an entirely new knee.  She should have her new knee by noontime.  I wish her well and remind her that in a few short weeks I fully expect her to be beach-ready.  She can do PT for BT (Physical Therapy for Beach Therapy).  Goodbye, Bad Knee; Hello, Bionic Knee!  (It looks like a knee wearing a metallic bikini!!!!  Sexy knee!!!!!

The second is that SNHU men's lacrosse team opens its season with a game against/at Molloy College in New York at 7 p.m.  I'm not making the trip because I have to work Wednesday at would be doing so on zero sleep after driving all night, and because it's too damn cold.  No, really.  It's going to be something like 5 degrees.  Plus, there's fresh snow in NY.  Then the team goes to Maryland.  There's fresh snow there, too.  Damn teams should have come to us.  We haven't had snow in hours, maybe even days.

So I interrupt our regularly scheduled blog posts to wish BEST OF LUCK to my friend's knee and to my son's team.  Regular blog posts will be back tomorrow!

SATURDAY -- PART TWO

Continuing the Saturday Saga, I am sitting in Plum Island Coffee Roasters Café in Newburyport, working on my thesis, hanging with a dedicated writing partner who keeps me honest, and we have successfully out-smarted Wicked Creepy Napkin Guy.  The only thing that will make this session a complete success is if we can snag the piano table.  The piano table is what's left of (or an exact replica of) a baby grand piano with chairs around it.  It is the perfect writing table in height, shape, and inspiration.

Two young gents are at the table, sitting opposite each other, date-close, close enough to play footsie under the piano, but they are not together.  Not-Date-Guy #1 is working away on his computer, and Not-Date-Guy #2 is plugged in to his own laptop, ear buds pressed so far into his ear canals that whatever he is listening to is surely fusing with his hippocampus. 

My thesis partner's daughter and her friend are sitting on the couch in a makeshift seating area behind the piano table.  Another young man is seated near them in a leather chair, animatedly interacting with his MacBook.  The girls, who have been quietly putting their heads together in camaraderie, are startled when all of a sudden Leather Chair Guy bursts out laughing.  Actually, "laughing" may not be the appropriate word here.  Leather Chair Guy starts guffawing.  Since the café is tiny, he disturbs and distracts us all.  Even Not-Date-Guy #2 turns to look at the transgressor, proving my theory that Leather Chair Guy's outburst is even louder than hippocampus-fusing ear-bud music.  Leather Chair Guy decides to show Not-Date-Guy #2 something that he seems to think is ridiculously hilarious, and this causes Not-Date-Guy #2 to pull one of the ear buds away from his head.  Apparently these gents are together, making Leather Chair Guy into Not-Date-Guy #3.  Why they are all plugged in and disconnected from each other while sitting in a Bermuda Triangle formation around the fireplace seems to be a mystery.

I still wish they would abandon the piano table.

This is also when my choice of tables becomes a boon.  An older couple enters the café, and they stand near our table.  The white-haired man and the gray-haired lady are looking at the framed photographs that are on display around the café.  In the three times that my friend and I have come here to work, we have been semi-distracted by the artwork hanging around us on the walls.  The first week there were some interesting paintings of food, including a disturbing derriere pear painting.  The second time we met here, there were some interesting paintings that bore strong resemblances to Spirograph drawings.  Although fascinating and certainly superior to anything I've ever attempted to draw or paint, I am not a fan of either display. 

Today, though, there is a multitude of framed color photographs: boats, buildings, and birds.  There isn't a bad photo in the batch, and I would gladly buy them all if I had the money.  I watch the older couple as they attach another chain behind one of the frames.

"Are you adding to the display?" I ask them, partially to make conversation and partially because I truly want to know.

They are indeed adding a new picture, a framed photo of a snowy owl, a close-up of its face and one of its eyes as it looks off into the distance.

"Oh, that's beautiful," I say when I see the finished piece.  A light bulb goes off in my brain.  "Are you the artist?"

Turns out the older woman is the photographer, the gentleman hanging up the new framed picture is her husband, and the snowy owl in the photo is their part-time resident.  All these bird pictures remind me of another friend and Cat TV, which occurs any time we can sit outside while her cats watch the patio bird feeder from the glassed-in safety of the den.  Cat TV is a seasonal activity for humans, where we set chairs out and interact with the birds and cats as a kind of nature-sensitive buffer: the cats cannot get outside to attack the birds, and the birds cannot taunt the cats because we are in their attack zone.  Pulling me out of my summer Cat TV reverie and back to frozen-over Newburyport, the woman hands me her business card. 

Suddenly, awkwardly, in the midst of my summer dreaming, a song comes through the muzak-spewing speakers.  Usually the music here is boss.  Right now, though, I want to smack the employees.  The sound system is playing a Christmas tune, "We Three Kings/God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" by the Barenaked Ladies.  Summer was right there, within my grasp, in my brain, at eye level, even, and now… now it's ruined.  Thanks, café staff, thanks.  It's not enough that the temperature outside is 7 degrees with wind chill, you have to go backtracking two months, reminding us all how bloody long this winter feels.

My thesis partner doesn't feel well.  She sounds like she has a terrible cold, and I worry that she is overextending herself.  We decide to pack it in about forty-five minutes early.  I take one last look at the photographs on the walls, the pictures of the beach and the boats and birds and sunshine and warmth.  I wait until my thesis partner and her daughter and guest are safely out of the parking lot before I pull out.  I do not want them to see me.  I do not want them to know that I am not heading west to go home lest they think I am insane.

I am not going cross-town to the back roads and civilization.  I am crossing the bridge to Salisbury.  I am going north, along the coast, to the beach.  I am searching for summer.

(Part III to come.)

SATURDAY -- PART I

Another Saturday, another round of thesis writing. 

I am meeting a fellow grad student at the Plum Island Coffee Roasters Café in Newburyport for one of our sporadic but productive mini-marathon writing sessions.  My partner-in-font-riddled-crime usually runs a few minutes late, and I usually run a few minutes early.  It works for both of us because it gives me time to acclimate myself to the task at hand, and it gives her a chance to pack up her daughter, who has joined our writing group, at least in spirit, and bring her along.

In the course of getting myself ready to get down to work, I choose a table close to an electrical outlet in case our third writer shows up (her computer battery is being fussy, so she needs a plug as a back up). I spread out a few things to show I have actually claimed the space, and then I grab myself something to eat and drink.  Today I order British breakfast tea and a fat slice of banana bread.  After adding a little sugar and a fair amount of honey to the steaming travel cup, I am ready to light a proverbial fire under my proverbial ass.

And speaking of fires, there are two drawbacks to this café.  The first is that it is ridiculously small.  The second is that it is ridiculously cold, heated only by a small gas fireplace in the far corner.  However, the view, straight over the Merrimack River where it flows out into the Atlantic Ocean and past the route 1 bridge that connects Newburyport to Salisbury, is unbeatable.  I huddle at my small square table and get down to business.

First, I take out my notebooks and my folder of work to edit.  Then, out comes a writing magazine.  I pop open the tea to stir it, try to re-cover it, and spill about a teaspoon's worth onto the table.  After I disengage the one napkin from under the banana bread, I clean up my tea mess.  Now that I've touched the banana bread, my body believes that I should eat it … right now … do not wait for my partner, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.  Most of the subtle lipstick I put on this morning is subtly smearing  onto my tea cup, so I use the tea-dirty napkin to wipe up that mess, as well. 

Other than the woman who drags a chair to the makeshift hearth and completely bogarts the fire, it seems like a regular Saturday.  I do not get the piano table this week, so I position myself at the square table with my back to humanity.  After a few minutes of staring out the glass double doors, I start reading an edition of Writer's Digest magazine.  I realize it is a copy I've already read and earmarked, but I refresh my memory going through it again, anyway. 

I am deep into thought and silently minding my own business.  I am as much in my own personal space as one can be when one goes into a crowded public place to be alone.  I truly believe that I have properly and effectively made it clear to every other patron in the café that I am here to get work done.  People bustle around me, providing plenty of fodder for Hemingway-like conversation-stealing moments.  I am content in my own world.

That is, until the arm. 

A man is standing at my back, breaching that Third Wall between performers (people in the café, like him) and audience (that would be me).  I do not look up nor make eye contact, but his arm extends over my left shoulder and his hairy hand makes a balled up fist with the index finger directing itself to something on my table.

"Are you done with this?" he asks me without any other introduction or small talk.  He is clearly pointing to my pile of work.

What?  Done with what? My notebooks?  My folder of story drafts that require editing?  My half-eaten banana bread?  My steeping tea?  My chair?  This table?  The magazine I am holding down with my elbows?

I do not turn to look at his face, but I know he is not an employee.  Only two people are working, and they are both still behind the counter.  I can hear them from where I am sitting, even though I am not facing the register area.  The weird, creepy hand invasion continues, only now the index finger is shaking like it is really, really pissed off.

"This," he clarifies.  "Are you done with THIS?"

I still have no idea what he wants, but my brain is rapidly going through the possible list of things he could be asking me for.  I feel like it takes ten seconds to gather my thoughts, but I'm sure it's closer to three seconds.  I do not know what he wants, but the one thing I do know is that making eye contact will probably be fatal.  Finally, I stammer, "Done … with … what?"

He puts his finger down onto my tea-stained, lipstick-smeared, crumpled napkin and says, "Your napkin.  I need this napkin.  Are you done with it?  Can I have it?"  As if there is not one single paper napkin anywhere in this café, in this city, in this universe, except, of course, for the one and only paper napkin that I happen to have on my table.

My brain goes into instant overload.  Why does he need my already-dirtied napkin?  Is he trying to get my DNA sample?  Does he have some curious fetish? Is he a serial killer picking out his next victim and garnering the memento first before slaughtering me between the dry-docked boats in the lot?

I want to yell, "Bugger off, you sick fuck."  Instead, I stammer, "No.  I'm not done with it."

"Okay," the man, who shall henceforth be referred to as Wicked Creepy Napkin Guy, says reasonably.  Wicked Creepy Napkin Guy removes his finger from the table, recoils his arm from around my shoulder, and sits down.  At the next table.  Back to back.  With me.  Only about ten inches apart.  He looks like he is part of my table universe, yet he is not.  Wicked Creepy Napkin Guy is loudly speaking to the woman who is also sitting at his table.  (I do not look closely, but I'm fairly certain she has a paper napkin with her coffee.)

I am Flypaper for Freaks.

The coup de gras is unwittingly delivered by my thesis mate.  Shortly after she arrives, she asks if she can use my napkin.  Before I can recount the story of Wicked Creepy Napkin Guy, and before I can assure her that the napkin is filthy, she grabs it for her runny nose, blows into it, and crumples it up.

Hey, I may not want strangers touching my DNA-laced paper café napkin, but I've no aversion to my thesis mate touching it.  And, to be honest, I am relieved the damn thing is gone.

SISTERHOOD OF THE CABLE-KNIT SWEATERS

Why is it that teachers wear things to our jobs at school that we would never wear anywhere else?  

Today I discovered a dirty secret about teachers, particularly but not limited to female teachers, and our work wardrobe:  We own multiple versions and colors of cable-knit cardigan sweaters.

My friend has many black cable-knit cardigans.  Her friend has many gray ones.  I have rust-colored ones, black ones, gray ones, blue ones, pink ones, green ones, and multiple shades therein.  I have pull-overs, button front, zipper front, handmade, man-made, factory-made, long-sleeved, short-sleeved, medium-sleeved…

I think about the fantastic women with whom I work, and I realize that they wear a lot of cable-knit cardigans, too.   An impromptu poll reveals that this is some sort of unwritten Teacher Dress Code requirement:

In cold weather, all teachers must resort to wearing cable-knit cardigans over otherwise stylish clothes.  These cardigans can be any color, but they must bulge awkwardly at the belly to accentuate the teachers' already self-conscious areas.  The uglier the sweater, the better, especially if these sweaters are extremely ugly non-holiday themed garments.

We are all members in the Sisterhood of the Cable-Knit Cardigans, and we totally rock the sweater sets.  Rock on, twisted cable-knit sisters, rock on.