Same Old, Same Old

Scene: A sunny yard. A clothesline is stretched across the yard, a basket of damp laundry rests in the grass. A stunning woman, with a perfect pedicure and hair that has absolutely been trimmed some time since last October, stands in a spotless sundress (as opposed to, say, a sweaty tank top with cheese on the hem). Also present: one toddler clad in a short-sleeved plaid button-down shirt and an overlarge bucket hat that eliminates all but approximately 78 degrees of vision, and one large, long-suffering German Shepard (not wearing a hat).

TODDLER: Da ya da. Da! ("Hm. This sand is fascinating. I could look at it all day, just watching the individual grains stick to my--hey! A dog! That dog I like! Is right there! I wonder if that dog wants some sand on her! I will go find out! At great speed!")

MOTHER: Tankbaby, stop. No sand on the dog, please.


TODDLER looks at MOM, making eye contact and nodding, while walking steadily toward the dog with a shovel full of sand, which he then dumps on the dog.

DOG: Um, a little help here?

MOTHER: Well, go lie somewhere else, then, dummy.

TODDLER: Eee-ee! ("Yaaaay! Sand! That fell out! Onto the dog! And got mama over here! Let's go do that agaaaaain!")


TODDLER walks purposefully back to sand table, chuckling gleefully while waving shovel wildly, occasionally whacking self in head, eye, or ear. After several attempts, manages to get twelve grains of sand in the shovel. Looks at MOTHER.

TODDLER: Ba! ("Chekkit, bitch! Got me some mothereffing sand!")

MOTHER: I see. You've got some sand. In the table, please.


TODDLER takes a few slow steps toward the dog.

MOTHER: Tankbaby...

TODDLER begins to run, inasmuch as he can, which is to say a very fast tipsy waddle, while shrieking, toward DOG.


DOG: Huh. Here comes that kid again. I sure don't want sand on me. I wonder if there's anything I can do to affect the outcome of this situation. On the other hand, I'm here now. And, you know, it's sunny. I like sun. Hey, do you smell something? I think I smell---


TODDLER dumps sand on DOG. DOG does not move.

DOG: --some other dog on the next block. Huh. Where did this sand come from?

TODDLER: Ba! ("Hey! I can raise my arm! The arm holding the shovel! And then can bring it down rapidly! On the dog!")

MOTHER (warningly): TANKBABY. No hit. Be soft with the dog.

TODDLER whacks DOG with shovel. DOG looks baleful, but does not move. TODDLER repeats whacking. MOTHER, who has approached unseen, grabs the shovel on the upswing, accidentally knocking the enthusiastic TODDLER off-balance. With renewed purpose and vigor, TODDLER lunges for the DOG, who finally decides to lie in one of the other twelveteen sunny spots in the yard. TODDLER drunkenly follows. MOTHER, who has so far hung one towel on the line, sighs. DOG lies down. TODDLER lunges. DOG gets up and walks elsewhere in the yard. TODDLER, after recovering balance from lunging headfirst at an empty spot, staggers after.

TODDLER: Ba! Ba! ("WHEEEE! HI DOGGY! HOLD STILL, DOGGY! CAN I RIDE YOU, DOGGY? CAN I HIT YOU WITH THE SHOVEL SOME MORE? WHEEEE! I HAVE FEET!! WHERE'S MY HAT! DOGGY!! HAT!! FEET!! WHEEEEEEEE!")

TODDLER wipes out, tripping over a tree root or his own feet or possibly a spiderweb, or a deep thought. Wails. MOTHER goes over, brushes him off, administers kisses and wise advice about not chasing the dog. TODDLER immediately resumes chasing the dog.)

End scene.



Showtimes: 10:15, 10:27, 10:39, 10:51, 11:01, 11:12, 11:23, 11:31, 11:40, and 11:58.

Indy (not Indie) Girls

Back in college, I had a dear friend named Mandy. She was quietly odd, which is one of the things I loved most about her. We lived on the same floor in the dorm, a floor full of other quietly odd girls (I went to school in Indiana. Quiet oddness was tolerated much more so than exuberant weirdness). One day, Mandy told me a strange story. She came home one night; her roommate, Carolyn, was already in bed. Mandy climbed into her lofted bed and burrowed in. But...huh. There was a strange lump. Soft, not painful, but not comfortable, either. Mandy reached down in the dark, thinking maybe a balled-up pair of shorts or something had gotten tangled up in the sheets. She pulled out a balled-up pair of socks, shrugged, and threw them to the floor. Turning over, she felt another lump. Another pair of socks. And another. "What the...?" She dug out and threw down several more pairs...about a dozen all told. In the dark, Mandy heard the not-so-asleep Carolyn start to giggle. Mandy snapped the light on. "What the hell is with the socks?!" Carolyn progressed from giggles to guffaws.

Turns out, another floor-mate, Jessica, had stopped by earlier, looking for Mandy. While chatting with Carolyn, Jessica--for reasons known only to her--casually rifled through Mandy's sock drawer, pulling out rolled-up pairs of socks and stuffing them throughout Mandy's bed. (It's worth noting at this point that this is the same Jessica who used to leave yellow chick Peeps floating cheerfully in the toilets on Easter to greet the cleaning ladies. Indy girls are weird, yo.)

Mandy told me this story the next day and we both laughed. Wacky story, but the best part is that, about a week later, it happened again! Jessica stopped by, Carolyn let her in and maintained a straight face when Mandy came home, and Mandy found half her sock drawer planted in her bed. Again.

(Along these same lines, when I was an RA in a different dorm, one day a girl came home and carefully turned each and every wall hanging, postcard, print, and post-it in the room 180 degrees--but in the exact spot on the wall--and then just sat quietly, waiting to see when her roommate would notice.)

Fast forward a few weeks, to a dinner with Mandy where I was trying to explain this fretful, anxious feeling I'd been having. "It's not any one big thing," I said, "it's just, like, a bunch of little stuff but it's all piling up and I can't get to a comfortable, relaxed place because there's just all of these little niggly things poking at me..." She interrupted, "Falling! You have socks in your Bed of Life!"

So now, whenever I have that feeling--that overwhelming sense of urgency coupled with despair, where you can't stop thinking about all the little things that are swarming around you like so many gnats, forming a black cloud that itself inhibits you from taking any productive action--I make a list. And at the top of that list I write "Socks in My Bed of Life." And usually I can fill up a good page or more of things as trivial as "schedule hair appointment" and as large as (ahem) "get your effing blogging shit together." And often, just seeing these things written out (I'll cop to occasionally often writing a few things that I've already accomplished just so that I can cross them off) helps me feel a little more in control and less drown-y.

It's time to make a list.

What do you do when you've got Socks in your Bed?

Extraordinary Intergalactical Upsets

OK, first? I am embarrassed to admit the number of times I read through your comments on the last post and how many of those times I got a little weepy. Thank you for responding with empathy and empowerment (and more than one crotch-kick to The Man), rather than scorn for my wimpiness.

As a weird/sad corollary, there was an article in the paper yesterday that a local teachers' union is, in the face of impeding layoffs, fighting for insurance coverage...of Viagra. Now, I'm all for equal coverage--meaning that if you cover my birth control (and only if), you can also cover whatever male enhancement drugs you like--but, people! Jobs versus penile uppers? Focus!!

And now, because I have been so navel-gazey and somber and adult over, I give you Things That Have Made Me Laugh Out Loud in the Past Week:

Thing #1: Hanging out with some friends yesterday, their five-year-old opened a conversation with, "Hey! You know what's cool about me?" It was rhetorical, and he went on to tell me about how he could count to five in Spanish or had vestigial wings or something, but I completely lost what he was saying, so tickled was I with that opening gambit. I exhort you to go forth and try it yourself: at the bar, at the PTA meeting, with your partner. Lemme know how it goes.

Thing #2: As part of a show several years ago, I made a large, Muppety monster puppet, which I named Smudge. I found him in the basement last week and took him in to school for the kids to see at circle time. One little girl, E, was quite enamored of him, but couldn't quite get his name right. When I went to put him away, she protested, "But I love Smut!" (Aaaand, hello pervert Googlers!)

Thing #3: As is contractually obligated when you have a baby, we have several of those hooded baby towels. After a bath, I wrap Tankbaby in a towel before he lunges his slippery wet body at me. He likes to hang on to the corners and help wrap the towel...and he also loves to fling the towel open, catching a nice breeze on his...um, block and tackle. Being mature, I like to yell, "Flash!" when he does this. And on Thursday, I followed with "Ah-ahhh! He'll save every one of us!" So now, while Tank waddles around, his towel hood up over his head while the rest flows majestically behind him, looking from behind like a miniature sheik meets E.T., you can shout, "FLASH!" and he will crow, "Ah-ahhh!" And show you his junk.

That's my boy, savior of the universe.

I Used to Play Bass for The Vitriolic Loons...

First, the good news: my friend may not have miscarried. We spent a night in the ER together (after I caught her Googling "ectopic pregnancy" on her smart phone at karaoke and informed her that we were going to the hospital, even though I hadn't yet had a chance to wail my signature Olivia Newton-John song). They ruled out an ectopic, but diagnosed her with a "threatened miscarriage" (isn't that reassuring-sounding? even more so in print on a discharge summary...), so on Monday night when she had more bleeding and cramping, we figured this was It. But it may not be. There is still hope, as her pregnancy hormones in her blood are still rising and--well, let's just say those are some pretty darn powerful prayers, good vibes, and other voodoo that y'all have got there. Now, if you could just harness that same energy and take care of that pesky oil "spill," that'd be great. Kthxbai.

(Sigh. Fucking oil. That's another post, though, and one which SubWOW has already written far more eloquently than I would have.)

(Oh, yes, that's right, friends...I am getting caught up on all the blog-reading on which I've fallen behind. I read all your old entries on my tiny phone screen, while I'm lying in bed nursing Tankbaby, so as to distract me from the bursitis I'm giving myself. I haven't gotten ahead of the game yet--and it's a very tiny screen--so you won't see comments, but I'm out here, reading. You know that creepy, hairs-standing-up-on-the-back-of-your-neck feeling of being watched silently by one not participating in the conversation? That's me! Hi there!)

Thanks for the kind words on my last entry. I struggled with the writing of it for some time, because I was trying to communicate a foundational shift, not just write a depressing monologue. I feel like you guys totally got it (which may say more about your perceptiveness than my writing ability, but let's go with it, mkay?).

And I needed those kind words this week, because other folks out there on the Interwebz (tm Elly, I believe) have not been so kind to me. Let me 'splain.

Two weeks ago, a letter to the editor in our local paper complained about an article mentioning how much money the teachers' union had spent fighting a couple of ballot measures. The writer said, basically, that the union money should have been spent on schools instead, and added a catty comment at the end. It got my goat, as every year for the past three years, I go to work hearing about more cuts coming, the possibility of layoffs, the constant requests to do more with less. And every year, the union backs us up. We have consistently voted to take unpaid furlough days, to give up our cost of living increases, etc., so that staff doesn't get laid off. So, with my britches firmly twisted, I wrote the following:

"...As a teacher and member of the union, I would like to point out that the money spent on the ballot measures was not money that would otherwise have gone into the schools. That money came not from the state or the taxpayers at large, but from union members' dues and donations.


At a time where teachers are being laid off by the thousands, it's ludicrous to think that we should also take money out of our own (already paltry, even before you factor in that many of us have given up raises or even cost of living increases) paychecks in order to pay for our own jobs.


It is not the union's job to pay for education, it is the union's job to advocate for teachers, who in turn advocate for their students. As noted on their website, the purpose of the Oregon Education Association is to "assure quality public education for every student in Oregon by providing a strong, positive voice for school employees." I pay dues to a union and vote on how I want that money spent so that they can fight for me, to pay for my salary, for my supplies, for assistants, for equipment. In turn, here's who I fight for in my job in early intervention/early childhood special education: the 4-year-old who has been in six foster homes in six months. The toddler who was born prematurely and had a brain bleed. The preschooler who can't talk, but whose family's insurance covers exactly two private speech therapy sessions. The baby adopted from an orphanage where she was never held, never allowed to learn to crawl.


I dream of the day when our culture values education half as much as we like to say we do. Until then, I will go to work for these kids each day--hoping for my sake, and for the sake of the families I serve--that this is not the year I get laid off. "

Now. I am certainly not saying that the union is the solution to all of education's problems, nor am I saying that it doesn't have its own problems. I'm just saying that the lack of funding in our schools is not the union's fault, nor is it the union's responsibility to repair it. Do I sound a little defensive? Lemme 'splain some more.

So, my letter wasn't published in last week's paper, but I received an e-mail telling me I could post it on the on-line editorial page of the paper. Which I'd considered doing, but then, you know, life happened, and it slipped to the back of my mind. Until I received an e-mail on Thursday morning from a co-worker saying, "What a firestorm you started! The vitriolic loons are out in full force!" He was gleeful. I...not so much. I went online, and sure enough, there was my letter, complete with my full name, and approximately 55 comments in response, most in varying degrees of Disgust, with some Crazysauce on the side. These people--and "vitriolic loons" is an accurate moniker--were cloaked in the anonymity of the internet and from behind their pseudonyms, they had no trouble addressing me by name and explaining just how wrong, dumb, misguided, and selfish I was.

To be fair, I only read through the first 15 or so comments. I stopped, because I was having a really visceral reaction to the responses. I was trembling, my pulse rate had quickened, and I felt sick to my stomach. It's possible that the last 40 comments were rallying in my favor (there was one very nice person who came to my defense many times in the initial comments to refute points and tell me not to listen to the "crazy old codgers who have nothing better to do than attack people." I love this person.), but I couldn't read any more.

Now, no-one threatened my life or even called me a bad name (directly...). As internet trolls go, these were pretty mild ("crazy old codgers," remember?), and I was a little taken aback at how taken aback I was. I think that part of it was the shock, in that I hadn't submitted my letter and so wasn't prepared for this. Also, I was especially ooked out by those commenters who used my name ("Ms Falling, sweetie, it IS taxpayer money...my taxes pay your salary!" I guess by that measure, she also pays for my groceries and I should check with her before buying the creamy Skippy, huh?). It was a submission requirement to include my full name, but if the letter had been published in the paper, a) people could have sworn at me from the privacy of their kitchen tables where I couldn't hear it, b) anyone who wanted to write back to me in the paper would also have to give their name, and c) it would have been out there temporarily, to be shredded or recycled or used to line the birdcage. Instead, my name now languishes in the netherworld of internet archives while crazies with poorly phonetically-spelled pseudonyms use it to chastise me roundly.

But, still. It was nothing, not compared to what lots of bloggers get every day. And yet, it was so upsetting to me...I thought about it later that day, and while my first reaction was an overwhelming sympathy for celebrities ("leave Britney alone!"), I also realized that I should, as a dear friend once put it, "cowboy the fuck up" and own what I said. Did I believe it? Yes. Do I still stand by it? Yes. So what if some people disagree? And, according to a friend who read the rest of the comments, it wasn't even that many people that disagreed with me, per se, it became an argument among the commenters fighting with each other over issues that neither the original letter writer nor I had even brought up.

So why am I having such a hard time finding my big girl panties about this?

Well, remember the approval junkie thing? There's that, for sure. Big time. And also? I'm easily intimidated by bullies, which makes sense for a kid who was a geek (and I mean a geek like the Geek in 16 Candles, before being a geek was cool). And, and, and...I just really think I'm right, I guess. It's not that I don't see the problems in powerful unions throwing their weight around. Or in tenured burnouts. But our society's priorities are so effed up, and we keep cutting education funding and teachers are getting laid off around the country by the hundreds of thousands. And yes, schools and teachers are "failing" according to the ridiculousness that is No Child Left Behind, but that doesn't automatically equal lazy, over-paid teachers. And while there are numerous faults in our educational system, it is what we've got to work with right now, and while I'd love to hear about an overhaul, I can't get behind just chipping away at it and still expecting results. And if we're willing to spend billions of dollars to fight wars that many Americans think we shouldn't have gotten into, then we have to be willing to spend a fraction of that on our kids' education, which everyone likes to spout off about during elections, but no-one likes to actually FREAKING PAY FOR.

Hey, who left this soapbox here? And what's all this foamy white stuff around my mouth?

Anyway, I've decided not to go back to the page and read any more comments from the loonies, even though this means I might miss some supportive comments. I want to be the kind of person who is comfortable taking a stand, hearing reasonable opposition, and dismissing the rest. You know, without peeing on myself. So I'm taking the small step of resisting the temptation to go back out there and debate/defend myself to my detractors. I'm also trying not to listen to the voice that says, "We'll just never speak up again, and that way everyone will like us, right (nervous laugh)?" I want to speak up again, if the situation requires it. It is ridiculous to be willing to be a bad-ass only in like-minded company. I'd like to be a bad-ass wherever I go, please.

You know, if that's all right with you.