run dnc

After suffering through the dull parade of people throwing their bodies around in the air for little trinkets and the chance to hear their national anthem one more god damned time, we finally got to the best show of the summer. Bill Clinton's teary-eyed "God I love her." Dennis Kucinich's insane arm-waving shouts to "wake up America." The apparent love child of Chris Farley and George W. Bush, Governor Schweitzer of Montana, delivering an SNL-worthy performance. Ted Kennedy passing the torch. The beloved crowds of protestors all over the city. There is no event I more enjoy watching on television...actually, I'll rephrase. There is nothing I more enjoy watching on television, event or otherwise, than the Democratic National Convention. Normally, if I am in front of the boob tube I can stand about five minutes, ten if it's a Seinfeld rerun, and I'm up out of the seat looking for something else to do. I find the thing terrifically boring. However, the giant blue circus that is the DNC held my attention for nearly seven hours straight yesterday.

It's basically the nerd's Kentucky Derby:

Thanks to CSPAN I got to watch the whole thing uninterrupted and without any of those pesky news channel morons blathering on about strategy, wardrobe choices, and who knows what else. So I got to the see the B-listers like Cecile Richards (my hero), the Congressional Black Caucus, the Women of the Senate, and my forever favorite B-lister Dennis Kucinich.

The B-listers are my favorites because with a lesser spotlight you get more personality, and they tend to really let it all hang out. Kucinich of course does this all the time, regardless of the position he's in, which is why I love him so much. But, sadly, the awesomeness ended there this year. Cecile Richards was what every Planned Parenthood executive is: poised, spotless, strong but careful. The Congressional Black Caucus didn't mention race. (In fact, nobody has mentioned race at all. They've mentioned gender about 67,000 times, though. Hillary's introductory montage was all about women's rights...Michelle Obama's speech commemorated women's suffrage (she did mention it, remember, right in the middle of her suzie homemaker speech that everyone but me seemed to love.))

This brings me to the women of the Senate. I am frickin' pissed off at you ladies!!!! The touchiest issue they brought up was equal pay for equal work. And they should bring it up, what with this 77 cents on the man's dollar bullshit. And they brought out the lady the Supreme Court told she was paid less and would just have to deal with it. Fine, fine, fine.

But where oh where, I ask you, was the discussion about reproductive rights?! Remember those, the ones that are in grave danger as we speak? They just left it all to Cecile Richards. Women of the Senate, shame on you all.

So in case you happen to be speaking at the dnc tonight, let me break it down for you.

Stuff you CAN talk about:

The Economy

Energy

The War

Equal Pay for Equal Work

Health Care

Stuff you CAN'T talk about:

Race

Reproductive rights

So don't fuck it up, because we wouldn't want anyone getting uncomfortable.

Crap! Is it August?!

Besides being a reminder that I’m one of the several hundred thousand Bostonians about to move on good ole September 1^st, the arrival of August is always moderately depressing. One begins to reevaluate one’s summer. There have been exactly zero trips to the beach, days off, picnics, one nasty tan line from a day of biking but otherwise still Scottishly pale… And of course every new month delivers the sinking, cold realization that I have criminally neglected my blog yet again.

I’ll go ahead and sum up all that I missed in…

Top Five Things I Totally Meant to Blog About Last Month

Or

My Summer Thus Far

#5 PROOF that my asshole coworker actually is an asshole

Oh most desired gift at last you’ve arrived. For the entirety of my employment I have known that this woman (referred to in previous blogs as Jabba the Hut) is an asshole. Like the worst kind of asshole, she manages somehow to evade what should be a companywide intervention based on the universal consensus that she is so egregiously awful that it is a violation of state safety regulations to force other employees to work anywhere near her. Rather, she manages to win the favor of certain administrators who, uh, clearly find their asses and elbows indistinguishable from one another.

What she does is the following:

We’re in community meeting, a weekly gathering of all students and staff wherein all may make announcements to the entire school and student leadership may put various things to a vote and blah blah blah. At this particular meeting one student, who had not attended the graduation ceremony, was receiving an award that came with a small scholarship. She was sitting with her case manager (our school has counselors assigned to each student) and both ladies were jokingly grabbing the scholarship check back and forth from one another during the rest of the meeting. Jabba the Hut notices this playful act and bellows, to a roomful of people who HADN’T necessarily noticed what was going on, “Whoops! Hang on to that check, you gotta watch these Puerto Ricans every second!”

Pause. Digest.

Now, if a student had yelled some racially charged statement like that in the middle of a meeting, I would stop everything and process the statement with everyone. I am constantly doing the work of getting the students to reflect on their own racialized statements and beliefs so that, someday, we might be in a place where those kinds of statements aren’t even thought, let alone screamed at the top of one’s lungs.

But what was I to do when a staff member did it?

Apparently I was to drop the dry erase marker I had in my hand, and say, “I can’t believe you just said that.”

Everyone tittered awkwardly and things moved right along. How the hell are we going to get the kids to start reevaluating their beliefs about race if the teachers make these kinds of statements?!

Silver lining: now everyone knows she’s an asshole.

#4 Culture Clash: Bikes v. Cars

I’ll admit right away that I used to loathe bikers. Those idiots weaving in and out of lanes wearing pants three sizes too small and flipping everyone off. But now having seen Boston drivers from behind the handle bars, I would flip everyone off too if I wasn’t so scared of riding without holding on… Car drivers’ sense of superiority and imagined entitlement to the entire road is at worst dangerous and at best really fucking irritating.

I had a run-in with just such a gas guzzling enemy of the planet mid-July while on a leisurely bike ride through Watertown. I don’t know how many of my several thousand dedicated readers are familiar with Watertown, but it’s a pretty mellow place with many residential areas. My boyfriend and I were taking a left off one residential street onto another, waiting in the middle of the road for oncoming cars to pass, just as a motor vehicle would have done. The car behind us begins laying on horn, yelling, “Get out of the road!”

This poor soul thought that only cars had the right to use the roads that all we taxpayers pay for. As I often do, I responded to potential conflict with grace and respect for another point of view…

OR

I screamed a string of obscenities in the direction of the speeding car as it headed toward a red light one hundred feet away. My better half responded the way a person as level headed as I never would, and chased after the car. The following interaction ensued:

My better half (MBH): Hey you really didn’t need to yell at us

Patty Petroleum (chewing French fries): Get out of the road

MBH: You get out of the road; I have just as much right to be on it as you do

PP: You have the sidewalk

MBH: Sidewalks indicate their purpose in their name and bikes aren’t allowed on the sidewalks anyway

PP: Whatever

MBH: So it’s okay for you to scream at people, but it’s not okay for me to-

Light turns green. Petroleum Patty wields her enormous arm to form a familiar gesture with its sausage fingers and yells the following brilliant statement out the window:

PP: GET A CAR!!!!!

Well we hadn’t thought of that! Thanks, Patty Petroleum! I mean, it’s really hard to eat all my meals out of a Styrofoam box while riding my bike! I could just GET A CAR! It’s been such a drag being able to park right next to my destination rather than patronize my friendly neighborhood garage three blocks away! I should buy a CAR! I really hate fitting into the same jeans I’ve worn since my early twenties, I need to gain weight so I can rationalize buying new clothes. I’ll get a CAR!

….of course, I do own a car. But I’m nice about it. Eat me, Petroleum Patty!!!

#3 JUST IN CASE YOU STILL DON’T THINK MY COWORKER IS AN ASSHOLE

Oh boy is this one priceless. We are in a staff meeting, headed by our boss who is African American. Jabba the Hut is taking the notes, and says…

“How do you spell your name again?”

Our boss, who has worked with us for three months now, replies.

Jabba says, “Oh that must be one of those made up black names.”

… … …

I’m just going to leave that hanging…but trust that it did not make it into the meeting minutes.

#2 Dante’s Sixth Circle of Hell

Otherwise known as the Boston Children’s Museum. A cesspool of diapers, whining, snotty sleeves, untied shoelaces, frantic parents, disobedient little persons darting around with no regard for passers by. When I face my ultimate comeuppance, it will be there I am sent.

During summer school we take the students on field trips every Friday. Since most of our students have children themselves, we take one trip on which students may bring their families. The amount of hatred I harbor for this annual event cannot be properly expressed in words. See, a group of teenagers gathered together, regardless of whether they are playing the role of parent or student, behaves like a group of teenagers. So when you combine a group of teenagers with a group of sub-3 year olds plus cell phones plus all the social pressures and conflicts and norms of school you get:

“Oh hell no she won’t. I am not playin’ with that ho- ”

“Don’t say ho in front of my kid.”

“Why hasn’t he met his momma?”

“Bitch I am not PLAYING with you.”

“Baby get out of the ROAD get out of the fucking road get the fuck out of the road.”

“Yo your baby is mad cute!”

“I’m at school. I don’t know a museum. I told you don’t be chirpin’ me at school….hello? Motherfucker I KNOW you didn’t hang up on me.”

“Hello? Did you just-”

“HellOOOO?”

“Where the bathrooms at?!”

“Where’d Miss Kelly go?”

Miss Kelly went straight to the museum shop, where she sat and read a book for the entire day.*

*Conscience alert: If I were a different blogger, I might have talked about observing my students in their roles as parents and how a palpable sense of community made the chaperons smile as the students encouraged their kids to play together. And I might have also mentioned the moments of unguarded, unselfconscious curiosity and wonder while they learned with their kids at various exhibits…but we can’t have that messing up my reputation.

#1 Unprotected Sex

Second only to the Children’s Museum as a reaffirmation of my decision to barricade these baby tubes with two coils of steel, this delightful endeavor is ill-advised for most of you poor saps but gee golly if it isn’t making fine and dandy my vacationless summer vacation. High five!

Retreat! Retreat!

According to the dictionary, retreat means: 1 a (1): an act or process of withdrawing especially from what is difficult, dangerous, or disagreeable

According to my boss it means disguising a team building marathon as a mini work vacation. The main mode of disguise is location. Meetings aren't meetings when they happen in some OTHER conference room!

Thus, the gaggle of overweight pale grouchy non-profit employees in second hand clothes and comfortable shoes gathered in the early morning sun at a dock in the Boston Harbor, bound for trust falls and ice breakers. The teaching staff was especially attractive, the ancients in their sun hats, I in the same skort and sneakers I wear every day all summer long, and the bipolar chain smoking bad poetry writing weird ass new girl in some kind of hemp outfit. Our boss waddled up to the dock dead last, laden with the giant Post-it easel pad and a copy of The Complete Idiots Guide to Team Building.

As we motored through the harbor, flanked by rows of rusting freight cars and floating plastic bottles, I leaned over the railing and stared at the water. There is a certain mindless peace that comes only on a boat. I had my own twenty minute retreat, which was interrupted by the question, "Hey which Gilligan's Island characters would we all be?!"

I. Would. Rather. Drown.

The new girl was mystified by her nomination to the Gilligan role, proof of a casting job well done. My role was decided as follows:

"Kelly's the professor."

"No she's Ginger."

"Ginger??"

A glance in my direction.

"The movie star? The one that dresses up all the time?"

"Yeah, but wasn't Ginger really self absorbed?"

"Oh, yeah. Okay Kelly's Ginger, so who's the professor?"

And the team building just kept on rolling, all day long.

Post Game Wrap-Up

I would love to tell you all about my surgery, but thanks to my friend anesthesia, I don't have much to report.  I can assure you that I entered the hospital with a sense of somber reverence, deeply thoughtful about my decision...

And, of course, I spent the following two days off of work resting quietly, allowing my body to heal...I certainly didn't use it to play tennis or ride my bike or put a new composter in the back yard or walk around town in the sunshine.  I mean I just had SURGERY for heaven's sake.

My doctor came to talk to me in the recovery room, and he mentioned that I was his third sterilization of the day - perhaps more women are realizing the children path is one only SOME people should take...?  If you are considering it, let me ease any worries you may have: As it stands, the most difficult recovery period of my life was right after the 2004 election, and the most painful surgery I've yet to have involved three very wise teeth.  The most difficult part of the surgery was abstaining from food or drink all day, and of course dealing with the antiquated sexist breeder-brained world which, I hope, is changing.  

My Final Fertile Weekend

Ah, the final days of fertility. The condom collection is down to the dregs, resorting at this point to the rain-slicker-thick ones tossed to me from a pick up truck filled with transvestites at the gay pride parade. The mandated pre-op blood work is evidenced by a nasty bluish junkie mark near the unlucky vein. The Depo shot to cover the risky post-op you-still-might-get-pregnant period has made of me a bi-polar Dolly Parton in heat. Between the migraines, back aches, weight gain, ear aches, weird fucking shaking attacks, and general psychoticry, I am reminded of exactly why I hate birth control.

All the more reason to go party in NYC all weekend with one of my favorite childless couples in celebration of a huge kiss goodbye to all of the above. Thus, I give to you the Final Fertile Weekend Recap:

1. The Bus
You know the bus. It was what you took in college. I am not in college. When you take the bus and you aren't in college you basically take a little trip into loserland. But you also don't put a whole lotta extra carbon into the air, so this counteracts the loserness of the whole escapade. Also it's an excuse, at least for me, to count gummy bears as a meal.

The driver on the way down must have wanted some sensitive national security information from one of the passengers, because we were basically in a traveling guantanamo. This rattletrap ramshackle poor excuse for a bus sounded like a collection of New Year's Eve party favors every time we: turned, accelerated, braked....etc. This was "auditory torture." The constant fear that we were going to tumble into a collection of bolts and seats flung wildly all over the highway was not enough. Oh no. There was also the traditional "olfactory torture," guaranteed to shock and awe even the toughest conscience. And it wasn't just the bathroom (which was egregious) but the air in the bus seemed thick with a potpourri of industrial cleaning agents and urine. On top of these add "climate torture." Our tyrannical driver turned the temperature dial to "Tundra" and rejoiced in our collective shivering. Then, just when we were about to fall unconscious, he spun the dial entirely around, selecting "Ethiopia." I actually extracted clothing from my bag (tank tops, underwear, a tee shirt) and fashioned leg warmers for the Tundra setting, which I had to periodically remove when we entered the Dallol Depression, and so on. It was as if he was waiting for the entire bus to scream "Uncle!"

By the time I climbed out of Port Authority and hit 42nd Street I had Dysentery and PTSD.

2. Indulgence
Luckily, my friends knew to inject me with Sangria and Tapas. In a Hell's Kitchen restaurant by a name I've already forgotten, I devoured marinated artichokes and portobello and manchego and octopus and prosciutto and aioli covered potatoes with shameless abandon. Like any good evening in new york, it was three am before we even thought to check our watches.

The next day we walked through the world, as microcosmed by Queens. India, Mexico, Korea (and, later, a quick cab ride to Greece for dinner). It got hot, so we stopped for what ended up being an inordinate number of frozen margaritas and a soccer match. The bartenders were very pretty and very dumb.

The streets are covered with a layer of grit in New York, and no matter the flow of sanitation workers there are just too many packages and papers and discarded pieces of gum to keep up. If you are ever looking for a visual to back up your personal worries about overpopulation, go hang out in New York.

After our impressive midday margarita pit stop we required naps and then showers. By the time we finished dinner it was nine thirty. We stopped at a local bar for a night cap at ten, and ended up unlocking the fifteen bolts on the front door right around three am again. Whoops.

3. Back home
On the bus ride home (considerably less reminiscent of abu gharib) I had plenty of time to reflect, over gummy bears, on my last day of fertility. After leaving dirty, crowded New York, I'm first reminded of my genuine belief that we should be pumping contraceptives into the water before we send the human race to follow the dinosaurs, because I'd actually like my species to stick around despite how annoying I find most of its representatives. I think of the little girl on the E train, packed between other passengers, whose mother kept trying unsuccessfully to keep the child from grabbing everyone's hair and how decisively uncute I found this to be. Mostly, I think of my relationship. There are thousands of late-night groggy conversations where we crystal ball our way through a wedding, through new careers, through cities and languages we've yet to see or speak, through a future that we only half plan and have pictured and repictured, both with and without each other, since we first knew how to think. Distinctly and consistently absent are: babies and voting republican. If I change my mind on the former, send me to an adoption agency. If I change my mind on the latter, send me off a cliff. Either way, tomorrow, I'm sending myself off to surgery. Au revoir, condoms. Ciao, depo provera. Adios, fertility. It's been a long strange trip. I'm glad to get off that bus.

the best thing i have done as a science teacher

I rearranged my room the other day, and moved my model of the solar system to a new location. Now, it sits atop a tall file cabinet, right over the oft-visited pencil sharpener, which also got moved. So now, I've gotten to have the following interaction approximately sixteen times:

Student: Hey, where's the sharpener?
Kelly: It's right under Uranus.

It's definitely June.

Memorial Day

A few years ago I had to sit through the funeral of a kid my age. This guy was kind of an asshole, in the way that most high school boys are assholes. He was on the wrestling team, very cute, obnoxious, got away with terrible breath. I was two grades behind him, and had trouble breathing normally when, after the break up of some awful cops-chasing-us-through-the-woods kind of party, his hands came at me in the dark northerly portions of a friend's barn. He was most assuredly cheating on some pretty girl or another. And there's nothing particularly fabulous about the coming of age shit that happens in the northerly parts of barns amidst handled bottles of brown liquor and red plastic cups. However, on every Memorial Day, I think of him. I'm really not sure how this 26 year old kid falling from a blown up helicopter thousands of miles from home helps America. So, this is me, remembering our fallen, in my journal that is NOT on the internet, which I feel like putting up here now:

The church is so white your eyes hurt. At noon the sun is right above it, and the steeple is constructed so that the shadow cast is a long cross, falling over everyone who passes under it. It is late fall; the trees are mostly dead. The leaves on the ground are mustard and the now only occasional brilliant red maple leaf. I’m wearing borrowed shoes, with toilet paper stuffed up into the toe. My heel keeps slipping and I’m holding onto a boyfriend’s hand. We join the line three yards from the church, watching the cross spread out over the mourners. The governor is there, shaking hands solemnly. I pass under the shadow, and refuse his hand, as he gracefully rolls away to another hand. He says anyway, “I’m sorry.”

Travis’s casket passes through the aisle, preceded and followed by incense and prayer. The hymn books are straight in their pockets on the pew backs. The wood is making me sit too straight. I don’t look at anyone. My feet are hurting and I can see the back of Travis’s mother’s head. Her lines are soft and slouched. The governor sits with the family.

The family speaks. The clergy speak. The governor talks about honor and country and freedom and love of one’s family and nation and fellow men. I roll spit around in my mouth. The boyfriend squeezes my hand. I say, “Bastard” and start to cry in the quiet way you cry at funerals.

At the close of the whole thing they play Bob Dylan. We all walk out behind him, his mother holding the folded flag in her fingers like a dirty sock. The squeal of the harmonica bounces around the rafters. And I can see Travis in his flannel shirt and ripped jeans with a guitar across a campfire. His face blurry and warm through the heat. It smells like the woods, like pine and thick, dark, meaty soil.

eating wasabi peas in rapid succession

Depending on your goals, this could be either a good or bad thing. Since I had no blocked nasal passages to clear, it's not really helping me out much.

I am what the kids call "freaking out." Not the immediate kind of "holy shit I just got hit by a bus" freaking out. Rather this is a slow, painful build up to freaking out crescendo.

You see, for many years I longed to live alone. For anyone who has endured years of roommatedom, as I have, the reasons for this are clear. There are the roommates who eat your food. The roommates who constantly remark that your living habits belie an upbringing "in a barn." The roommates who actually WERE raised in a barn. The sex party throwers. The suicide attempters. The non payers back of loaned cable bill money when you never watch the goddamned ass box in the first place. The fuckers of your ex boyfriends. I've shared mail slots with them all.

Thus, when both of my roommates left last week, and my house was to be my own for nearly two months, I believed myself embarked upon a journey of peace and joy!

As Howard Dean would say: "That turned out not to be true."

Due to overwhelming popularity, this is actually the first day I've had zero social engagements and zero people waiting for me at the house when I arrived home from work. Thus, today was the first day in the life of a person who lives alone.

Already, I blog.

I walked in the door, put down my stuff, and kind of just stood there. There was no Nayad running down the stairs at high speeds, telling me why it would be so great if we all had cocks, just for one day. Or Gina, offering me a nice big slice of salami without looking up from her computer. There was no food cooking and no crisis to deal with. I could do whatever I wanted, as loudly as I deemed necessary. I could make a mess. I could play with myself on the kitchen counter. I could...

Actually, hang on a sec...

...

Or I could eat whatever was in the fridge without worrying who it belonged to. I only had two responsibilities: clean the bathroom upstairs and put out the recycling.

When you have eight hours to complete two tasks that will take about 45 minutes, something terrible happens. They become impossible. I have often wondered why I keep my life so busy, but I think it is because that if I had too much free time I would never get anything done.

Itinerary: Day One Without Roommates

5pm: stare at the entry way
5:15 pm: enter the house
5:23 pm: walk upstairs
5:27 pm: put stuff down
5:28 pm: sit down
5:28 pm: look out the window, breathing
5:39 pm: check email
5:40 pm: check email
5:47 pm: turn on public radio
...proceed to spend two hours getting overinformed...
7:47 pm: realize you are starving
7:48 pm: frantically run around the kitchen assembling a dinner that could feed four
8:15 pm: wrap up leftovers
8:25 pm: think about putting out that recycling, and the upstairs bathroom
8:32 pm: check email
8:33 pm: listen to the counting crows for an hour
9:33 pm: think about the recycling, mentally table the bathroom issue for another day
9:41 pm: feel guilty about neglecting your blog
9:42 pm: procrastinate blogging by putting out the recycling
9:53 pm: put on pajamas
10:00 pm: blog with a sad face, eating wasabi peas in rapid succession

Sigh. I miss my little overeating, dirty talking, mess making, food stealing, loud screwing, leg humping, shoe borrowing, endless trips to the grocery store buddies. Ohhh the sorrow.

Dear Bobby Breeder

I feel compelled to deal with the comment left anonymously (read: huge pussy) on my last post. The text of the comment is:

So, I was vagging out on the couch reading your entry from my laptop. Congrats on your va j j day victory! Like, it's totally tubular! Nothing quite like increasing the cost of insurance for others by electing some expensive, thoroughly unnecessary elective surgery. Oh yeah, let's hope that you don't encounter any of the many complications (thus making our insurance more expensive): hot flashes, heavier periods, mood swings, depression, anxiety, insomnia, vaginal dryness, mental confusion, fatigue, bladder infections, bowel infections, hemmorage . . . you know, the basics. You should know that doctors have reasons for putting young women through the ringer when they request tubal tying. Many, whoops!, change their mind. Insurance won't be covering that change. And, of course, let's not forget about the joys of malpractice suits when things go wrong. The fact is that more men who decide to end the jizz biz remain comfortable with their decision than their female counterparts.

Again, congrats!

Bobby BreederMarketing Director, Trojan Corp.

Where oh where to begin. First, let's heave a sigh of dismay for the planet because these people are the ones who reproduce. Then let's ask...what the heck is "vagging out" exactly? Anyone?

Okay, let's break this down issue by issue.

Bobby Breeder's first issue: increasing the cost of insurance.

I find it hard to feel guilty about increasing the cost of insurance on this one. It would seem that Mr. Breeder's brilliant editorializing would be better directed at all of the people out there who, say, smoke during pregnancy and produce little hospital-residents-for-life. Or women who never want children but just remain on birth control their whole fertile lives, messing with their hormones in ways that might be more harmful than we currently realize, thus becoming at risk later in life and "medically expensive" (not to mention visiting the doctor over and over again to try new types that don't make them feel insane/get migraines/gain weight/etc etc etc and therefore driving up the cost of insurance, if one must look at it like that.)

Besides all that, it seems insane that we accept a system that pits patients against one another, debating the term "necessary" for medical procedures, when most developed countries don't make citizens pay for health care anyway. Again, I feel Mr. Breeder could redirect his ire for the better of us all in this instance.

Bobby Breeder's second issue: Complications

First off, thank you for your concern for my safety. I feel warm and fuzzy. The fact is, over 10 million women have had tubal ligations and most of them are just fine. The complication rate is about 1-3% - and that includes the gamut of complications from "being irritable" to ectopic pregnancy. And concerning the latter, that happens far less than 1 percent of the time. The chances of anesthesia issues are the same as when I had my wisdom teeth out, and I'm willing to accept that five of every ONE MILLION anesthesia procedures result in death. Really, Bobby Breeder, do you think odds like these should alter behavior? Because if you did, you would certainly never ride in a car, which is statistically like seven billion times more dangerous.

As per your worries about depression, anxiety, and insomnia I'm hoping this will cure those, not cause them.

Bobby Breeder's third issue: Defensive of Doctors

"Doctors have reasons for putting young women through the ringer..."

Yes, I agree. The primary reason is plain jane sexism. There are programs in nearly every state that offer vasectomies to men FOR FREE (that comes out of your tax dollars big guy). The man need only be 21 and have a valid ID. Women are "put through the ringer." If this isn't treating people differently based on gender, I don't know what is. Saying, "Women change their minds more" is a bunch of sexist bullshit. Examine, in your little brain, why women might be more likely to change their minds. Perhaps part of the reason women change their minds is the social pressure to have children, and the cultural assumption that a woman is incomplete without children. Perhaps it is a need to be loved unconditionally in a world that treats women like a different species (that does something to one's self esteem, see, and then the need for love comes after that.) Men remain comfortable because society is, by design, more comfortable for men. They are allowed to be comfortable in their decisions because they have designed society; it looks like a pretty sweet deal from here. I'm going to go ahead and give you the satisfaction of a "fuck you" on that one.

Bottom line, tubal ligation is a valid form of birth control, and the one that is the most effective. It is cost-effective over the course of a person's fertile years. Again, you're welcome for choosing not to produce another costly water drinking air breathing co2 emitting human in this already overpopulated world. Talk about increasing costs for others! Your idiotic arguments and egregious offences to the laws of grammar and spelling aside, Bobby Breeder, I appreciate the fan mail.

Fallopian Tubes: 1 Sexist Bastards: ZERO!!

Victory, she is mine!

In October 2004 I was standing in a crowded bar, having just watched Foulke throw that last pitch, ending 86 years of near-victory blue balls all over New England. Most of us, watching them win that series, just stood there for a second and stared at the TV and said, in our heads, "Um...what do we do?"

That's kind of how I felt when I encountered Dr. S., who popped his head into the examining room yesterday and, before introducing himself, said, "Hi I'm Dr. S--- and I don't have a problem with it."

Then he went on to say that he knew I had probably been through a lot of bullshit, and he had a strong allergy to bullshit, and would perform the surgery whenthefuckever I could get the day off work.

I just kind of sat there for a second. Wait...we won?!

Unfortunately, I didn't get to crowd-surf across Government Center afterwards, but it was still pretty sweet. I called my best friend, and my dad, and a few others, and we all kept saying, "Finally finally finally." No one thanked me for refusing to continue overpopulating the planet, but I'm sure they meant to. You're welcome.

So let the countdown begin! 61 days of fertility left, and liberation here I come. As Dr. S. put it, "You can say goodbye to messing with your hormones, and all the crap that comes with birth control. You can say goodbye to smelly, I-can't-feel-anything, mood-killing, expensive condoms."

I love this doctor! (That being said, this is the internet and I feel compelled to go ahead and put in a plug for condoms since STI's are just as horrible as babies.)


All of the resentment and frustration I have been feeling just melted away, and I was even nice to a child today without an onrush of nausea! I took my students to an Earth Day festival at MIT, and several of them brought their kids. I was photographed holding a 10 month old child, and I must say, I felt significantly less like dropping it and running in the other direction. There is something so liberating about this part of my identity being respected, and validated, and acted upon. I mean, I still think all you breeders are totally insane, and that my world view makes a whole lot more sense, but I think having this surgery might lessen the instances of me wanting to push strollers into traffic. (She says smiling sweetly.)

Look forward, vast readership, to a full surgery report and how to throw a fabulous "NO Baby Shower." Hooray!!!

Test Prep

I am doing the only test prep I know how to do - I am drilling and killing myself on what it is, exactly, I must say to the doctor this afternoon to convince him that my tubes need tying.

The relaxed jocular Kelly didn't work. You can't say, "Trust me, Doc, if you knew me well enough you'd stop me from reproducing at any cost." They just don't have a sense of humor about these things.

What I'm really preparing is my response to the inevitable request that I seek therapy. Will I get on the couch (do they still have couches?) to buy myself a shot at saving thousands on birth control? Is this conceding to the bullshit sexist assface jerks? Do I, perhaps, need therapy after all?

Times over the past month I have displayed signs of craziness:

1. Anger Management

I was riding my bike through harvard square yesterday at like 5:30pm. There was a wall of people thicker than that thing they are erecting in Iraq. I was up on the sidewalk because some stepchild of the big dig has slithered into cambridge and there are cones and ropes and boards and cops directing traffic all over creation. Not that I ever go fast, but I was going exceptionally slowly, barely moving. Some bespectacled dinosaur born wearing a cravat had just bought a copy of The Economist (ahem, take note: I was going slowly enough to see what magazine he bought) and had his little harvard head stuck in his magazine and was backing up without looking. So I yelled, "Heads Up!" He stopped, did not back into me, and was unharmed. I felt like this was the best possible outcome. I continued on, toward the end of the roped off section where another cop was telling cars what the green light means. The Economist runs up behind me and says, "Excuse me, little girl, but did you bother to consider that riding your bicycle during rush hour might not be the most intelligent thing to do?"

Pause.

Did he just call me "Little Girl?" !!!

Then he goes on to say that if I had blown a horn, he would've known what that meant. But "heads up" means nothing to him. (And it's my intelligence in question - who the fuck is confused about the phrase "heads up?")

So I reply, all sweetness and light, "My voice is free; a horn costs like twenty bucks."

And he says (this is priceless,) "You aren't willing to invest twenty dollars in my safety?"

And I say, "I would be willing to invest several hundred dollars to watch a Clydesdale have its way with you and then drop your old rich white ass in a port-a-potty so I could tip it over at the top of beacon hill and watch you, in a fantastically horrific shittumble, gasp for your last shitty shitty breath on this earth that feels sorry for ever creating you."

Okay I didn't say that. But the fact that I THOUGHT it might suggest to some that therapy is in order. ...And make that SEVERAL Clydesdales.

2. Eating Disorder

My house is dysfunctional in many ways. Particularly charming are our truly disgusting eating habits. I don't like to call people pigs...but, um, we're pigs. A common utterance is, "Oh, I'm not eating anything, you guys can eat but I just ate." The list of things consumed directly following that phrase, trekking into our mouths in direct opposition to the outgoing breath that carried the words, could fill a ream of paper. Just last night I was keeper of the "Oh I'm not eating" torch. I sat through almost the entire meal, sipping my wine, enjoying the company, having already eaten but glad to have a nice dinner conversation with my household.

This is how it starts. It's a normal meal. We have rice and vegetables and some leftover grape leaves heated up. Wine and a salad. Then...out comes the hummus. The feta cheese. The Irish cheddar. The grated Asiago. The pita chips. The wasabi peas. The eighty seven different sauces. The chocolate covered nuts. It ends up here:

The pot full of rice sits in the middle of the table and we dump everything we have yet to eat in the middle of it and go at that thing with our forks like savages. I can't resist! I am physically unable to sit at that table and not pick up a fork at this point. There is something way too wonderful about diving into a pot of food with friends and eating the shit out of it.

So, I had dinner twice...once consumed standing up...out of a trough. This might be reason enough to seek help.

3. Schizophrenia

My neighbors are conspiring against me. They descend upon me in choreographed swoops like a swarm of over privileged bats every other week or so. I live in the richest, whitest, most thoroughly annoying neighborhood in Cambridge and their trust fund sense tells them that I am not one of them. (Or it's the times I sit in my shorts, barefoot on the porch, drinking beer and talking too loudly. At least I'm allergic to it, which is my best chance to fit in.)

So the unifying principle of their conspiracy against me is that I don't belong, and then they divvy up the duties. They are the suing type, so I'll change the names. The responsibilities go like so:

Ellen Fitzgerald has spy duty. She is the decoy. Feigning neighborliness, she knocks on the door occasionally to inquire about seemingly innocent things. "Oh, is that your little car over there? How nice." "What are you all, friends or...?" "It's so nice to have ethnic people in the neighborhood you know we're terribly the same around here usually." (No fucking lie, she said that.) "I looooove low income people, I have a lot in common with my garbage man, more than I have in common with anybody from harvard, I'll tell you that!" (Again, direct quote.) "Make sure you button up that gate, we get the riff raff around here sometimes. Plus it looks nice closed, and, everyone likes to keep them closed." "Are you planning to stay only the semester or are you permanent neighbors?" "Any vacation plans?" Etc etc ad naus.

Doug Wastenhoff is "The Enforcer." His job is to make sure we don't bring anyone's property values down by violating any important neighborhood rules. Leaving snide ass notes about how one should properly park one's car figures prominently in his job description. If, after trash day, the trash container is not whisked immediately from the sidewalk, this unsightly mistake is addressed in one passive aggressive manner or another by the enforcer. In the event of snow, he is very important. The second that snow stops falling, he must run at high speeds to my door to reiterate the shoveling policy. A perk of his job is that his dog gets to shit in my yard when he thinks I'm not looking.

And, finally, the bitch with the dog. I don't know her name. But her job is to walk around and look like her cunt is made of diamonds, giving everyone dirty looks and leaving whiffs of Chanel no.5 in her wake. She makes people like me want to move somewhere else, and is therefore indispensable to the conspirators.

Let's review.

I need therapy for lots of reasons, but I'm pretty sure that only solidifies the fact that reproducing is just not a good idea in my case. No couch for me, not on account of my totally sane and reasonable baby-proofing desires anyway. The Clydesdale thing...maybe.

Perseverance Award

Every year, at graduation, my school gives out the "Perseverance Award" to a student who isn't graduating that day, but who has worked to overcome amazing barriers. They get a small scholarship which they can use toward college tuition when they do graduate. The last two recipients include one girl who battled her way through several homeless shelters with her daughter in tow and came to school as a 19 year old barely able to read, and a young man who was so afraid of being killed by the same gang members who killed his brother that we picked him up when he missed the bus so he wouldn't have to take the T. The world has been terribly unfair to some of these kids, but they are a resourceful group and we like to reward that. I was writing the text of the Award speech for graduation this year (because I was at work, on a holiday, because we aren't in a union and therefore get to show our "entrepreneurial spirit" by working every fucking vacation day) when my boss called this morning.

"Traffic is really bad, there are roads closed for the marathon. I can't figure out how to get around it. I think I'm just not going to come in today."

Way to be, fearless leader.

I tried to think of another title for this post, but "the pope is an asshole" is really the only option

The Pope Is An Asshole


The head of everyone's favorite pedophilia club flew from Rome to the U.S. today. I wasn't going to say anything about it, because I don't give a hell, but then he went and said some stupid shit about which I couldn't possibly remain silent. When commenting about the oh so mysterious and suddenly discovered tendency for priests to rape small boys, he said:

"It is a great suffering for the church in the United States and for the church in general and for me personally that this could happen"

A great suffering for...for YOU?! A great suffering for the church? You unbelievable asshole. I am continually shocked by the catholic church's complete and total refusal to offer an apology to the victims, and in this case, to even an acknowledge that they are the ones who have suffered. The church in which he is the head cheese abuses over 5,000 kids (that we know about) and he tells reporters that he is suffering.

Mr. Pope expressed his personal remorse about the abuse scandal, which up to this point he hadn't really given much attention, and said the church is "increasing its efforts to keep pedophiles out of the priesthood."

You asshole. You total complete asshole! "Increasing?" This implies that they were like kinda sorta maybe gonna figure some way to alleviate this suffering for the church when they got around to it, but now they are really going to start doing something about it. Increasing? Whatever efforts, which of course don't include letting priests marry or (god forbid) be female, should have already been at maximum.

Since 2002 over five thousand victims have come forward, and those are only the people who have braved exposure in a culture that socializes its children to feel shame when they are abused. Not to mention what that experience must have been like in their own families and church communities. I hope every single one of these five thousand people didn't have to hear the horrifically insensitive remarks of their "spiritual leader."

What's New Here?

Hmm. Same messy desk. Same backpack. Same coffee mug. Wha...is that...is that a bicycle?

It's true. Hal the Hyundai has taken a few days off this week so that I can try my hand at the cool kid commute. Just when you thought, "Wow, Kelly can't possibly get any cooler" look what I go and do?!

The coolness of the whole adventure was mitigated by the fact that I had to, as an adult, take LESSONS to learn how to ride a bicycle. In a very Cantabrigian manner, I hired a private tutor. This was less because I felt the quality of a highly paid private tutor would far exceed learning from any old regular American who learned to ride a bike as a child and more because I was not about to embark on this very uncool journey under the tutelage of someone I had to see ever again.

Enter: The Bicycle Whisperer.

Susan the Bike Teacher calls herself the Bicycle Whisperer, and that's exactly what she is. I was a wild, untamed klutz of equine proportions and for forty bucks an hour she guaranteed she could get me to stay upright on two wheels. I drove to Somerville for my first lesson, skeptical. I parked on the street outside of her house, one of those huge old Somerville paint peelers that, to me, always look homey and welcoming. Still, I'm apprehensive and practically tip toe to the front door. Considering I found her on the internet, the chances that this woman might strangle me in her basement with a bike chain are slightly higher than normal. As in any dangerous situation, I just tell myself: "If you survive, think of the story you could write!"

Alas, no bike chain murder here.

Susan answers the door and gets me a parking pass so Somerville's finest won't charge me extra for the lesson. She is the definition of east coast baby boomer, living out her golden years with wild gray hair, attending every available leftist talk and rally in town, and trying to save Africa. She lives with roommates; she started her own organization in Mali; she makes a modest living teaching people how to ride bicycles. She's basically super awesome.

As a teacher, it can be hard to assume the role of the student. Luckily, the bicycle whisperer is about as comforting as a womb, and I immediately trust her with my safety. We walk to the barn, where the bicycle collection lives. We maneuver through the maze and extract my special learning bicycle. The process of building character through humiliation begins here. If anyone videotaped this I would murder them with a bike chain in Susan's basement. The bike is a special machine for special people. Literally. Its center of gravity is very low, the pedals are wrapped with soft fabric, and the rider sits totally upright with feet slightly out in front rather than right underneath. For me, the padded pedals are by far the funniest part. Moving on to: wardrobe.

Susan wraps me and pads me and covers me in so many articles of safety gear that I feel a weird combination of invincible and incredibly ridiculous. It feels like I could just dive into the pavement without getting hurt. Which is great, because at this point I'm pretty sure I am destined to do just that.

Through the streets of Somerville we march with our bikes. People smile at us because they think Susan is volunteering her time for some organization that teaches the mentally handicapped to ride bicycles. Little do they know, she is charging the mentally handicapped forty dollars an hour.

[[real time check in: I am at my desk; it is 7:15 am. Lessons for the day are planned, and I am free to blog. As I have mentioned, my school is located beneath a homeless shelter. Today in the room above me there is a child screaming at the top of its lungs. Again. I. Hate. This. Child. Judge me if you want to, but I do. I hate it. I mean, I don't really like any children until they are old enough to drive. But this child...ohhhhh this child.]]

So we arrive at a large abandoned lot adjacent to a basketball court. It is on a slight incline. We walk the bikes to the far corner at the top of the incline. This is what my life has done to me: a woman I met on the internet sends me down the hill on my bike when I am 27. What the fuck, parents?!

Offering all manner of supportive words, Susan takes me through step by step. By some miracle, I don't fall and it really doesn't seem that hard. Except turning. I still can't really turn. But that's another blog entirely.

She has me practice signaling, changing gears, etc. etc. calling at the top of her lungs from the center of the lot, "Left turn!" "Emergency stop!"

All of this is made exponentially worse when two young men decide they are going to play basketball. I am basically an adolescent male when it comes to the opposite sex. I cannot be expected to behave rationally or devote my attention to anything else when there are boys around. It's a sickness and I've got it. So here I am wrapped up like the Michelin Man on the short bus bike and there are male twenty-somethings playing basketball right next to me. I learn that I cannot yet look over my shoulder at a boy while trying to steer a bike. Horrible horrible cruel stupid world!!

I graduate to the bike path. This amounts to walking through Davis Square with the bikes until we hit the path, thus increasing the potential of being recognized by someone I will have to see again. Still, I am operating in my "I've decided to do this" mode, which means that I will ride the godforsaken idiot bike until my ass bleeds if that's what it takes to learn how to not fall off of it.

Fortunately, riding a bike is not nearly as difficult as I have imagined and my ass, while rather sore these days, has not bled.

The bike path is basically an interactive obstacle course. There are all sorts of moving, unpredictable things and people that you have to avoid hitting. I narrowly missed a family of four, and yelled at them to make sure and teach their kids young or...well or just look what would happen to them!

That being said, the bicycle whisperer felt that after one lesson, I only needed practice and did not have to take another lesson. While I had a pang of separation anxiety just thinking about mounting one of the two-wheeled death traps without her womb-like presence to soothe me, I was willing to save the forty bucks.

Since then I've bought a bike and commuted to work a few times, but I've gotta go shape the minds of the future and will have to write about that later. It involves less padding and way more bone chilling moments of pure terror.

Believe to Achieve (Part Two)

So, the conference.

A project of the National Urban Alliance, this conference was billed as "The Most Important Educational Experience of 2008." The goal of the conference was noble: give educators the tools to close the achievement gap one classroom, or one district, at a time AND reaffirm that education is a fundamental civil right. The goal of me and my Education Action! buddies: meet as many passionate activists as possible and get them working on educational justice in their home communities. It seemed, on paper, that OUR goal and NUA's goals were going to dovetail nicely in gorgeous downtown Albany. We piled into the EdAction Mobile at 8 p.m. Friday night, bound for Achievement.


Saturday morning, very early, we entered the Crowne Plaza's lobby. A small crowd milled about. Everyone was sort of swaying in place, waiting for what we did not know. The whole scene had an underwater quality. The concierge informed us that everyone was waiting for a shuttle to the convention center, where the conference was ACTUALLY being held. Lugging our collection of recruitment materials, promotional materials, NCLB information, and general whatnot, we waited outside amid the flotsam and jetsam. We piled in the van. It took us approximately seven feet North to the convention center. We piled out. These things always have a funny way of making us realize what our students must feel like when we create inefficient systems for them to operate within.

The convention center is the weirdest building on earth. It is HUGE. Absolutely huge. The hallways are wide enough for three Hummers and a horse drawn carriage. Everything echos. Sporadically, in random corners, modern art appears, the sort of art that makes you wonder what distinguishes "art" from "nice try buddy." We walk through this building a longer distance than we traveled in the van, arriving at last in the center where registration tables are assembled.

The registration tables look like tic tacs sitting in a swimming pool. This place is a rough venue to generate conversation and build community. But we hang on to our optimism. This is the Most Important Place To Go All Year, remember?!

Fast forward. It is lunch time. Three people have passed our table. They did not stop. Those little golf cart things carrying maintenance workers and security guards whiz by like tumbleweed. This. Place. Is. Empty. We decide to split up the table-watching duties, and two of us head to a breakout session.



My session is concerned with reframing the idea of underachievement. The primary take away: it's all in our attitude. If we expect our students to underachieve, they will do just that. We find what we're looking for, every time. So, if we look for success, if we expect it, we'll get it. This is an important message. Too often, I sit in staff meetings addressing each student according to weaknesses. This is the language we speak: failures, risks of failures, weaknesses, challenges, etc. We almost never speak in positives.

At one point, the presenter asked us to share with our neighbors some positive words we felt described urban "underachievers." I am flanked by administrators. They are very encouraged to hear that I teach the homeless/teen parent/court involved population, which they had experience doing earlier in their careers. So we start thinking about generalizations, of the positive nature, that we can make about our students, past or present. I say, "Resourceful" which makes everyone nod. They say, "Persistent." One woman is writing down all of our suggestions, as was directed by our facilitator. I say, "Passionate." They cock their heads. Really? Passionate? They don't write it down, and move right along in the conversation.

When we come back together as a group, the four most common responses are put up on the powerpoint Family Feud style. Our group had written down all four. Passionate was not up there. My neighbors are very satisfied with themselves. They got the right answers.

That pretty much sums up my review of the conference right there. We want to address the achievement gap, and we do a lot of rephrasing terminology, looking at the results of expensive research projects, and fighting a system riddled with racism and sexism and classism and greed. We want our schools to be equitable and excellent and the education they provide to be a guaranteed civil right. But, when it comes down to it, we are up against ourselves. We are up against our own expectations for our schools and our students. We are up against administrators that don't think "passionate" is a valid adjective to describe a group of students. We are up against a culture that values getting answers more than really thinking about questions.

All weekend, we spoke to about six passionate advocates for change. Since then, we've been in contact with one of them. I want to say to these people: attending a conference for a weekend isn't making change. Writing one email to an activist organization about how much you believe in the cause and then never following up on it isn't making change. Getting the same answers as everyone else in your workshop on closing the achievement gap isn't making change. It's as if the standardized testing mentality, that many of us agree is detrimental to schools, has been ingrained into the minds of these well meaning educators. Reform efforts seem to fall into the same "just skim the surface and move on" trap as test-prep obsessed curricula. There seems to be this idea that never using the word "Underachiever" again is all one needs to do to eliminate underachievement. It's a valid step, sure, but creating an educational system that provides an equal education for all races and social classes is going to take more than vocabulary.

Get out there and DO something, people!

Believe to Achieve (Part One)

Normally, my weekends are rather joyful. I flee work on Friday like the building is on fire no later than 4:30 pm, and go straight to the gym (or, if there are warmer-than-tundra conditions by the river, head outside to run). Boxing, running, spinning class - whatever it is, I sweat a lot. Then I get to tumble into a big hug from a cute boy, and spend all weekend lolling about asking each other, "What do you want to do?" More times than not, the plot involves a lot of napping and a delightful martini or two. By Sunday night I am armed for battle again.

This weekend, however, I got to attend my first ever All Weekend Professional Conference. This is different from the All Day Conference, which I've already mastered. It is different because instead of missing a day of work you just work all fucking weekend. No lolling. No cute boy. No martinis. Just a three and a half hour drive to Albany.

Let me tell you something about Albany.

...something...something to say about Albany...

My search yields nothing. There are exactly zero things to say about this place except that Albany in March is like Worcester in December. A crappy, cold, not-quite-a-place. I'm getting ahead of myself. The drive:

We take the company car, possession of which I find hilarious given that we have, technically, three human staffers, two bunnies, and an empty bank account. My coworkers and I prepare like we would for any car trip longer than forty five minutes - pack a bag absolutely filled to the brim with snacks. Wasabi peas, crackers, gummy candy, peppermint patties, a grapefruit, beef jerky, cans of soda, three nalgene-fulls of water, salt and vinegar chips. Three minutes into the drive we stopped for coffee and a sandwich. (Just in case we got stranded!)

The three little piggies and their Fast Lane barreled onto the Mass Pike headed west, bound for the 2008 Believe To Achieve Conference. I mean, if we're going to close the achievement gap, we'd better not go in hungry.

Somewhere close to the New York border the world forgets that it is spring and begins to snow like a banshee. I am in a contemplative mood, arms crossed in the backseat, listening to Radiohead and staring out the window. The snow on the side of the road gets deeper and deeper. Somebody switches the CD. The Shins. I squish my forehead into the window and contemplate suicide, hand in the salt and vinegar chips.

We're on Route 87, in search of our Pricelined stay at the Regency just outside of Albany.

I judge my hotels across a complicated cross-section of criteria. I won't bore you with those here. Just know that this Regency fell, judging by that index, in between the first Motel 6 you hit after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border into Tijuana, and the time I went camping in the bed of a Ford F150 with a capped bed.

The door bell drew a customer service representative who looked like a defendant in a domestic violence case. This gem of a beefcake, bedazzled beneath gold chains, sported a sweatshirt with a sewn on logo for the NYPD and an embroidered message: "Cops for Cops."

Either he had some internal digestion issue or he said hello, I couldn't tell. Nayad, who is like a pretty flower doused with honey wearing a cloak of sunshine and music, says: "Oh hello sir we are just checking in."

For fun, we hold hands.

Nayad says, "I'm so excited for our weekend, Pat."

We make kissy faces.

Cops for Cops is unamused.

Nayad says, "We have to be downtown tomorrow morning by 8 for a conference, what times does your shuttle run?"

Cops for Cops emits grunts that translate into, "We don't have a shuttle." Nayad, like a little wood sprite sprinkled in fairy dust and happiness flakes, informs Officer Congeniality that the website lists a shuttle to downtown as an amenity and this particular amenity figured prominently in our decision to book this room.

Cops for Cops hands Nayad her cards back to her and says, while walking back into his cubicle of manliness, "Shuttle only on weekdays." We can hear, as the door opens and closes, that he is watching a film. I can't resist. I walk over and peer in.

He's watching Phenomenon starring John Travolta. For those of you who haven't seen it, it ranks just above Steel Magnolias on the "Funniest Movies to Catch This Guy Watching" list.

We have trouble abandoning the shuttle issue, even though we can drive in just as easily. Luckily, we brought the printer. We print out the web page, and march back out to the lobby. Nayad may actually have been concerned about the issue at hand. I one hundred percent just wanted to screw with Cops for Cops. He hands us the list of amenities and the list goes like the following, asterisks are for the ones of whose existence we found zero proof:
Cable TV
Tennis Court*
Pool*
Continental Breakfast
Air Conditioning
Shuttle to Albany
Room Service

The last two, on every such card we found throughout our stay, were CROSSED OUT WITH A PEN.

Cops for Cops one. Us zero.

Since it was just about midnight at this point, we gave up and went to bed.

In Part Two I'll actually talk about the conference. Not to ruin it, but...we didn't do shit about the achievement gap. We didn't even get lunch.

how the other half gives

"If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it 'cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he's poor in hisself, there ain't no million acres gonna make him feel rich, an' maybe he's disappointed that nothin' he can do 'll make him feel rich....


...It ain't that big. The whole United States ain't that big. It ain't that big. It ain't big enough. There ain't room enough for you an' me, for your kind an' my kind, for rich and poor together all in one country, for thieves and honest men. For hunger and fat."

It's not just that John Steinbeck is a huge pimp. It's also that rich people are the devil. I can't help it - I don't like them. They freak me out. Unfortunately, I am cursed with a particularly discerning palette. Thus, when uber-rich people invite me to dinner, I can't say no. On Tuesday I was representing my boss at a house that could swallow up the trailer from whence I came seventeen times over. I walked over with my iPod blasting Bob Dylan singing about a dead hobo. The jazz trio could be heard from the courtyard. Cheek-kissing ladies funneled through the doorway. I stood at the edge of the drive in my favorite blue sneakers, a little post-welfare ball of anxiety. I hate these people. But I want to eat their food.

The entry way is clogged with activity. A frantic young woman repeats "May I take your coat" to the air, her arm outstretched toward no one in particular. She takes my coat and points to a table covered with alphabetized name tags. This young woman has the perfectionism disease big time. Her pearls sit exactly one quarter inch above her neckline and if you somehow threatened the sanctity of this exquisitely planned event, she would eat you for breakfast.

And so begins the excruciating "mingle" hour. To me, mingling is drinking wine in the corner and mocking people. This is delightful with a partner, but alone it just looks crazy. I stand there with my wine, not eating, staring at people in shifts, leering just long enough to make them uncomfortable. One woman accosts me.

"Oh hello, dear. I thought I saw you walk by the house, and I said to myself 'well she looks like she would be coming here, why would she walk by?' and now here you are."

I say, "Yeah, I was listening to music and I hate to stop mid-song."

"Oh! Isn't that wonderful, sounds like you've got your priorities straight."

I'm so bad at this. I have nothing to say to this woman. I gulp Fume Blanc.

"So, tell me dear, what do you do with yourself."

I tell her what I do: Teach. She cocks her head. Then I mention my employer's name.

Within seconds there is a flurry of Burberry and Chanel; I am engulfed by five old ladies. "Ohhhhh you work for him? How iiiiiiis he. It has been tooooo looooong. Oh you must tell him I say hello. Oh you are so lucky to be working with him. It must be just fabulous."

All of a sudden, I exist.

They poured upon me stories of the late 1960s, when they met my boss and fell in love with his work. I offer words of admiration for his work, looking into my wine glass, which is looking mighty low. They hand me cards and tell me to make sure to pass those on to him and flutter away as a unit. Existence by association. Blissful, as you might imagine.

Alone again. Mingle hour is almost up; I have eaten exactly nothing. The furniture looks like a museum collection. The art on the walls is old and represents an obnoxiously vast cultural diversity. I feel like I might break something.

Along comes the Ambassador, tinkling a bell. She holds it up over her head and motions for us to gather elsewhere. She herds us into the largest room, we moo obey. We sit facing a podium. I take a chair next to a sleeping cat. The Ambassador tinkles her way to the front. She has a microphone - it's time for introductions. She instructs us to speak about ourselves, and passes it to her left. It is five people away.

I look at the cat. The cat looks at me.

The five before me are presidents and founders of various philanthropic outfits. They kept saying, "By day, I'm an attorney. By night and weekend, I run this or that organization that I started. We help 'the communities.'"

What communities, exactly? Certainly not the ones we all live in.

Anyway, I'm struck by the sudden presence of a commonality: We all have more than one job. I will hand that to these rich people. They are really busy giving small fractions of their fortunes to "the communities."

I stammer through some mildly humorous thing about teaching. Then I mention, again, my boss whose name makes everyone go, "Ahhhhh." The Ambassador winks at me.

The microphone passing takes a significant amount of time. As it nears the end people are either more comfortable or more drunk, because the two sentence intro turns into paragraphs and jokes and commentary. Most entertaining are the high school students invited to represent their schools. They are perfectly adolescent, and say funny things. Two of them are black, and this pleases the crowd immeasurably. Oh look how integrated our little party is.

After the introductions and a few longer speeches by guests of honor, the Ambassador talks about raising millions of dollars through parties like this for great organizations that support the arts in education in Massachusetts. Then she says, "Because I only invited rich people!" Everyone laughs. "Like me!" Laughs.

Oh. How we chuckled.

Then she goes on to say that in "this very room" Frederick Douglass and other community leaders of the past gathered and plotted against oppression and inequality. Everyone gets reverent, breathing in the space.

Yeah. I'm sure this is just how Frederick pictured the future. We have fabulous parties to raise some money to put a year's worth of art and music programming in the urban schools because otherwise "those kids" wouldn't get any. Nice work America.

No, Actually, It Did Not Go Well

Welcome to the third and apparently nowhere near final entry regarding my quest for permanent baby-proofing. This promises to be the most frustrated entry yet, so bear with my ranting.

[to self: Deep breath. Settle into a calming, excessively wordy description, and go from there...]

The Women's Health Center is on the same floor, down the hall, from Dr. H's office. I approach it with great excitement, as I have waited two months for this appointment. (Actually, that is only the length of time between appointments. I first asked a doctor for tubal ligation at age 18, making my wait time just under ten years.) This visit to my gynecologist seems like a step toward the light at the end of a really, really long tunnel (if you are thinking that this is an intentional invocation of female anatomy you are correct, and I'm enjoying the hell out of it).

The Women's Health Center is a reproduction (pun totally intended) of the Medical Specialties Office. Same muted colors for the upholstery, television in the same corner, different magazines. I go through the check-in rigamaroll and sit. And wait. The television bestows upon we waiters the slings and arrows of televised small claims court. In this particular episode, a woman is suing her landlord for her security deposit and he is simultaneously suing her right back for damages. Plaintiffs and defendants both, they glare at each other beneath ill-combed mullets. This world provides daily reminders as to why reproducing humans is an act engaged in far too often.

My appointment time comes and goes. Cases are settled. The suers and the sued offer post-trial commentary beneath rolling credits. I wait and wait.

Finally, the receptionist comes around from behind the desk and calls me over. She points me down the back hallway, where a nurse is waving a clipboard. She tells the receptionist thank you, sending her back out front. The nurse explains to me, "I didn't want to go get you myself, because there's an angry lady out there who says she's waited too long and I wasn't gonna deal with that."

We go through the motions. Weight. Blood pressure. Doctor will be right with you.

She pops back in.

What was the last day of your last period.

I have no idea. We look at the calendar, thinking that will jog my memory. I literally have no idea. Do people keep track of this shit?

To get rid of her, I tell a complete lie. I say, "Ohhhh yeah. The sixteenth." She happily marks it down, thanks me, and leaves for real. I have lied to a nurse.

Two minutes later the doctor is in. She is a healthy sort, in her late forties I'd wager, and looks like she rides horses or something else that requires physical exertion and wealth. Tennis. No make up, no jewelry. Whether she remembers me or not, she acts as if she does. I mean, I do have a rather memorable...um...face.

"Hellloooo, good to see you again."

"Hi, it's good to see you."

"You look great."

"Thanks."

"So." Clipped, but not curt. "What can I do for you today?"

"Well I think Dr. H told you that I am requesting tubal ligation."

"He did. Tell me, Kelly, have you hooked yourself into some counseling yet?"

As you may remember, as a teacher I am the Apotheosis of Patience, and this is no different. I make no gestures to reveal how vile I find the idea that one must seek counseling before a simple medical procedure.

"No, I haven't."

"Frankly, even if you had, I'm just not comfortable performing this surgery on women under thirty. However, I do want you encourage you to get a therapist or psychiatrist or other mental health professional involved before you continue with this. I think anyone potentially performing the surgery would want you to have sorted that all out."

Stop time, Zack Morris style. You won't do it at all? And you knew what this appointment was about? Um, that might have been appropriate information to offer BEFORE the $25 copay, ass hole. Or BEFORE I took the day off of work. Or BEFORE I got my little child hating hopes up.

Dr. Gynopussy, as she will heretofore be known, senses that I am frustrated (might have had something to do with heavy sighing and eyeball movements...she's very perceptive) and says, "I'm sorry to make you come all the way over here. And I hope you don't feel like I'm abandoning you."

No, actually, I don't feel abandoned at all. Here is the list of things that I feel:

1. Fucking irritated

2. Patronized

3. Belittled

4. Judged

5. Did I mention fucking irritated??

So then she launches into this defensive speech about regret rates, and her oath to "do no harm" and blah blah freaking blah. I say, "Would it be easier for someone to get a vasectomy?"

She says she isn't sure, but that she would certainly be interested in knowing. Then she says, "Are you in a relationship with someone who does not want children?"

I first mention that one's relationship status shouldn't really have any bearing on medical decisions. I then tell her, in an attempt to escape what had just become an awkward moment, that dating someone who wanted kids would be like dating a Republican. Someone who wants children disagrees with me on something pretty darned fundamental to my identity, something that is non-negotiable. Then I go ahead and make it awkward again with this: "I find it incredibly frustrating to have the entire medical profession, not to mention 98% of everyone else I know, consistently calling that part of me into question, as if there is some part of me that is unknowable, or that I need to be protected from decisions I MIGHT make later."

So then she says, "I understand completely," and IN THE SAME BREATH, asks if my boyfriend would seek a vasectomy.

What?!

Despite whatever antiquated world-view Gynopussy is operating within, I thought she might see how I would find that offensive. Regardless of who I am dating, my reproductive decisions are my own.

Folded into her suggestion is the assumption that obtaining a vasectomy for a young unmarried male presents fewer obstacles than obtaining tubal ligation for a young unmarried female. If this is true, me and the nice folks at Cambridge Hospital are going to be in our own little courtroom drama. I left the office with her repeated urging to seek counseling echoing in my brain.

I make an appointment at the desk with another gynecologist in the building. He represents one of three more "shots" within Cambridge Hospital. I have to wait another month. I have to pay another fee.

On my walk to the car, my mouth excreted foul language unlike any I've ever spoken. I ran out of swears. Now, I come from a long line of laborers and drunks. Running out of swears is not a small thing, people.

Then I do what I always do when I am about to for serious freak out. Like any grown up who can make her own damn decisions, I call my dad. He says a number of unhelpful things like:

"Given the likelihood that your offspring will resemble me, it's kind of your duty to the world to have at least one."

and

"General anestesia sounds like just what you need right now, actually, I'm surprised she wouldn't give it to you."

and, his only serious comment:

"Well, all she's recommending is that you explore a really important decision with an impartial person before going through with it."

To which I say:

Do people who want to have children have to seek counseling?

Do people who are having trouble conceiving have to go see a psychiatrist before receiving fertility treatment?

Do people seeking fertility treatment get a speech about how the process of having kids is non-reversible?

NO! Why is the seriousness of choosing NOT to have children GREATER than choosing TO have children?

There. Aren't. Enough. Swears.

test prep test schmep

This will be short. Remember that time I got demoted for being too "unfocused on testing" and "progressive to a fault?" You know, the time when they told me to do more test prep or they would fire me. Well I do. And since then our students have taken lots and lots of tests. Ohhh how we love tests.

Lo and fucking behold:

ONCE AGAIN, upon receiving the test results this morning, we can see that: the test scores in my subjects for my students were higher than every single other subject and every single other teacher.

Did I bend to the will of the test prep wackos? No, no I did not. In fact, in my childish stubborn manner that is both adorable and effective, I did approximately ZERO test prep this school year. You know what I did do? I loved the crap out of my kids and my job and I did not for one nano-second believe that any of them could fail. That's it.

Huzzah! Drill and kill this, bitches. Sniff...sniff...mmm...I love the smell of victory in the morning.

Internet Puberty

My sentiments exactly.

Listen everyone. All five of you. Two days ago I used blog as a verb. I have been known to show Youtube videos in my classroom. I edited something on Wikipedia last week. Things are happening that I don't entirely understand...like when changing in gym class suddenly became a thing of horror.

But just like when these two perfectly shaped behemoth enchantresses began to grow on my chest in fifth grade, I am coming to accept the fact that the internet can be useful. Given my age, I SHOULD be one of the kids who grew up right alongside the internet. But I didn't even have cable television until age 9 or 10. A computer?! A computer is on the list of things we requested as children, sure. And it met my mother's only response to inquiries about material possessions. She would throw her head back and bellow, "You can't always get what you want...but if you try sometimes..." and raise her eyebrows. We would stare back, forced to glumly admit that we had what we needed.

When I was a teenager I could walk a mile and a half to my best friend's house, and she had the internet. But she also had a pool. So I squandered my only pre-adulthood chance to get acquainted with this...this "internet" for the sweet cool chlorine bath out back. We spent entire summers on floats shaped like alligators, eating sandwiches made from white bread and mustard. At night, the neighborhood convened in giant games of capture the flag. I never had to go home and I never had to go on the internet. It was perfect.

Thus, I went to college having used email once or twice and able to type. I sailed through college as a writing major, researching the depths of my own imagination. Sinking into the glorious world of fiction. All my papers were composed on collections of loose leaf paper, napkins, in the margins of other books. I would gather them up, spread them out on a table at the library, and type them in one shot. My thesis was written almost entirely at a dusty old man's bar three doors down from the library. I took to drinking red wine and letting the neighborhood regulars listen to late-night paragraphs of my work. This sort of madness suited my college identity rather well. There were people around who thought I was a crazy Luddite. There were the "media studies" kids, who to me were just as crazy as the theater arts kids. Their art wasn't my art and I wasn't interested in being anything other than a writer. I couldn't understand what the hell was so interesting about the computer. I could spend six weeks in a tent with nothing but a copy of Babylon, Revisited and not get bored. There were whole worlds in single sentences, what the hell did you need a computer for?!

Then I went to grad school. Oh fuck. These people get their research on. Here, a computer becomes a necessary tool. Syllabus: online. Class discussions: online. Test results: online. Okay, okay. I give. I purchased a computer. An adorable little laptop. It plays music; it plays movies; I can send email from the toilet. These are useful, enjoyable things.

HOWEVER I still did not really grasp the extent to which people engaged with this "internet." I thought I did. But I did not.

There is a bunch of knowledge out there that seems ubiquitous. I take great pleasure in being ignorant of most of it. People magazine is a collection of beautiful strangers; I know nothing about Hollywood and all that noise. But this is the conscious, deliberate result of watching almost zero movies and refusing to own a television. Recently, I have been blindsided by a whole other world of things to which I have been blind. Perhaps you are familiar with the website whose charming assault on grammar involves photographed cats. Until recently, I knew only the "Hang in there Baby" cat. Apparently, cats and captions have been married for some time on the internet and I had no idea. These cats are everywhere. Literally everyone knew about this except me. As it is with any new knowledge, I am starting to notice references to these grammatically horrifying pictures all over creation. I feel I have joined some other realm. I have moved to the lunch table where the girls talk about periods and boys and shaving their legs instead of...of...whatever we talked about before that. I have got internet pubes. And with them comes all the uncertainty and weirdness of that first real bout with adulthood in grade school. The internet awkward phase. iAcne.

Thanks to my workplace, my status as computer pubescent is paradoxical. No matter how tech-inept I may be, simply by virtue of my twentysomethingness and my coworkers' babyboomerness, I am The Resident Computer Genius. Countless are the times I have heard: "Kelly, you're good at computers..." followed by a request to, say, explain why the machine was suddenly "typing in only capital letters." My love for learning is second only to my love for knowing things my coworkers don't, so this works out for all of us.

This is a recurring theme with me, this being dragged into my generation. At a sleepover in grade school I remember sleeping on some girl's New Kids on the Block sheets wondering, self-consciously, "Who the hell are these guys?" When my girlfriends were making mixed cds I was still pushing the speakers of my turntable up to a taperecorder, recording all my Beatles albums onto cassettes. At a birthday party when everyone went to see Ace Ventura Pet Detective, I left them and watched Mrs. Doubtfire by myself. I identified with middle aged divorcees, it seems. I watched The Breakfast Club for the first time three years ago, yet I owned a copy of Gone with the Wind by eighth grade. I denied being a member of my own generation.

This has made for a great time in adulthood! Two years ago I started listening to Radiohead and Pearl Jam. They are GREAT! While everyone else who grew up in the eighties actually GREW UP IN THE EIGHTIES, I created a little world for myself and grew up in the sixties and seventies. Looking back, this was a smart decision on my part. So, now I'm using blog as a verb. One thing is for sure, though, I will retain my grammatical prowess, and resist the temptation to find subject verb disagreements cute.