I've come a long way, folks.

(Post by Tracy)

This is my fifth year teaching. My first year, I had students who were only 4-8 years younger than me. I remember our "Back to School" day, when I met my first bunch of students and some of their parents. A mom looked at me, said, "You're not old enough to be teaching!! How old are you??" I stammered, thought as fast as I could, and said, "23!" (This is when I first started lying about my age. I added a whopping year, making myself 23 instead of 22. In the brief amount of time I had to think of my answer, my thoughts were 22 sounds too young! and She'll know I'm lying! Ever since that fateful day, I've confused about my age. To illustrate: in November, I turned 27. I had been 26. (Obviously, Tracy, unlike you - we know how birthdays work.) But as soon as I start to think Ok, now I'm 27, my brain jumps to Next is 28. Next thing I know, am I 26? 27? 28? Did I turn 28 and soon I'll be 29? The differences are subtle, I know, and so was the difference between 22 and 23 - but really, 23 does sound older, right?)

Well, anyway, I want you to know that I'm moving up in life. Lying about my age to make me seem older is apparently no longer a necessity. Swinging the pendulum, if you will. No doubt the change from "Miss" to "Mrs." moved this along. As I was responding to a parent's email this morning, I wrapped it up with a cheery "Have a good weekend." He replied, thanking me for my email, and polished it off with:

"Happy Mother's Day."

And no, he doesn't know something you guys don't.

Sum- Sum- Summertime

(Post by Tracy)

It's definitely that time of year again. Spring break is now behind us. The days are noticeably longer. Quintessential summer songs are playing on the radio. Things like "locker clean out day" are visible on the monthly calendar. Countdowns are announced in class. All the weekends in June, July and August are filling up with plans.

Summer is right around the corner!

I am feeling the exact excitement, squirrelly-ness and anxiousness that I feel each year, which surprised me a little: I had previously thought that the origin of these feelings was the warm weather appearing (finally!) at some point in April, after a long and cold Midwestern November-March. But here I am feeling it again, and the weather has gotten warmer, but mostly just going from 70's to 80's. Maybe there's just something ingrained in the student and teacher psyche, a switch that is triggered when the mind decides that summer is finally close enough again that it's worth looking towards and counting down to.

At the same time, I do recognize at least one unique spark to these feelings this year. It was exactly a year ago that I was out here for my interview and then returned home to get a phone call with a job offer. Remembering that time throws me back into the excitement of last end-of-the-school-year-time. I love Milwaukee as a city and as a place to live, but after deciding last March that I was not returning to that school for another year, the prospect of starting again somewhere new was so refreshing, scaring but very exciting. The anticipation of a new adventure with my new husband in a new city was thrilling. Add to that the emotions I felt during my interview and time on campus at this, my new school - the thought that I could really see myself teaching here, belonging here and being happy here. So as I've walked around campus this week, I'm thrown back into those feelings as well. And I feel so happy that it has worked out how it has.

And with that, I'll leave you with this:

Official countdown: 18 more school days! (not including 3 days of finals) until summer!

Things That Make Me Feel Old...

(Post by Tom)

In order:

Overhearing a bearded young fellow, in the course of discussing Waco with his friends, wonder out loud who the "FBI lady or whatever" was that was in charge at the time.

Seeing a Jimi Hendrix t-shirt on a four-foot-tall braces-clad kid.

Hearing two teenage girls giggling about how old Bob Dylan is.

Compiling lists of things that make me feel old when I'm still about 15 years too young.

Are you thirsty yet?

(Post by Tracy)

Hi friends.

It’s Friday afternoon (finally). We still have not had spring break. Yes, I have summers off, but I often wonder: what is it like to work a job where your day ends when you leave the office?

That is besides the point. All day Tuesday I thought it was Wednesday. All day Wednesday I argued with myself over whether it was Wednesday or Thursday. Thursday morning came, and I was just exhausted with trying to follow our 7-day calendar and decided to let the day “just be.” And finally today is Friday.

It was 80 degrees today. The sun was shining. I walked across campus to do some photocopying, and I literally (using this word for emphasis, but correctly, thank you) thought to myself, I am so happy to be here.

Nonetheless (best word in the English language), I am happy it is Friday, because this week was a long week.

But, we should all be celebrating.

Even as I type that, I realize it’s true for so many reasons, not just the silly, facetious reason I am about to present. I’m so thankful for so many things… One of which is that next week is spring break and ¾ of my family is coming to see me!! However, that is not what this post is about. Back to my facetiousness.

We should all be celebrating: that we have made it so far.

You know what I realized last night? Every decade until about the year 2000, we were in great danger of Daily Under-Hydration.

This is how I came to this realization:

Last night, there was a school function for incoming freshmen, a fancy “Welcome Dinner” for them and their families. I was to be in attendance. On my way back to the school last night, I decided to stop at Starbucks.

It was 6:15. I’d be at the school by 6:30, where tables would be set. I could easily have gotten a glass of water or iced tea upon arrival. But no, I wanted Starbucks. I’m not even a coffee drinker, but I felt drawn to Starbucks last night. After all, I did not have my water bottle with me.

So I went. It was very tasty.

I met a coworker in the school parking lot, with whom I walked into the gym. She was smart; she was carrying her water bottle.

It got me to thinking…

How did we survive the 1990’s? (Let alone the 80’s, 70’s, 60’s…)

Here’s what I mean… When I was in high school, when you were thirsty, you asked to go to the water fountain. Or, in French class, you asked, Est-ce que je peus aller a prender l’eau? (Yes, I only put that in to see if I still could. Booyah. Ok, I did double-check it in Google translator. But I was darn close!...)

Seriously, though. The reason I was told we weren’t allowed to carry water bottles in high school was because students would sneak vodka into school. (Those Dominican sisters think of everything!)

Whether or not we were allowed to bring Starbucks drinks to school was not even considered. Who would stop on their way to school to buy a drink?? And, in 1998, what was Starbucks? Oh, you mean that drink place? (Don’t they only sell coffee?)

These days, I expect most students to be carrying a drink around with them all day. And I do the same thing! Dreadful is the day that I forget my Nalgene at home in the morning! Or my travel mug to carry my tea or hot cocoa!

And so, I asked myself last night, how did they survive? These past generations? The generations who saw the Nalgene’s predecessor – the cheap, freebee, BPA-ridden plastic water bottles? Not dishwasher safe but run through the dishwasher anyway until, after 20 washes, worn away was the name of the team or politician or real estate agent who gave it to you as cheap advertisement in the first place. What about before that?

So, thank goodness they survived. We are so spoiled today, bringing our beverage with us Wherever. We. Go. (By the way, what do you think of the latest Facebook / blogosphere / email trend of putting periods to show the emphasis you would give if it was spoken word, even though those periods are completely grammatically incorrect? I’m still undecided.)

Anyway, hats off to my parents, grandparents, all those who rode the waves of the under-hydration era and made it out on top. This Nalgene-swig’s for you!

[Epilogue: My sophomores and I just read Slaughterhouse Five. Kurt Vonnegut’s style is ca-ra-zy. So please forgive me if this post is somewhat disjointed or ramble-y. I played for my students an interview with Vonnegut in which he said he wrote well because he wasn’t an English major; English majors (he said) are taught too much about what defines good literature, and thus it hampers their ability to have confidence in their own writing.

I will not take to heart Vonnegut’s opinion on English-major-writers (yes I will, I already have), and so I will have confidence in this blog post exactly as it is and say, Dear reader, take my ramblings for what you will, and enjoy the ramble-y ride!]

[Epilogue, part deux: You know me too well; I had to go back, reread and edit. So sue me, Vonnegut! Is that the right spelling of sue?]

[P.P.P.S. Yes, students who (Heaven-forbid) stumbled upon this blog, this is a good example of satire. And yes, that will be on your test on Tuesday.]

St. Patrick's Day in L.A.

(Post by Tracy)

Has anyone else ever heard of being pinched for not wearing green on St. Patrick's Day?

Granted, growing up in Chicago, it's near impossible to forget the day coming up and even harder to forget to wear green the day of. But I'd never heard of the pinching thing until about an hour ago - after being pinched!

I completely forgot that today was St. Patrick's Day (actually, I haven't really been aware of what day it is even, let alone the date, since probably March 2nd - it's been a busy March!) So today I am sporting a white sweater, dark pink skirt, tan boots. Oops - no green in sight.

A junior walked into my classroom, said hi, and then pinched my arm. Sometimes students are just weird, so I simply asked, "What are you doing?" She said, "Pinching you." (Ok, I thought, fine I guess.) Then she said, "You're not wearing green." I said, "I completely forgot." She goes to pinch me again. "No more pinching me!" I said. And she recoiled.

I came into the faculty dining room for break, and most of the teachers are sporting some shade of green, and when I said I forgot all about St. Patrick's Day, one of my coworkers asked, "Have you been pinched yet?"

Until this point I had no idea that my student's pinch and her comment about my attire had any relation to one another. When I told my coworkers I was pinched, and how weird that was, I was suddenly singled out as the strange one for never having heard of that tradition before! Everyone at the table was surprised that I didn't know the punishment for not wearing green on St. Patrick's Day was a pinch! Personally, I think this should be filed as "cruel and unusual."

So my question to you - Did you remember what day it is? Or do you deserve a St. Patty's Pinch?

Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

(Post by Tom)

Well, dear readers, we have good news for you all. After a hiatus of several months, this blog is finally creaking back to life. The invisible Internet gears that make this page work were allowed to rust over and collect cobwebs, but we’re firing up the ignition and making them run again.

We will wait here patiently while all nine of you take to the streets in a fit of celebratory dancing. You have five minutes.

The reasons for reviving this blog are plenty; a few might even be interesting. I will dispense with the first and most blatantly narcissistic right away: I am determined to write more regularly (as I'm assuming Tracy also is). This blog is a space to do that. (Plus, I heard that “self-absorbed ramblings pumped out by people trying to fulfill boring personal goals” is the most commonly searched phrase in Google, and I am never one to stand in the way of giving the public what it demands.)

The second is a matter of pride. A favorite pastime of ours is finding the corpses of long-defunct blogs, of which the Internet is full to bursting. It is depressingly easy; just type a random URL into your browser (like, say, “puppylover.blogspot.com” or “pigsinablanket.blogspot.com”) and see what pops up. I would bet dollarstodonuts.blogspot.com that whatever you find will not have been touched in at least three years. These bastard children of ambition and inertia are everywhere; they seem to be the Internet’s most plentiful natural resource. We do not want this blog to join the multitudes in the graveyard of good intentions.

Of course, because this blog was originally conceived of as a way to document a trip that ended about six months ago, it could probably be argued that it should pass on into Internet purgatory. But there are still things about our experience worth writing about. Yes, you guessed it: though we’ve arrived at our destination, our journey will never truly be over.

The challenge, for me at least, will be to write posts that are more than just digitized navel-gazing (“digitized navel-gazing,” by the way, was what the Internet was originally going to be called), or the equivalent of a never-ending Christmas letter. This can seem crushingly overwhelming at times, because everything has already been said by someone somewhere. But we’re going to give it a try.

Although, I also think it would be hilarious if the “final words” of this blog consisted of an explicit vow not to let it die an un-mourned death. So, you know, it’s sort of a win-win deal.

Next episode: “A Mild Case of Homesickness.”

To Further Illustrate My Point...

(Post by Tracy)

On Monday we had to take the car in to get a few things checked out.

Employee at the L.A. Ford dealership: "You talk like you're from New York. Are you from New York?"

Me: "Uh, no, Chicago."

Him: "Yeah, there you go. Same thing!"

The kicker: He is from New York, and he just told me that New York and Chicago are the same thing.

(Back East!)