Don't send nudie pictures and other advice I'd give

Once upon a time, I put mothers on a pedestal, which means I put myself on a pedestal of perfection when I had N.

I could not stay on that pedestal.
Having a first baby after 6+ years of marriage and leaving behind my career and being a perfectionist with extraordinarily high expectations of motherhood was a recipe for emotional disaster.
I am not perfect, and I cannot achieve the extremely high expectations I put on myself.
Every day, I am still learning how to live with not always being able to live up to the goals I put on myself.

So my expectations have modulated, but I still think parents should walk the walk.
If they expect their children to behave in certain ways, they should model that.

If you don't want your children to drink to excess, YOU do not drink to excess.
If you want your children to take their education seriously, YOU take your and their education seriously.
If you don't want your children to be chronic complainers, YOU should not be a chronic complainer.
If you don't want your kids to be slobs, YOU should not be a slob.

I hold these same expectations for church ministers and teachers because their entire existence is working with others to strive for betterment.

Perhaps that is unfair; they are human after all.

I had a bit of an embarrassing situation this semester during my grad class when a teacher inadvertently showed me a picture of herself in a bra when she was swiping on her phone to show me something that was not herself in a bra. This would have been weird enough but she then told me it was a picture she'd texted her boyfriend.

Now, I am not much of a selfie taker ever, and I'm definitely not a nudie or half-nudie selfie taker. If D ever took such a picture of me, he'd have to dig his testicles from his esophagus.
But that's me.
Consenting adults can do as they want.
(I'd just prefer not to accidentally be a part of what other consenting adults do.)

What I would recommend, though, is the following:
1. delete these pictures so you don't unintentionally share them with more-or-less strangers.
2. be very careful of the advice you give young people or children about what to do because you could, like the pictures, unintentionally give them advice that you yourself do not follow. And if they find out, they will lose all respect for you (if they haven't already because kids are exceptionally good at deciphering bullshit and/or hypocrisy).

On the plus side of this weird situation, it did provide me an opening to discuss nudie photos and the aftermath with my teenage daughter.
It was nice to have an anecdote to tell her before I launched into a lecture.

Like full-time

I have worked 5 days of the long-term subbing job.
I have access to the grades.
I am planning the lessons.
I am giving feedback.
I am having students ask for my help.

I am also having conversations like this:
Student: "Why did you give me a zero for independent reading?"
Me: "Because you were sleeping."
Student: "But only for a minute."
Me: "Imagine how long you would have slept if I hadn't woken you up. You have to read, or pretend to read, for ten minutes."
What I did not say: "If you can't stay awake and/or pretend to read for ten minutes, you deserve a zero."

I have told myself that this job will be a good reminder for me of what it was like back when I worked full-time, as well as what it might be like if I worked full-time now with kids.

The principal introduced herself to me today and asked if I would be coming back full-time.
I wanted to answer: "Only if you'll hire me to work here."
But my response was, "Not for a while because we don't have transportation here, and my daughter is a freshman, and I can't work across the county and get her here and home each day."

What I'm remembering is that I am not good at turning OFF the teaching.
I keep looking for rubrics or lessons or activity ideas.
I keep writing myself notes of what I need to do tomorrow or the next day.
I'm thinking about the job when I'm not at the job.
My dining room table is filled with papers to be graded.
Such is full-time teaching.

What has felt hard is trying to schedule life around teaching, like getting M to his post-op ENT appointment.
Racing out the school door, dropping kids off at my house to be picked up by their parents, racing to M's school for pick-up, racing to the ENT.

I haven't been anything like full-time in nearly 15 years.

When I was explaining that this feels hard for me, someone replied, "Well, that's what every working parent experiences."

This person is right, except for the fact that this person is a man, and I'm 95% certain he hasn't made a habit of taking off work to take his child to the doctor or get her to afternoon/evening activities.
I assume he did do these things with his older children, but that is because he was divorced from their mother. I think had he been married to her, the bulk of the post-school child wrangling would have fallen to her (maybe it did anyway).

There is a part of me that asks myself if I'm crazy for actively trying to have a busy professional life that does not involve working full-time.
Full-time work would feel easier in a lot of ways.
I wouldn't have to ask "Where am I today?" and "What am I working on today? Subbing, cottage school, freelancing? Do I tutor tonight?"
Puzzling together part-time jobs is difficult in a weird way. It pays little considering how much time I give to it, but it gives me flexibility, which full-time employment does not.

What crazy things I will do in the name of "flexibility."

I often have to remind myself that non-full-time work also gives me a certain benefit called "active enjoyment of living" for both me and my family.

Me taking care of the bulk of home and kid stuff means D doesn't have to after work.
It adds to his active enjoyment of his non-work hours.
I have the energy to go to book club and occasionally make it to the gym and volunteer at the kids' schools and go to lunch with my parents.
I have a certain amount of "availability" that is valuable in and of itself.

And that's not nothing.

There are probably a lot of people who could work part-time and who would work part-time, but it isn't an option.
Or they have gotten used to their lifestyle and activities and costs and think they can't change anything.
Or they have taken on expenses that require them to work full-time.

And there are those families in which both parents have to work. But I think many of the people I know are people who think they have to, but they don't. They have confused their wants and their needs, as a lot of middle-class families seem to.
Private school, in most cases, is a want, not a need.
Having a newer car is a want, not a need.
Going on vacation every year is a want.
Remodeling the basement is a want.
Having a house at the lake is a want.
Having a boat is a want.

Teaching an economics class at the cottage school this year has forced me to delve back into opportunity costs and the truth that "there is no such thing as a free lunch."

The book nerd version of "Show us your t*ts"

The other day I wondered to myself how many books we have in our house.

Given that I've been writing about heavy topics of late, I thought I'd indulge my lighter side and pay homage to books.

I decided to go through my house and snap a photo of every place I find a book.

I started with the main floor:

 The dining room table (also my makeshift office)

The other side of the dining room table 

 My purse

 My desk in the kitchen

(Actually, there is a Jodi Picoult novel on my desk, too.)

 The living room

The bookcase by the front door

The upper floor where our bedrooms are:

 N's bookcase

N's bedside table

The boys' bookcase

Books in bins on the floor in the boys' room.

Book on boys' dresser.

Table in my bedroom

D's bedside table

 Book on a desk in my bedroom (I work in a lot of rooms in the house)

My bedside table

The basement:

 My bookcase

 D's sci-fi/fantasy books

Under the steps closet for miscellaneous books

A few years ago I actually got rid of a lot of books from college because I decided to only keep books I love.  I have sold or given away many children's books as the kids have outgrown them because there is only so much room in our house. D actually reads mostly ebooks, so we would have more if he didn't do that. I'm also a big library user, so I borrow regularly, which also cuts down on the books we own. 

See, I feel like I'm offering excuses for why my book hoarding behavior could be worse. 

Still, if there is any truth to articles like this, I think we're setting our kids up well. 

Voting

I vote in every election because I want a say in my government. No one has ever accused me of being an optimist (because I generally am not), but I believe my voice counts. Even if it doesn't make a decisive difference, it is valuable and counts because it is mine, and I think I'm very important.

I vote in every election because women before me fought to give me the right to vote. It hasn't even been 100 years since women were allowed to vote.

I vote in every election to set a good example for my children.

I do not vote in every election because my friends and family tell me to.
I do not vote because social media is blowing the heck up with people demanding that I vote or haranguing me to vote.

To be perfectly plain, it actually bugs me to see every single person I know urging me to vote.
It makes me not want to vote.

I am a bit very much hella contrarian and, perhaps, this is why I enjoy being around middle and high schoolers.
They are contrarians, too.
I understand them in this way.

Here is the thing--when I experience someone urging me to do something, and that something is typically political or religious because those are two things people often feel strongly about, I think to myself,
"Are you aware that you are strongly urging me to vote or find God because your bias assumes that I am going to vote the same way you do or find God the same way you do?"

Here is where the non-optimist part of me comes through--based on my experience on both ends of this. I do not believe that people are urging me to do things out of an abundance of neutral sentiment.

People generally urge others to do something because they expect others to do as they do and feel as they feel.

Once upon a time, I was a very strong breastfeeding supporter, and I still think breast is the best thing a baby can get. If and when I urged women to breastfeed by saying, "Are you trying breastfeeding?" or "Are you going to breastfeed?," I wasn't urging them to "just try it" or "do it for 3 weeks." Inside my head, I was urging them to do it for a full 12 months without any formula, and even longer since that is what the World Health Organization says. I wanted them to be as committed to breastfeeding as I was.

What I said and what I thought and expected were vastly different things.

When people have urged me to visit their church or seek God, they have not done so thinking that I'm going to believe in my own loosey-goosey, skeptical way. That I'm going to believe in kick-ass Jesus and not necessarily a literal translation of the bible.

They want me to full-on "COME TO JESUS" and be an evangelical and sing his praises on high and wear shirts that say, "I LOVE MY CHURCH" and believe every word of the bible is right, true, and not to be critically analyzed.

And I can't help but think that when people urge others to vote, they are doing it in part because their bias is that others are going to vote as they do.