My Journal:

Honestly, I've been a mix of a depressed funk over the national elections; not so much because of who is our president-elect, but by the sheer number of assholes that are now proud of their behavior and glad to rub it in our faces.

And I'm super busy with work. I have unofficially been tasked with developing a new curriculum, a new senior science elective course that is to be possibly co-taught with a social science teacher, that will be tentatively titled "Marine science and society". The goal is to do a trans-disciplinary, operationally-based, student-centered, project-focused, class for students whose strengths may not lie in traditional lab- or lecture-based science course. The objective is to merge environmental science, sustainability science, economics, political science, and sociology. It is exciting and daunting and scary all rolled into one. It is eating up a lot of my energy already. I am still in the early stages, and if you have any ideas for projects, or competitions (I'm thinking video or art competitions), or field trips/experiences, please let me know.

And I hate the winter weather, which makes me just shut down mentally and physically. Every body part feels cold. My body is particularly sensitive to non-cotton materials, and to being constricted (I sometimes break out in welts from the elastic bands on clothing, or anything that is too tight), so winter clothing, especially the multiple layers that is needed to keep me warm, is just an uncomfortable hindrance. Combine that with my frugal nature, whereby we don't keep the house any warmer than 72 degrees during the day and 65 degrees at night, and I'm fairly uncomfortable and just grumpy. I'm counting down the days until the Spring.

We had a parent-teacher conference for Erika.
- Reading: She was assessed above grade level for first grade; she entered at reading level C and is currently reading at level F. Her teacher feels she is on track to complete or surpass grade expections by the end of the year.
- Mathematics: She has received a 95% and a 98% on her two math assessments. The main issue is she continues to fail to show her work. For example, a test question said "Tony has 13 pets, some are cats and some are dogs. How many combinations can you make? Draw every combination you can think of". And so Erika wrote 12+1 = 13 and below that drew 12 hollow circles and indicated them as cats and 1 darkened circle and labeled that dog, and then she started writing 11+2 = 13, and 10+3 = 13. And then she ran out of space and didn't keep going. She only scored a 2/4 on that question because she "provided 3 equations, and only showed work for one". Sigh.
- Class Dynamics: She waits for the teacher to call on her before responding. Her teacher would like her to voluntarily raise her hand and contribute to class discussions. The teacher also feels that on a few occassions, she had to speak to Erika about her attitude towards her peers. Erika has a know-it-all tendency to have a "I got this" confidence, and she overpowers some of her peers who are not as confident in school.

And then her teacher left on maternity leave to her second kid. And Erika is feeling lost and stranded and feeling like she has to start over with a new teacher, 3 months into the school year. Her teacher wont be back until May.

On Sunday, I ran the senior awards brunch, a two-hour event where scholarships and awards from various organizations but particularly the PTSA, gives out awards to recognize seniors. I had to emcee the event and keep the pace going; we also do Senior Reminiscences and the first showing of the Senior VIdeo. It all went smoothly. Then as the senior class advisor, I'm expected to give Closing Remarks. I worked on my speech 48 hours before the event, rehearsed it a few times, had some edits from Brian and my sister Carol, and then went with it. Apparently it was mind-blowingly amazing because I had rave compliments from my principal as soon as I stepped off the stage and all my colleagues had their jaws hanging open in awe, and after the event was over, moms were coming up to me with tears in their eyes saying it was the most touching and beautiful speech they had heard. I might have to dig it up and post it on Livejournal haha, though now I've probably hyped it up too much and it'll be anti-climatic and it'll be an awful read.

On Monday, when I returned to school, I found out that I was awarded a $1000 EcoSchool grant to work on coastal dune replenishment, so that was awesome! I'm super excited to get started on this project, and my principal was thrilled to win another award.

And today, I took a group of my students in the Marine/Environmental Science Club that I run to a 4H Climate Change Summit. The goal of the summit was to raise awareness about climate change in middle and high school students, and task them with conducting a community-based service project that addressed/mitigated climate change, raise awareness within individual communities, and then report back on the results. We ended up finishing in second place and won $200! Hurray!

So I turned 31 years old this year and at my annual eye exam, turns out, all of a sudden, I need reading glasses. The optometrist said "good news! You're now far-sighted! Isn't that cool? It's like a superpower!" And I said, "no, because those terms are misnomers. You're telling me I'm far-sighted and near-sighted, when in truth I'm blind as a bat!" Let's call it what it is, right.

So I've been trying to be an complying patient by wearing them whenever I use the computer or when I'm grading papers. I told a coworker, "but these reading glasses just make me feel so old!" Isn't this something that plaques a 60-year old women or something?!

The other day, I was at school grading papers, when a student came up to me and handed me a pair of black-rimmed glasses that they had found. I told them I'd take it to the "Lost & Found" box in the Main Office, went back to grading, and at the end of the period, packed up, and went about my way. I stopped by the Main Office during lunch, filled out an announcement sheet (it's a form that, when approved, puts a message on every TV in every room; normally it conveys the date and time, upcoming club meetings, etc.) that basically said "Found! Pair of black glasses! Claim in Office". I dropped off the glasses, and went about my day.

Two days later, time to grade again; I whip out my reading glasses, put them on--- they feel funny. Vision's real blurry, take them off, look at them, clean them really well, and put them back on. Something's not right. Coworker I was talking to looks at me and says "wait, those aren't your glasses".

Turns out I had turned my OWN pair of glasses in to the Office. Imagine me then going to the Office and explaining that to the secretaries (who laughed hysterically at me). Who then told me a student had actually come in, looking for her glasses; saw mine and said "those aren't mine, oh well". And of course now I had to fill out another announcement sheet to explain that the student should come back, because there was now a NEW pair of black glasses in the office.

"Oh hon," my coworker said, "getting reading glasses isn't a sign that you're old. Forgetting which pair of glasses is yours? THAT is a sign that you're old."

It's snowing outside. And that's not even an April Fool's joke.

Going to see Daniel Radcliffe on Broadway tonight with 30 seniors. Wish me luck wrangling teenagers in Times Square, NYC.

Taken October 31, 2006.

This was my first year as a teacher, and along with the two chemistry teachers, we dressed up as dorky/crazy scientists. I knew then that this was going to be a great work environment. I wasn't wrong.

(This is a follow-up to my poll, found here: http://aliki.livejournal.com/465388.html)

We were in NYC enjoying lunch, when we had a conversation that more or less went like this:

Clare: I go back to work in 8 days.
Carol (Clare's sister): On Sept 1?
Clare: Yeah. *sad face*
Brian: And I'm off work for six weeks! [Ed note: He's taking paternity leave]
Clare: Taking care of Erika IS WORK.
Brian: Well, it's hard; but it's not hard like working.
Clare: Yes it is!
Brian: At work you have to deal with clients, and deadlines, and phone calls. It's so stressful!
Clare: If you don't do your job as a parent, someone dies!
Brian: If I don't do my job at work, lots of people die. [Ed note: He's an architect]
Clare: But with Erika, you always have to be so vigilant and watch her. At work, you can take lunch breaks, check your email, zone out.
Carol: Yeah, you can put things off for another day; it's not pressing the way a baby's demands are.
Clare: I'm telling you.. looking after Erika full-time, all day, is harder than work will ever be.
Brian: Then you must have a very easy job.

Steam must've been coming out my ears with fury, because Brian gave me the "you're not convincing me but I'm going to shut up or this is all ending up on Clare's Livejournal" look, and went back to eating his lunch.

Clare: **not able to let it go** You're sleep deprived, and lonely, and exhausted, and she still wants to play or nurse or she gets bored and wants to go outside, then she's overstimulated and cranky and wants to go inside!
Carol: And with work, you can take breaks. Parenthood is like pulling a college all-nighter... and then doing it over and over again, every night, for several months straight.

~~~~~~~~~

I think there are gender differences involved, regardless of the jobs we hold: him being an architect, constantly faced with deadlines and pushy customers who dont know what they want and me being a high school teacher. I think it has to do with our roles as parents in the early months.

As many posters point out, early motherhood is round-the-clock nursing (if you breastfeed), waking every 2 hours to burp, nurse, and change diapers. During the day, the infant clings to you like glue and protests when you put them down (even for the short duration it takes for mom to drink some water or go to the bathroom). Fathers-- well, unless it's spacefem's situation where you have a stay-at-home-dad-- their lives go on, pretty similar to pre-fatherhood. They dont have to contend with feeling like you were hit by a freight-train after labor, you dont bleed from your nether-regions for six to eight weeks, you dont feel like your breasts have swelled to 4 times their size and are about to explode from engorgement.

And janehex once wrote, the infant sees your face all day and gives you the "poker face" stare, and then dad walks in the door after work, and her face lights up and she, giggling, starts to bat her arms for him to hold and play with her.

smittenbyu writes, "My husband says he doesn't feel being a parent just yet, as I am the one taking care of her physical needs. He says he is enjoying the perks of it as he goes to work, comes home and plays (although he does a lot more than he gives himself credit for)" which I think is what Brian feels too. Erika is four-and-a-half months old, and his weekday interaction with her involves kissing her goodbye in the morning (if she's awake, half the time she's taking her morning nap when he leaves), and then seeing her excited face when he returns at 7pm. We eat dinner, then the two of them play for 30 minutes, then it's bathtime, then bedtime at 9pm. Weekends we split the caregiving 50-50, but still, it's 50-50. You get to take a break to eat, to go to the bathroom, to sit in a quiet room and decompress while the other parent is there to hold her.

Don't get me wrong, I love her to death. Motherhood, by far, is the best thing that has ever happened in my life. But I find, as the primary caregiver, that after cosleeping with someone who hogs the bed and kicks in her sleep, then being alone with her from morning till 7pm, I am exhausted!

This is, by far, harder than any job I've ever held.

That's the number of days left before I go back to work, something I haven't done since March 19, 2010. I feel rusty and awkward. It feels like a lifetime ago. I feel like a different person. Work suddenly doesn't seem that important to me anymore.

I know I will cry on September 1st. Erika turned four months old on August 10th, and the longest I've been apart from her is five hours, when I went to Linda's baby shower and she stayed home with Daddy. I thought of her with every breath I took. My chest ached to feel her against my body. I missed her silly lopsided smile, or the way her eyes crinkle into crescent moons when she laughs, or the way she snorts as she laughs when I pretend to eat her belly.


Erika on Aug 12, 2010.
(17 weeks old)

Two weekends ago, Erika was baptized on August 8th. Shockingly I didn't take a single photo that day-- I was too busy tending to Erika! I'm waiting for friends/family to send them to me. She was so beautiful and so well behaved.

Sometimes I forget how much she's grown till I see photos like this. She's the size of a toddler! (And actually, several strangers have rudely commented "your toddler doesn't walk yet?" Ummm, no, she's 4 months old.) But she's got wonderful head control and is a great supported sitter.

Note: NOT stay-at-home-moms but rather stay-at-home-wives.

I think I posted a rant about this a few years ago, so I wont rehash how I feel that people, regardless of their gender, need to find something productive to do with their lives, something they feel passionate about, something that enriches their community. I cringe at the line: "well, my husband makes enough for us to live comfortably on one income" because is that what a job is to you? Shouldn't you feel excited to go to work? Aren't you disturbed that you haven't found something in your life that makes you wake up in the morning and just want to go out and do it? Don't you feel inadequate by being defined as simply "a wife"? Don't you want to volunteer with a non-profit organization, take up a hobby like photography, become a mother? JUST SAYING.

The whole "Real Housewives of Whatever Town" is the epitome of how lethargic (not sure that's even the right word to describe them) and pointless their lives are: endless days of facials, pedicures, shopping, and gossiping. Is that what a whole generation of girls envy and look forward to when they become SAHWs?

This workaholic actually went to work yesterday. (I defensively said to Brian: "Just for 30 minutes, and it was sort of on the way to the beach with the dog!").

Today, I started cooking the Sauerbraten in the crockpot. I got a pedicure. I walked the dog for an hour. I went to four different stores and bought six outfits for Peanut off the clearance racks for $10. I ironed Brian's work clothes. I watched hours of daytime TV.

I miss work. I really love teaching. I miss the students. I miss being productive.

I can't wait to be a mother.

My mom arrives from Taiwan on Monday night! (She'll be here for two months to help me and Peanut out.)

News reporters are calling it the "February Fury". School was canceled on both Thursday and Friday for me, and our cars are still snowed in, so I bet I'm going to get cabin fever fairly soon.

This makes it the fifth snow day this school year. We only have two school days built into our schedule around Memorial Day, so I'm sure a lot of people are upset that instead of getting 5-days off from school that week, we're only getting that Monday off.

And then all additional snow days are added on to the end of the school year, meaning that instead of graduating on June 17th this year, with the three remaining make-up days, it'll be June 20th... and if we get more snow days, it'll just keep getting pushed back farther.

Makes no difference to me because I'll be on maternity leave, so bring on the snow days between now and March 19th (my last day)!! Hehehe!!

I've been watching the Winter Olympics (the daytime stuff, like curling!), doing lesson plans, grading lab reports, and cleaning up the house.

Me and two other science teachers dressed up as witches for Halloween. When my seniors asked me on Wednesday if I was dressing up for Halloween, I said "I'm going to be a witch on Friday", a senior quipped: "so you're not wearing a costume?"

I got my first evaluation by my principal on Thursday, which is hard (the day before Halloween, the kids are buzzing). I need a total of three for the year. I think it went alright. We had gone out into the field on Monday to profile the beach, so on Thursday, I gave them their data sheets back, and gave them graph paper and reviewed how to graph it (this was only their second time beach profiling). We then went to the Media Center and learnt how to do it in Microsoft Excel, which, as a sign of times a-changing, 100% of my students had already used Excel before. Even just five years ago, it was probably only 50% and my school actually had a separate computer class to review PowerPoint, Word, cropping images, etc.

I'm watching Rock of Love Charm School on TV, and boy, is it an addictive trainwreck!