This is what happens when you live with a teacher/geek

Conversation #1

Terrance (on phone): Um, there is a strange charge on our house acct...

Dawn (in her office): Hmmm?

Terrance: Yeah. It is for 199.99 and is National Geographic?

Dawn: Yeah. That's me. I ordered one of those Genealogy kits for myself. You know, the one I asked for in 2007 as a birthday present? I went ahead and bought it for myself with some of my tax refund money.

Terrance: (pause) Oh. Ok.

Several Days Later

Terrance (on phone): HEY! There is a crazy charge on our acct?!?!?! It is some children's store in NYC and it is for nearly 500 dollars?!?!?

Dawn (in her office): Oh, yeah. That is me. Shit. I thought I put that on my checking card. I must have used the house card by mistake. I'll transfer the money over in a second.

Terrance: Are you sure that this is yours? Someone could have cloned my card when I was in the city last week!!! It's a place called Kaaaa-miiissshhh??

Dawn: No, it's me.  It's Kamishibai. Remember those cards I have for storytelling? The ones from Japan? I ordered the stage and some more story cards for my class. I want them to do some Japanese style storytelling.

Terrance: I don't know what you are talking about.

Dawn: Never mind. I will move the money over right now.

Terrance: It was 500 dollars!!!

Dawn: Yes. I am buying it out of my refund cheque. 

Terrance: But it was you, right?

Dawn: Yes. It was me. The money has been transferred now. 

Terrance: Because I was going to start canceling the bank cards...

Dawn: No need. Everything is fine.

Gorey Love

Happy Birthday to a person who brings me much baleful joy.

HVD 2013

Nothing says Valentine's Day like Bright pink lipstick.

And a upcycled cat beret.

The thing that can not be mentioned

The thing that can not be mentioned lives just outside my eye line. I can almost see it, if I turn my head quickly.

However, like all things that can not be mentioned, it flees if looked at directly.

There are times in which I realize that I have almost forgotten about the thing that can not be mentioned.

It emerges from shadows before I drift off to sleep, sidling up to my bedside and whispering to me.  I lift from my descent into sleep just long enough to recognize this old friend, this love long departed, before I close my eyes and try to return to sleep.

It never quite works, of course. The thing that can not be mentioned has settled in next to me. I struggle to find a comfortable spot in my bed, while the thing that can not be mentioned shifts and moves with my contortions.  I sleep, sweaty and restless. I wake with my head where my feet should be and my sheets twisted around my body.

I go to work. I laugh. I take pleasure in my work.  I come home and indulge the rabbits, giggle with my daughter.

Later, the thing that can not be mentioned will return. Emerging from the gloaming; slinking, skulking, stealing up in to my bed to curl around me once again.

I sigh.

My lips part and I exhale.

"I miss you."

I close my eyes to the thing that can not be mentioned, rolling over to gather my pillows in my arms. I pretend it is not there and seek my peace where I can find it.

Second First Day

My second semester begins tomorrow and I am nervous.

I wonder about these new groups of students I will share space with, wondering about their personalities and if they will like me...or rather if they will trust me enough to listen to whatever it is I am going to share with them.

I fidget as I work on syllabuses. Striking some things, writing others, struggling between too much rigidity on the syllabus and too much wide open space. They need structure, but I need flexibility to observe them and work on some parts while skimming over others.

I've not yet decided in what costume I will adorn myself. That is, after all, part of the role I play.

I have created my stage in my classroom. I hope they are soothed and inspired by the environment, as it soothes and inspires me.



At the end of term last year I found a card in my box.

"Dear Professor Rouse,

Your class was never dreadful because you are a splendid instructor."


This is the mantra I will use as I face my next group of students.

Teaching Lab

A few days after Christmas, I began a transformation of my teaching space. I enlisted Emily into a sort of captive teen servitude as I began to deconstruct the teaching lab.

It was not a simple cleaning. Twenty years worth of materials needed to be sorted and cleaned. Any person who has walked into the classroom of another knows exactly of what I speak. Cabinets had to be excavated. Paints washed and combined. Items labeled and placed in the correct places.

The custodians were kind, but clearly wondered why the new professor was spending her break in the school, working 2-7 hours a day cleaning materials.  They patiently hauled bucket after bucket of trash away.

Some tasks were easy, but mundane. Pulling out all the broken bits of crayons, peeling off papers on what can be used to melt and recreate, discarding others I suspect are toxic.

I test markers, I open glue sticks to make sure they are usable  I wash and refill glue bottles.

I have been collecting baskets and bowls since September when I knew that I was going to begin this transformation. I visit the local Salvation Army and Goodwill frequently, looking for treasures. I want no plastic containers; choosing old wooden bowls, small glass containers and sturdy natural baskets to be my medium.

It takes nearly three weeks of cleaning and arranging before I am content.  On Tuesday, I tell my colleagues that I am satisfied.

A somewhat cluttered teaching lab is now something more; a place for students to see what we are talking about when we discuss aesthetics and functionality.

This re-imagined space pleases me. I will be adding a light table and beautiful new instruments in the coming weeks (hurrah for grants). I am creating lists of materials that we need in the Resource Library ( A whole OTHER photo essay as I purge that particular room) and still looking for lamps and other ways to soften and change the lighting. I am not a fan of fluorescent light and don't like for children or adults to be surrounded by it.

This is where I teach.

Subversive Tights

There is nothing better than subversive tights, worn on a Sunday afternoon:

Except for, of course, subversive pink eyeshadow and hot pink lip tar.

Scarred

You can still see the scar under my right eye. Look closely. It lies in the crease of my cheek, running from the corner of my eye downwards.

I acquired this scar when I was three and sat on our sleeping dog. The dog, named Dog, was startled and bit me in the face. I recall the panic in the voice of my mother. I recall my father being incredibly angry. I have no doubt that the injury looked horrific - bloody, close to my eye,  pieces of my flesh laid open.

Like all wounds, it healed.

Most people do not even notice that I have such a scar. The placement folds naturally in my cheek and I wear glasses.

I show my scars to you. I have no ulterior motive.

I, like every other adult on the earth, am flawed.  The difference is that I don't fear my flaws. I don't obscure them or gloss over them.

Imperfect Uncertainty.

White Light

Some days you have to wear your Gorillaz Converse with sparkley tights and go to the movies.

Doors Closed

I spend a great deal of time trying to puzzle through my relationship with Terrance.

On nights like this, when he has called me a selfish and miserable bitch and I follow him to tell him that he has my full attention and what does he need which causes him to tell me through clenched teeth and bulging veins to leave him alone, I wonder why I stay married, why we stay married.

I do not claim to be innocent. I ignored him as he comes moaning into my bedroom, seeking my attention. This is because he does this constantly. He moans, he groans. He tells me that he thinks his chapped lips mean that he has cancer, or that his stomach ache is an ulcer. He interrupts what I am doing to make me look at the cut on his foot, or ask me to put a band-aid on it. While moaning.

This drives me fucking crazy.

Then he stands in front of the television. Like a three year old.

I do not give him the attention he craves so he, like a toddler, amps up his requests for attention.  Then, like a toddler, he storms and rails against me. Unlike a toddler, he knows my soft underbelly and rarely holds back.

He uses the words I use to describe my mother: Narcissistic, self involved, selfish. Why does he fucking put up with me?

The truth is that I don't know.

The other truth is that since 1991 I have been building my walls against his disapproving anger. I insulate against the punishment, the disappointment, the litany of words that describe what I am not for him.

I have deadened my reactions to him because the alternate would be to live on tenterhooks. This state of being is not conducive to attempting any kind of normalcy.

The other mind fuck is that I can no longer tell you if it is him, or if it is me or if it is neither. I have no grasp of what is real in this relationship. I do not trust what I see nor what I feel. I certainly don't trust the person who has told me that I am neurotic and have low self esteem for 21 years. I recently asked him to introduce me to the person he thinks he is married to since I have no idea who this person might be. She doesn't look like the person I know internally.

Goodness knows that the person he presents to the world in no way resembles the man with whom I live.

So many of these doors are closed and I have no energy or desire to open them.

Doctorem

Something arrived in the mail last week.


I am not yet ready to write about the murders of children in Connecticut. Suffice it to say that I have cried more than I can quite understand. Emily has been comforting me as I weep. I do not like for her to be my comfort, for it is not her job in the world. That is my job in her world. Yet, those events broke something in me. Perhaps it is because I have loved and taught children just like those children. Perhaps it is because I am now teaching young teachers, just like those teachers.

All I know is that I continue to cry, even now writing this.

Chip off the old Baleful

The drive home tonight after I pick Emily up after school:

Emily: "Eli asked me if I knew the reason we celebrate Christmas and I said "I dunno - gifts? Trees? Family?" and he said "NO! We celebrate the birth of our savior, Jesus Christ!" so I just shrugged and said..."Uhhhhh......OK."

Me: "Was Eli upset?"

Emily: "Yeah, he was getting all stressed about it. Then I started to giggle and he asked me what I thought was so funny so I told him "Easter." That is when he asked me if I knew what Easter was all about then proclaimed "Our savior rising from the Dead!" That is when I said "Do you know what my Mom and I call it?" and he asked me what, so I told him."

Me: "Oh, no......"

Emily: "Zombie Jesus. I thought his head was going to explode he was so angry. I asked Eli if Zombie Jesus needed to eat braaaaiiiiinnnnnssssss and he just didn't think it was funny at all."


Me: "I'm not sure you are going to be invited over to have pizza at Eli's house anymore."

Incorrigible

I had been watching the men working on the lot across from my office for quite a while. There was a house there that suddenly one August day .....was not.

I thought not much more about it. These things, houses and people, come and go. One is best served to not resist the flow of the tide, but rather observe and remember.

I settle into the flow of my days, of classes and students, of new names and faces. I settle Emily into her new routines and smile to myself as she begins to socially blossom. My smart ass sense of humor flows directly through my daughter. This does my heart proud.

By the beginning of December the work men come back to the lot across the street.

I am getting tired, although I dearly love my job and the students.

Later that night, I am leaving my late class. The sun has already set and it is getting cold. I walk towards the parking lot.

I watched the men pour the concrete that day. The tug of longing to stick my finger in the rough, cold cement and make my mark surges up, a remnant of childhood.

I look around. Surely, no one will stop a professor on the way back to her car. It will just look like I dropped something and bent down to retrieve the errant object.  My finger touches the concrete. Still damp and rougher than sandpaper.

D.................R............................

My giggle erupts after I finish, snap the picture and walk elegantly back to my car.

I remain incorrigible.

Midlife

Therapist: So how are you feeling?

Me: Fine.

Therapist: Are you happy?

Me: Happy? What do you mean?

Therapist: Happy. Are you happy?

Me: I don't know. I'm not unhappy.  I don't know if I have ever been happy though.

Therapist: Would you say that you are depressed?

Me: No. I'm not depressed. I know depressed, this isn't depressed.

Therapist: Have you considered the mood stabilizers?

Me: Yes...And No. I read up on them and the side effects are unacceptable. The Pristiq is doing fine at controlling the depression. I'm not adding a mood stabilizer that might make things far worse. Maybe I am just not meant to be happy in the way other people think of happy.

************

What is happy, my internet friends? Where does satisfaction with some of your life become enough? When does one stop looking for or expecting something that is not meant for you, by virtue of brain chemistry? When does the desire for that something spill over into the unobtainable which keeps you chasing the elusive desire that it might be just over there...just beyond that house, around the corner?

I'm not talking about giving up, but acceptance of how it is?

Is this the midlife crisis? Trying to figure out how to reach some kind equilibrium?

Wistful

I've mentioned that I really like my job, haven't I? I do. I like teaching and I like the students. I like poking at their brains and hopefully making them think beyond what they know now or what they might assume.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. The students are kind and respectful. If I have failed them - as I surely have on some days - they seem to forgive me. Emily visited one class and told me that I am goofy even as a Professor. Utterly NOT shocking, that news.

We are heading for Thanksgiving break and I am glad. I need the break, even the two day break. There is reading to do and lessons to plan. While I am teaching the same three course next term, there are tweaks to make and readings to change. I scan, I make lists, I try to respond to emails promptly.

I tell them that I scaffold.

Inside of me, the mist still remains. In the few quiet times, my tendency towards melancholy returns. I struggle with this part of my being.

I understand with pinpoint precision why I allow work to overtake my life. In work I am engaged. A busy brain means no room for the other parts, the doubts and the sadness.

I wait for that part of me to fade, to return to some hibernation so I can live inside the pleasure of my work, my vocation. 

Sigh of relief

We voted in our new home, Wisconsin.

I like to think we helped to tip the balance.

Emily asked me to wake her when the election was called. I just shook her gently and whispered that President Obama had been re-elected. She sighed, "Oh good" , and rolled over and went back to sleep.

Yes, my love. We can both sleep easier tonight.

Skin Flick

Several months ago I made mention that I was now wearing makeup daily.

What I failed to mention was my habitual obsessive need to encompass as much knowledge as humanly possible about all things "makeup" since I had shown an interest in the topic.

In those short months, I have developed a stunning amount of knowledge about makeup and skin care. I actually stunned a Sephora sales girl recently as I waxed poetic about the different types of BB creams, and why I preferred the one I was currently using...although I was interested in trying out a different line once this tube I have runs out.

I went from a makeup zero...to a makeup hero in several short weeks.

Of course, I took care of my skin in a cursory way. I washed with the cleanser that my esthetician told me to use, and followed with the toner/moisturizer. I wore sunblock. I added eye cream when I turned 40.

Now? Oh. I have a regime. Care to hear about it? Good, because I want to share.

I've kept my G.M. Collin organique cleanser and moisturizer. It reminds me of Montreal, but I have to have it shipped here. Thank goodness for the internet, I say.

What I have changed is this: Ole Henricksen Truth Serum, day and night. Ole Henricksen ultimate eye lift gel (night only) and Ole Henricksen  invigorating night gel.

This stuff is magic. Pricey - but magic. The products don't smell overpowering and the results are fairly solid. The eye gel was the first part of the line that sold me, with the truth serum and night gel following quickly. Although Terrance says he can't tell any difference and that I am ridiculous for purchasing this, I don't care. My skin looks smoother, my pores are smaller and I think I am looking pretty good. At a faculty function recently, I said something about being 42 and a much younger faculty seemed genuinely shocked at my age.

Then again, it could have been the t shirt and rocket dog skull sneakers.

As for BB creams, primers and eye shadow primer - I am all Too Faced, baby. Again - the stuff works for me. I tried the urban decay primers and ....meh. Not right for my skin. Didn't feel right.

I most likely will try to Dr Jart's BB cream at some point once I get my hands on a decent sample size to give it a few days run. I use an air brush to apply my BB cream, to which I add the tiniest dot of Kat Von D foundation. I do mean the tiniest dot, because the description isn't kidding when it notes that this stuff can and will cover tattoos. On the other hand, it adds a seriously beautiful finish to your skin.

I don't dig Kat Von D, overall, but her makeup is pretty kick ass. I have three of her Tattoo Liners and prefer them to my other liquid liners. Yes, you read that correctly, I only use liquid liner now.

While I do have some Urban decay eyeshadow and will absolutely agree that this is pretty great eyeshadow, my real eye shadow obsession is Concrete Minerals. I am embarrassed to admit that I keep a spreadsheet of which colors I have, including the ones I picked up as limited edition releases.  I was super nervous about using loose mineral eye shadow - However now that I have converted, I can't imagine going back to "regular" eye shadow. Same with liquid liner - I simply can't imagine using a pencil anymore.

Want to guess how many I have? Huh? Huh?
Ok. I have (whisper)....35.

Yes. I wear red eye shadow to work. Lime green, orange - Yes. I wear them all. Fierce heels need fierce eye shadow.

Lipsticks are still being tried and worked through. A friend has spoken highly of the OCC Lip Tar  and I will most likely make a couple of choices to try out in the next month or so. I have a multitude of handmade lip tints and stains that I use as I prefer the staying power of the stains to a lipstick and can not bear to have anything drying on my lips. I layer a balm, then lip tint in layers until the right color is achieved.

So how long does it take to get a PhD? Six years. How long does it take me to learn 40 years worth of makeup and skin care knowledge? 2 months.


*No promotional consideration was received for the mention of these products. No free stuff at all. I bought all this stuff with my own cash. Being the contrary bitch that I am, I most likely would have hated anything I had received for free - being suspicious of companies that want to "influence" me.

*Stop crying, JB, I know how proud you are. 

Except some things, which mean everything

I found a new massage therapist this week.

The timing was perfect, as are all of these discoveries when I open myself to seeing them. I was achy and sore, my hips were hurting and the miserable twinge in my  left knee had begun to flare.

The knee is a pain I have known before. It flares when I feel powerless, as I seem to hold some kind of energy in an injury I incurred on the night of my 40th birthday party. It wasn't a fear of getting older, of course, but the dawning realization that I had no control over my world and was losing love.

I had tried to ignore the hip and knee pains, telling myself that I was just getting used to wearing heels all the time again. This body is different now. This body pushes back harder when I try to ignore it. This body begins to rob me of sleep.

Sleep is the delicate fulcrum on which my sanity balances. Mess with that and you get my attention quickly.

This massage therapist is not like my beloved Sandra in Montreal. He is a big guy, maybe 270 pounds. I believe he was a biker or may still be one. He has old tats and piercings. He may be the age of my father. Yet, he is good. He warns me that he applies pretty deep pressure and to tell him if I start to hurt.

Hah! You've got no idea what I can take, buddy.

His hands are very different, very big. Yet I still feel the tingle of energy leaping up when he begins. He works on my legs and knee first.

With Sandra, I could feel the energy moving from her hands into my skin. It was a direct transfer. James doesn't transfer as much energy in to me, as he does push my energy around. He knocks down barriers in my body, brushing them out of the way.

As always, I lay on the table listening to my inner reactions, breathing through any discomfort.

Once again, my grief surges through me. This fucking grief that I can't seem to shed surges back every time. My inability to understand why people that I love abandon me, or to adequately defend myself so that I am not in a place to need to understand never fails to push its way to the forefront. My anger at my feelings of dissatisfaction re-emerge, asking me what exactly am I looking for and do I really believe that anything better lies beyond the horizon?

After the massage is finished, he says to me: Your aura is dark.

Yes. I know. 

Flabbergasted

The way to make my spouse lose his ability to speak?

My daughter: "What's the KKK?"


Yes folks, someone has dropped the race ball...and that someone isn't me. Now, to be fair...we lived outside of the US between her years of 7 and 14. Canada has a very different history when it comes to race. We didn't have the same sort of conversations because the context was so very different.

Moving back to the state has reminded us that there are some areas in which our child has no deoth of knowledge.

Terrance reacted out of fear yesterday, driving Emily to tears and me to exasperation. He tried to explain that there are people who will hate her for her skin color, and she said "But I'm not black, I'm biracial..."

And his head exploded again.

Later, I tried to explain that to some people her skin color designates her as only black. That those people can't imagine the concept of people being more than one thing at the same time. I tried to find the words to explain that her father wants to protect her and that part of that protection is for her to identify as black.  I had to explain the history of the more favorable treatment of light skinned black people, and the idea of trying to "pass" as white.

At all of these things I feel inadequate. Terrance is angry at Emily' lack of knowledge...yet he does not move to fill in the gaps, opting to lecture me about our failures as parents. When he paused for breath mid-lecture, I interjected: "It is as if you are asking me to teach her what it is to have a penis. I can't do that. I am not qualified to do that. I don't have that base of experience. The best I can do is to tell her what I think  it may be like to have a penis, which isn't the same."

I can't tell her what it is to be black.

Pistachio Pudding

This past Friday, I was one of a very small amount of faculty in my department who were on campus. The combination of a conference somewhere else and Oktoberfest meant that few people were in the building.

I don't mind this, of course, as I tend to get an inordinate amount of work done. Grading, planning, responding to emails that I failed to return. You know, stuff.

I should have know the day would not go as planned when, at 9 a.m., as I was walking towards the child care at which I was going to be doing a student teaching observation I passed a young man dressed in lederhosen.

Not joke lederhosen, but real, authentic lederhosen. He was not being ironic. Oktoberfest is a really big cultural deal here.

"Oh!", thought I, "There is a young man of about age 19 in lederhosen. Huh."

Then I walked into the child care and began my observation, placing the young gentleman in elk pants out of my mind.

Later that afternoon I sat in my office, grading quizzes. I have one class of mostly sophomores and I am training them to do the reading I assign by giving quizzes based partly on lecture and partly on reading. As I sat in my (truly lovely with large windows) office, one of the maintenance gentlemen stopped by.

I should mention that I have made a concerted effort to say hello to everyone in the building. I am an introvert who disguises this well, knowing the value of appearing as a friendly and reasonable person.  Any of you reading know that this exhausts me - By Wednesday night, I fall asleep between 5:30  and 7 p.m., my internal energy resources entirely burned up.

I am also not a fool. I know how important support staff are in the scheme of "things running smoothly." I've been that support staff. I push myself through the motions of "normal human relations" hoping that I can use my astute observation skills to "learn" how to behave.

I've only just met the maintenance gentleman who has now appeared before me a few days prior. Of course it occurs to me much later that he knows exactly who I am in the way that maintenance people become intimate with the inhabitants of their buildings. He has watched the transformation of my office over weeks as the former inhabitant disappears and I exert my personality through things brought in and arranged. He sees photos and art appear on the walls. He sees what sits in my bookshelf, and what appears, then disappears on my desk. He knows I don't take my work Macbook home and have a "French Baguette" scented candle sitting over on the sideboard.

I lift my eyes and smile when he enters my office. I am recording grades into the computer, saving after each one so the system will remember them. I am careful to check and double check when I do this, fearing the fallability of my short term memory. The late afternoon sun is beginning to stream through the glass.

He sets a metal baking dish on my desk. He explains that there was a pot luck and they have leftovers. He wants to give the few faculty the leftovers.

"It's pistachio pudding.", he explains. "Pistachio is a kind of nut."

Perhaps I looked as if I was unfamiliar with what a pistachio might be and he felt the need to reassure me. In truth, I am well versed in varieties of pistachio. Iranian? Californian? Soaked with Lemon and Salt? I did not share my expertise in things pistachio, however.

"Oh.", I say. "It looks delicious, but I don't have a plate or bowl for you to dish me out some."

The pudding is green and has a cool whip topping. I suspect the bottom is nilla wafer crumbs. It is the type of pudding I have seen several times here at picnics and potlucks. I think of it as a very Midwestern dessert.

His solution is direct. He takes a box which recently housed a desk copy of a book I am considering for use in class next term and rips off the shortest flap. He then slides the cardboard under a section of the pudding and presents it to me.

I sit at my desk, holding a rectangle of cardboard topped with pudding and coolwhip.

I smile. I then do the only acceptable thing I can think to do at that moment. I eat the pudding off of the cardboard. I have no fork or spoon. I simply lift the cardboard to mouth and begin to gracelessly slurp pudding while making sounds of delight.


Later, as I recounted this story to my child and she was doubled over with laughter I remarked:
"If I hadn't just lived that, I may not believe that not only was I offered green pudding on a piece of cardboard - but that I licked it off in front of another human being."

And this, my friends, is how I live now.