Ice on my fingers, on my toes, and on my toys.
School's out. No it isn't.
I'm still going in every day, answering email and meeting with colleagues and packing up my room. (For once, I'm just moving to another location on campus, as opposed to back home until I find another campus.) It needs to be done, it's important, it's real adult professional stuff, it engages my intellect and it's good for me in a thousand ways, but I am ready to be done. I realize I'm getting zero sympathy here from the 99% of employed adults who have to make do with two measly weeks a year, and I feel for you all. Really, I do. It's stupid that three months of vacation isn't a constitutional right for everyone; it's stupid that what we all agree is healthy and fair and sane for children and adolescents is made unavailable to most adults. Greed is the only reason. Greed expressed as a pathalogically paranoid competitive streak made social imperative by an emotionally stunted plutocracy, not to put too fine a point on it.
Point is, I feel whatever's the opposite of shame about taking a few months off to be with my family and watch my daughter grow up, instead of heading off to work before she's awake and coming back a couple of hours before she goes to sleep. Oh yeah, and there's my wife, too, who is, in addition to being gorgeous and hardworking, someone I don't see nearly as often I'd like.
Genevieve recently recited the entire alphabet. Her only slip-up was saying "K" twice instead of "J K", but damn: two years and ten days old. She can count up to about sixteen or so before she starts repeating herself. She draws circles with squiggly lines attached and calls them "balllloooooooooons". Although her verbs aren't as plentiful as her nouns and she's only beginning to flirt with tenses, she often speaks in complete sentences: Papa, more juice please. Thank you for ice cream, you're welcome. Birds eat worms. Garbage truck picks up trash cans, empty trash cans, more trash please. Crickets: little tiny BUGS!
She's highly advanced.
I'm all verklempt just thinking about her, tearing up over here, and this is from a guy who almost never cries. Not a macho thing, a biological one. I don't know why, I'm emotionally about as open as it gets, but I don't cry. But my daughter gets me all misty-eyed.
Uh . . . yeah. So none of this is particularly entertaining or clever or even interesting, probably, like a good website should be. Is this what happens in my thirties? I turn into a sappy, boring-ass teacher/father/noodler with nothing to say that anyone beyond his immediate family could possibly give two rat turds about? Yeah . . . guess so.
Maybe if I could get started with my freaking SUMMER VACATION that is, like, the whole reason to be a teacher in the first place, I could write something sharp. Till then, it's whiny, sappy grown-up blather. Enjoy.
I'm still going in every day, answering email and meeting with colleagues and packing up my room. (For once, I'm just moving to another location on campus, as opposed to back home until I find another campus.) It needs to be done, it's important, it's real adult professional stuff, it engages my intellect and it's good for me in a thousand ways, but I am ready to be done. I realize I'm getting zero sympathy here from the 99% of employed adults who have to make do with two measly weeks a year, and I feel for you all. Really, I do. It's stupid that three months of vacation isn't a constitutional right for everyone; it's stupid that what we all agree is healthy and fair and sane for children and adolescents is made unavailable to most adults. Greed is the only reason. Greed expressed as a pathalogically paranoid competitive streak made social imperative by an emotionally stunted plutocracy, not to put too fine a point on it.
Point is, I feel whatever's the opposite of shame about taking a few months off to be with my family and watch my daughter grow up, instead of heading off to work before she's awake and coming back a couple of hours before she goes to sleep. Oh yeah, and there's my wife, too, who is, in addition to being gorgeous and hardworking, someone I don't see nearly as often I'd like.
Genevieve recently recited the entire alphabet. Her only slip-up was saying "K" twice instead of "J K", but damn: two years and ten days old. She can count up to about sixteen or so before she starts repeating herself. She draws circles with squiggly lines attached and calls them "balllloooooooooons". Although her verbs aren't as plentiful as her nouns and she's only beginning to flirt with tenses, she often speaks in complete sentences: Papa, more juice please. Thank you for ice cream, you're welcome. Birds eat worms. Garbage truck picks up trash cans, empty trash cans, more trash please. Crickets: little tiny BUGS!
She's highly advanced.
I'm all verklempt just thinking about her, tearing up over here, and this is from a guy who almost never cries. Not a macho thing, a biological one. I don't know why, I'm emotionally about as open as it gets, but I don't cry. But my daughter gets me all misty-eyed.
Uh . . . yeah. So none of this is particularly entertaining or clever or even interesting, probably, like a good website should be. Is this what happens in my thirties? I turn into a sappy, boring-ass teacher/father/noodler with nothing to say that anyone beyond his immediate family could possibly give two rat turds about? Yeah . . . guess so.
Maybe if I could get started with my freaking SUMMER VACATION that is, like, the whole reason to be a teacher in the first place, I could write something sharp. Till then, it's whiny, sappy grown-up blather. Enjoy.
hurled forth by Felix Helix | 11:51 PM
3 Comments:
Geeze! She is, like, really really advanced. Two? Years? Old? And knows the alphabet? And talks in sentences? Most two years olds are strange, drooling monsters who terrorize kitty cats. They don't say "thank you" or speak in sentences. I wonder where she got her brains from? Mommy must be incredibly smart;)
Heh. Mama is.
For the most part, she (Genevieve, that is) understands the need to be gentle and careful with animals. When we're out walking and we see a dog, she says "Ask pet dog please!" Our own dog, Jennie, has only had to show her teeth once or twice. The danger these days comes from G's newfound ability to climb on top of chairs, and from there to the tabletop. Where the scissors are. Yikes.
But yeah. Hella-advanced. And, when not overdue for a nap, sweet as a peach to boot.
Thank bob she takes after her mother. 78^)
Please don't stop writing about her. (Not that you could.) It's wonderful. I come here in part to seem more of it. :)
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