This Happened

[akiva]

[akiva]

I get to go to a post-observation conference with an admin in about 10 minutes. Given that I suck at teaching, I'm not looking forward to it.

[Phoebe]

Ahh, hope that goes or perhaps rather went well! I guess it depends a lot on how the people doing the assessing choose to handle it: do they see it as an opportunity for truly supporting improvement, or as a chance to nitpick people? Been on the receiving end of both and when it's the former it's actually quite wonderful, even when they have all sorts of criticism, because the suggestions are helpful and made in that spirit. The latter not so much!

After 25 years I don't know what it means to get over something. I think it just means you live with certain feelings that are expected to be a permanent part of who you are. Maybe it doesn't make sense, but there is nothing wrong with being a person who lives with some things unresolved or forever painful. What is there to blame? Grief of other kinds is certainly like that, but you probably wouldn't blame yourself if grief lived in your heart at some level forever in other situations, because it meant always giving a little silent honor to that person. 25 years is a long time. The man I lived with before I got married to my husband was a truly good person, who was wronged by me far more than anything he ever did wrong in return or deserved. But after 25 years, I see some damage you deal to others is largely because it was long dealt to you beforehand, and you hadn't yet learned how to stop transmitting it. As if damage made you radioactive and you had to learn how to accelerate the half life until it was all gone. So maybe the price of having once been radioactive is forever feeling remorse for not having been a better person, earlier in life, but it's also a good reminder you're no longer that person. You chose to live a different life and your actions are different now.

Or maybe you discover or are unexpectedly gifted with a surefire way to have contempt for the person, because their actions show how far beneath you they really are and always were, and if they get over their own radioactivity you'll know, because they'll behave differently. Voila. If you have no hope of contempt then this probably isn't a useful option at all; living with a little grief that honors other people's memory, be they still alive or not, is a fine part of being alive that I think almost everyone shares. Don't have to blame yourself for caring for things; caring is good.

[Phoebe]

Regarding this general topic: another thing that can happen is your former best friend sends you a holiday card two weeks late that includes her child's SAT score. And do you realize the sadness on that subject has left you, and wonder why you had to waste so much time feeling so very, very sad about that? Like, tears! So many tears over it! Why? Also I'm kind of a crap mom sometimes but at least I got some things going for me.

[akiva]

First the meeting went reasonably well--I successfully fooled him into thinking I'm a mediocre teacher.

I think you're right about just learning to live with it after 25 years; the problem is that it hurts like crazy. Nothing happened (which was the problem); she never wronged me and I don't think I wronged her. But it's become one of the defining parts of my psyche and it's incredbily painful. It seems that time is irrelevant to it; it flares up pretty often and it sucks. And the worst part is that it's incredibly trivial compared to real problems that people. But I seem to incapable of healing that.

And this is why I often think that I'm not clinically depressed; instead, I seethe with self-hatred because I deserve it because I fucked so many things up.

[Eliahad]

There are two separate violin lessons happening at this little studio that I reach at. The interplay between the two things being worked on is providing a delightfully avant garde pontilistic experience that is the best thing I've heard today. John Cage would be proud. I secretly hope the guitar lesson adds a third voice soon.

[Phoebe]

[Phoebe]

[akiva]

Never killed anyone, or ate anyone.

It’s mostly not guilt; it’s mostly desperately wanting two things, and failing at both. And failing at both because other people were clearly better than me. And realizing that my fucked up life is the best i can do, and that’s pathetic.

And I’m not sure I live a just life.

[Phoebe]

Good that guilt is not the main thing! So maybe you aren't living a just life in all respects, but whatever the failures of not getting what you wanted may involve, at least they don't involve feeling guilty about how you failed. It's one thing to fuck up because people fuck up all the time; it's another to do something wrong to fuck up. So there is one silver lining, at least. I can't address the fuck up part usefully but would repeat it is something people do all the time and for which, especially if they weren't wronging people in the process, or worse yet deliberately wronging, they probably deserve forgiveness. At least forgiveness from themselves! Maybe you are your harshest critic. I guess self-hate does that eh? But what would you even have to do to win absolution from yourself? What would constitute winning? Having to get two things? But if you're living life without them why do you need them? if they're not absolutely basic needs like food then there are multiple ways of achieving them?

[Phoebe]

My teenager started shouting about how her bathtub was full of poop, so I ran upstairs wondering what horror awaited me, but not feeling particularly skeptical because it wasn't out of the range of possibility. Instead I was just filled with Dread. Upon arrival I find out one of the younger kids was using a bathtub marker so there was just a little bit of water still in the tub that had been tinted a slight shade off of clear. Now why would this make a person start shrieking about poop as if teeth made of poop had jumped out of the tub and bit them? Why?

[akiva]

Your responses are far too rational for my demented psyche.

[Tahlvin]

Child #2 got accepted as a transfer to the college that was her first choice: CSU in Fort Collins, CO. Now she just needs to decide if she is actually going to attend, or if she's just going to bypass college and try to make a go as a tattoo artist.

[Mike]

If my vote counts, I'd say tattoo artist. While she's still young and not weighed down with other obligations and still (presumably) has a great support system available and is young enough to remain on mom & dad's insurance (although as an independent contractor, I don't know how much your costs vary based on the number of dependents on your health plan).

But that's just me.

[Tahlvin]

Long term, tattoo artist isn't going to pay the bills. Having a degree will help open possibilities for the second job to help pay the rent while working on the tattoo artist apprenticeship. And she can always take some business classes, which could help if she decides to run her own shop someday. Plus, she really wants to move to Colorado. So going to school, and perhaps working on the tattoo apprenticeship after hours allows her to do what she wants, where she wants, while attending school on mom & dad's dime (as long as she keeps her grades up); if she's not going to school, then she's going to stay around here to complete her apprenticeship, then will have to relocate, re-certify, and rebuild a clientele when she's done.

It's her call, though, so we'll see what she decides.

[akiva]

Not sure why I bother trying to teach.

[Phoebe]

I suspect it can be very draining; all the teachers I know are exhausted and overcommitted/overextended, and that's if everything is going well and firing on all cylinders. If classes go poorly or students have issues, I'm sure it is quite enervating. BUT IT'S NOT YOU, it's a super difficult job. Don't blame yourself because your job is super hard; I am positive that it would stress me out in a serious way.

[akiva]

[DMDarcs]

Just got home from the third Academic Decathlon study session this week that not a single student showed up for. Those students think they're going to proceed to the state championship after our meet this weekend. This is a near mathematic impossibility.

[Phoebe]

If anyone
(A) removes a blanket from the room in which it was resting; OR
(B) drags a blanket through the kitchen or basement areas of the home or any bathroom whatsoever; OR
(C) deposits this now-dirtied blanket without ceremony anywhere near the laundry room;
The judgment of guilt shall be immediate and the punishment shall be the worst thing that can be legally done to you.
Lesser crimes that will get a severe punishment but not the worst possible thing include:
ANY even slight deviation from the prescribed bathroom habits that apply to your species.
Leaving used dishes or food waste or food wrappers anywhere outside of the designated locations in the kitchen.
Taking laundry that I have in the washer and moving it to the dryer; OR
Taking laundry that I have in the dryer and stuffing it down into a laundry hamper.
Putting any object whatsoever into my laundry room.
This is basically where I'm at right now
with the people who live in this f****** house.