Yesterday was the first day of school. Annie was so thrilled to join her classmates in the kindergarten. It is hard to fathom that my baby really is a big kindergartner. When Carla first entered kindergarten, I remember thinking how very big she was then, and yet now that Annie is that age, I still think she’s a tiny little thing.

We’ve been on our feet walking a lot, since the car is still being repaired from its little run in with the deer. I would normally enjoy walking but my ankle is acting up, plus it has been HOT! I am really proud that in spite of needing a longer time for getting to school (it’s about a mile away), we were on time, with a few minutes to spare! I also walked home a load of groceries this week, pulling them in a little red wagon. My CSA delivery also came home this week on the power of my feet, dragged along in a little shopping cart. Cammy came with me, and it was really pretty pleasant, walking and chatting at night as we went to get our fruit and veggies delivery.

There was one sad moment on the first day of school. As we walked up to the school, scads of Carla’s friends saw her and screamed their delight, surrounding her with hugs and gleeful mirth. Annie saw all these big girls and clearly expected that they would greet her in the same way. Instead, Carla disappeared into the school with her buddies and Annie was left behind, holding her arms out as if ready to receive a big hug. Luckily, just as I thought she was going to be scarred for life, a classmate of Annie’s that she knows was suddenly there and they greeted one another heartily and all was well. It was one of those moments where I thought: Ah! It’s hard being the little sister, overshadowed by and preceeded by the popular and famous big sister!

But I need not be too concerned. Before long, Annie was all over school with her 5 and 6 year old peers, and looked like she fit in just perfectly.

The fun has officially begun!

We’re regrettably late for school nearly EVERY DAY. Today I had a conference with C’s second grade teacher and was surprised to find how upsetting it is for me to be reminded of our continual failure to be on time.

I find it humiliating, arriving late for school – it is really hard to manage each morning. I have a hard time waking up, a hard time getting everything ready for the day, getting out the door, and it seems like there is always a delay of some kind. The shoes can’t be found. The homework’s not done. The lunch isn’t ready. Someone’s hat. Someone’s glasses. Someone’s keys can’t be found.

Different problems, different days.

Then today I went to this conference, thinking it may be raised as an issue, but not a HUGE issue, not a HARD TO DISCUSS issue. It was really hard. I ending up crying which made me feel like a fool, an idiot, and a nutbag.

This is especially hard when one is a new employee and one’s co-workers now have seen one crying and being a blubbering pathetic idiot who can’t even arrive to school on time each day.

I am so ashamed. Of my tardiness. Of my emotional reactions. Of my apparent inability to do what everyone else apparently does with such ease and panache. I feel like a failure- which wouldn’t be such a big deal if I hadn’t been trying so damn hard.

It’s one thing to be a screw up thanks to being a slacker, an un-caring person who just doesn’t give a damn (that’s not me). If that were the case, I’d at least be uncaring and indifferent. I wouldn’t be SUFFERING! OH THE SUFFERING!  But no, I failed over and over and over again to be on time to school when it’s been pointed out to me that it’s soooo important… and that was with actually trying very very hard to get there.  It makes feel so despondent. How can I possibly do this when I’ve failed all along.

It’s not like I haven’t been trying Every. Single. Day. Since. September.

Oh and this being late in the morning is by no means limited to this year. It’s been a nearly daily sense of shame and failure ever since C was a pre-pre-schooler and her teachers gave me a daily dose of the hairy eyeball for having arrived too late.

In fact I can trace our tardiness problem back to that time easily; it coincides quite neatly with me being the parent of not one but in fact two small children.  The addition of my darling Annie to the family caused a dramatic shift in our family’s ability to arrive anywhere on time.

AND YET. And yet, we have never missed a plane ride.

AND YET. I am almost NEVER late picking up the kids from their schools.

It’s not ME, I keep thinking, but then again, I guess it is. It’s me in the morning.

I’ve never wanted a tattoo, but if I ever WERE to consider getting one, I think I’d like it to say “NOT A MORNING PERSON.”

The real trouble is the suffering. I am ashamed of myself for being late so much. I feel absolutely horrible thinking of C’s friends who routinely expect her to “not be there” for their little morning exercises. The kids in her class each have a job in the morning, and she’s essentially “late for work.” And she’s a “dreamy kid” who “spaces out.” Yes, we are all spacey in this family. What do you expect? Our big brains are working overtime coming up with some kind of creative genius thing and how could we possibly keep track of the location of our shoes and coats and bags also??

But poor little C. Her education is suffering! (and I’m paying HOW MUCH again for that education??)  Her social life is suffering! Her transitions are slow and dreamy!

What a horrible job I am doing, I think to myself! I’m modeling tardiness! I’m failing to teach her to be organized and structured! Because I’m disorganized!

It all comes back to what has got to be my favorite Philip Larkin poem entitled “This be the verse”, which I’ll quote for you now.

They fuck you up, your mom and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults you had.

And add some extra just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats

Who half the time were soppy stern

And half at one another’s throats.

Well it may be a bit cynical — the poem does end with an exhortation to “not have any kids yourself”. OOOPS! Too late for following that advice!

But in a funny way, this poem really calms me down. I am not perfect. I am flawed just like anyone. My only hope is that our creativity, our sense of humor, and our ability to think and express and emote in beautiful ways will more than make up for the fact that we arrive for life about ten minutes later than anyone else.

And my therapist hasn’t even called me back yet. Did I mention the suffering??!

I should really be getting to the backlog of bookkeeping and billing that I need to accomplish in order to keep my business afloat.

I am distracted, though, because I have a job interview today at 1:30 PM.

This will be the third time I have applied for this same position: being the teacher and director of an after school program at my daughter’s school.  This time, I am applying for the job just as a temporary position, filling in for the current teacher’s maternity leave.  I am quite pre-occupied thinking about it.

The job would cut into my time with just my kids, though I’d (theoretically) still be with them. Actually the staff at the school don’t want me to have my younger child with me at all, were I to take this job. I see this as an opportunity for negotiation and compromise, though they don’t. I’ve asked them to set aside this issue for now, and to please just consider me for the job on the basis of my strengths, experience and skills, rather than the fact that I have a nearly-five year old child and would have to figure out a way to arrange for her care.

Many of my regular readers are probably already aware that mothers in the workplace are typically paid less than women who do not have children, who in turn are paid less than men. Single mothers tend to be paid even less.  This is shocking to my ears, though I’ve heard it before more than once.   The facts have been  documented.

In the job I’m interviewing for, however, unfair pay is not a problem. I know that they will pay the same, no matter which person is hired for the  job. However, I sense a kind of unfairness permeating even into this very liberal school, coming from our mainstream culture about work.

I believe that the American work ethic suggests that “Work is not for doing with your children.” and “Children are not allowed in the workplace.”  I think there are very valid reasons why in many workplaces this is a good rule.  For example, I myself generally do my work when the kids are elsewhere, because it requires me to focus and the children distract me from my work.  I don’t like to ignore my kids, so when I’m working I make sure they are well cared for and happy — elsewhere.

Workplaces can also be dangerous or inappropriate for children.  Nobody wants a toddler messing with a shredder, or a child sitting bored with nothing to do.  A child would be a distraction to the parent in an office environment where phonecalls and meetings need to be taken seriously and without little voices interrupting.

However, these are all non-issues in the job that I’m considering. As the after school teacher, I’d be the teacher for a mixed age group of kids, ages ranging from 5 years old to about 13 years. The ground tends to be on the younger side, because so many of the older kids begin to go home after school around age 10 and up.

Adding one nearly-five-year-old to a mixed group of kids does not make the job of managing that group any different. I do agree that SOME kids at that age may make their mothers miserable in a group setting.  I already  help once a week with this same group of kids, taking “Annie” along with me.  She has friends in the group, and plays with them. So far, I’ve hardly needed to speak two words to her each time I’ve been working with the group because she fits in so well. She plays with her sister and with some of the younger kids, and has a great time.

I have a great time, too. I enjoy getting to know the  kids and see how they interact.  At no point did I feel like I was torn between caring for my own children and attending to the group. When I’m volunteering there, my children are simply a part of the group, and I interact with all of the kids as needed.

My opinion about caring for groups of children is that if you provide an appropriate environment, then children will exhibit the behaviors you’d want: playing, talking, interacting, and remaining generally happy.  Make sure there’s a good and timely snack, a variety of activities that interest the kids in question, and a general routine that is comfortable for the group,  and the result should be a rewarding and enjoyable group experience.

This group would vary each day in size, just depending on which kids happen to be left to remain in the program so from day to day, so the teacher has a bit of a challenge. Namely, the teacher does not know how many kids will be in the program each day. Nor does the teacher know for sure the ages of all the kids who will be present on any given day.

Ideally, kids can partner up with friends and enjoy social time together; of course sometimes kids fight anyway, in spite of the good classroom management.  At a small school like this, though, everyone knows everyone else, even across grades.  Getting along in mixed age groups is not only common, but in fact, is something that is a specific goal of the school.

My point in discussing all of this is to a) clear my mind before the interview and b) suggest that though there are jobs where it would be wrong to bring your child along, this is not one of them. My younger daughter’s needs would be attended to in this group setting, as would the needs of my older daughter, and I would still be able to do the job of caring for the group even as a I care for my own children as a part of that group.

But I also have to consider the effect that getting a job has on my family in general.

Would it be hard on my family?  I think that at first, it would be an adjustment.  Our afternoon routines would change, and we’d have to get used to that. Dinnertime would be a greater challenge for me, as the program does go all the way to 6:00 PM.  In order to get my kids fed by their usual dinner time (say, 6:30 at the latest) I would have to be very organized about food, and have something ready in advance to heat up once we get home.

It’s funny how having more constraints on your time can sometimes lead to better organization. I’m imagining that taking on this job might just help me a great deal with my nightly What’s-For-Dinner anxiety.

Would it be hard on my business? Again, the challenge is in getting organized.  I would not want to have to deal with customer support issues during my after-school job.  I generally don’t have a lot of returning phone calls to make during those hours and already carefully limit what calls I make when I am with my children.  Therefore, I do not think there would be too much stress on me as a result of being busy with this new job.  After all, I would still have my mornings free to attend to my freelance work and my business duties.

All in all, I think I am ready to take on this interview and I am ready to take on this job. I am qualified for the job, and I am enthusiastic about the work. I have thought about all the ways that taking on a job like this will impact my family and I am still hoping that they will want to hire me.

It’s funny, but I am really not thinking about the pay I’ll receive should I get this job. I don’t even know or care how much the pay is.  I am applying because I have a strong desire to do this kind of work. I am applying because I care about kids, and about this school.  I am applying because it has always been my dream to work with kids.

In spite of my degree in psych (concentration on developmental psych), and my master’s of education (psych studies in edu.), I have not officially worked with children. Instead, I have allowed my computer skills (and their accompanying golden handcuffs) to steer my career.  There have been times when what I felt that I needed was a good steady paycheck. Thanks to Drob’s Job, and his incredibly industrious nature, I do not feel under any pressure to make a lot of money.

So… here I am, Unnamed School, HIRE ME, YOU FOOLS! And don’t worry about the kid. She’s easy — it’s her momma you have to watch out for.

The trouble with standardized achievement tests is that scores on such tests are looked on by some as the tell-all number that predicts a student’s abilities.  Not so, if a student is one who for some reason other than aptitude for the subject does not do well on exams.  Meanwhile, scores on standardized tests don’t necessarily reflect an individual’s competency when put to task in real life situation.

While such tests often include time limits, we in real life, usually are able to consider things and think through a problem before jumping to a conclusion, and multiple choice is not an option.

So why are tests so darn popular? Well, I think it’s because some of us actually like them.  I know, I know, tests don’t really mean much and they are certainly over-used and over-valued.  But I realized something today: I actually enjoy taking tests – even when they’re not of a subject that I am very interested in!

All this was brought to mind today because my cousin sent me a link to a website that offers a Bible Drill.  Test your knowledge of the holy book — and you can take several different quizzes and it will pull up questions at random from its little database.  You get a score and everything! I actually went and kept trying again until I could get 100% correct.   And I don’t even read the Bible!

I can think of at least one other example of my perverse enjoyment of taking tests. In high school I was something of a rebel geek.  I’d cut gym class to hang out with my friends in AP Physics (a class which I was not taking). One day, in this class, the teacher told me I’d have to leave; go back to the classroom where I belonged, because he wanted to give a small test to the class.  Smirking, I asked if I could take the quiz, too.  And so he let me! It turned out that I did better on the pop quiz than a number of students who were actually taking the class.

Tests give a person who’s good at them another way to shine!

There’s something very satisfying about taking a test – you have to focus on the specifics of each question and there is a right answer in there somewhere. In real life, the answers are complex and the focus is broad; the answers exist with addendums and qualifiers, caviats and footnotes.  Worse, in real life, there’s no simple feedback to tell you how you did.  You don’t even to get take each test of life over again if you don’t like the answer you came up with the first time around because the darn test keeps morphing into something else, before you’re even finished with it.

Parenthood is not like taking a test. Running a business is not like taking a test. Building a website is not like taking a test.

Anybody think I should go back to grad school?

Nah.  Too many essays. Not enough tests. Maybe I should enroll in 4th grade at the local public school.

TBH has a post about how tired she is from all her cooperative commitments. Like TBH, Pann and I are members of lots of cooperative organizations. We’re members of two cooperative schools (one for each kid), a food coop, and a babysitting coop. I feel sure I’m missing at least one organization, but that may be all of them at this point– Our kids also went to a cooperative camp but have since outgrown it. And I’m actually deliberately leaving out two organizations that are structured as co-ops but don’t have an explicit work requirement for all members (although we do participate anyway).

I should be clear that I love these organizations. I don’t regret joining them. My older daughter’s school, in particular, is a real source of community for me, and I also think they provide great value– more on this later.

That said, I feel TBH’s pain. I’ve been thinking a lot about the energy we put into co-ops and whether it’s worth it. Making this work for a family is sort of a martial art, something you get better at with time and hard practice; it was a lot more overwhelming a year ago. I think we’ve gotten a little better at this.

Here’s a quick braindump of some of the things I wish someone had said to me when I first got involved with so many cooperatives around the time our kids reached toddlerhood.

1. Have a time-management system. I think lots of parents, coming from working a single job and being the master of the rest of their time, are not prepared at first for the number of evening and weekend commitments you start to have once your kids are in school. Being part of coops magnifies this. You’ve got to have a good system for keeping up with all those commitments, to make sure you can be in the right place at the right time, to make sure you don’t double book yourself, to help you predict your own energy levels, and also to make sure you’re covered for your own kids.
   
   Pann once accidentally committed to coop at two schools at once, but beyond that we’ve also run into a few situations where we both needed to be somewhere (cooping, a meeting, whatever) but we never got around to making arrangements for our own kids while doing that. (We’ve gotten better about this one, but we still mess it up occasionally).
   
2. Find out whether your cooperative organizations have options where you can do work with your family or kids, instead of taking additional time away from them to do coop work.
   
   My family spent 2 hours picking vegetables at the local cooperative farm this morning, for credit at our food co-op. Although we had to get up REALLY early, it was something we were able to do as a family, and get 4 hours of credit (for two adults) in two hours of time. And the kids hung out with us and had a good time too!
   
3. More generally, can you choose the work you do? If so, this goes a long way toward making it all less draining. Sometimes you don’t have a choice, but sometimes you do. I’ve tended to move my school cooping commitments toward administrative and technical stuff, which is valuable to the school, but takes less out of me than chaperoning on field trips. I still go on field trips when I feel like it, but it’s not because I have to do it. Schools have other needs– If you’re a writer, can you fulfill some of your obligation to the school by writing an article about the school and getting it published in a local newspaper? Or something else that uses your unique skills?
   
   One parent at my older daughter’s school recently shared with me that he started out doing fundraising, and then switched over to helping the art teacher keep her materials organized. He hated the fundraising, but he loves working with the art teacher and has now been doing it for nearly 10 years (two kids in the school through 8th grade); the change of job made all the difference in his satisfaction with the cooperative organization.
   
4. For babysitting coops in particular, consider the age of the children and what they’re going to be doing in addition to simple logistical concerns.For me, there are certain plum sits I’ll take anytime they come up, and others that require a lot more thought. For example:
   • Sits which start after I’d get home for work, and end after bedtime. Assuming the kids are reasonably good about going to bed when they’re supposed to and reasonably okay about having a babysitter put them to bed, these can be great because once the kids are asleep, I can get my own work or reading done.
   • Having a kid the same age as one of mine come over for a “playdate”– the kids do a lot of the work. Sure, there’s supervision involved, but I find this takes a lot less energy than many other kinds of sits.

   These aren’t the only sits I’ll take, but for other kinds of sits, it takes a lot more consideration– how badly do we need that credit? Am I likely to be really exhausted at that time? Will it be taking me away from something I want to do with my family?

5. Is the coop work distributed equitably in the family? For the coops we’re part of, Pann and I try to participate somewhat equitably. This really helps avoid burnout on the part of either parent. It isn’t always possible– for example, our younger daughter’s school requires classroom cooping around once a month from 8:30 to 12:00, and while my work schedule is flexible; it would be really hard for me to do half of that, so I end up doing it once or twice a year and Pann does the rest. However, I make up for that by doing other parts of the commitment for that school.
   
6. Are you taking on too much? Sometimes these organizations need specific additional help, and they just know you’d be the best person for the job. If you don’t have the time or energy for it, it doesn’t matter how good you’d be, you shouldn’t take it on. Doing so can only lead to burnout. And ultimately, if you’re burned out, the job doesn’t actually get done well.
   

At the end of the day– is the value we get from the co-op worth the energy we put into it? Co-ops allow us to save money on a product or service by performing some of the labor involved in delivering that product or service. In other words, they allow us to trade time for money. There are other ways to trade time for money (”work”, “do it yourself”, and also “doing without”) and sometimes those other methods provide better value than the co-op does.

On the other hand, sometimes the cooperative organization provides qualitative value that can’t be purchased elsewhere (community, better quality food, better quality school, babysitters who aren’t teenagers, etc.) so that has to be taken into account. But my personal store of energy also provides me with qualitative value that can’t be purchased elsewhere, and I need to consider that every time I take on a cooperative commitment. It comes down to honoring our own energy, something that can be exceedingly difficult to do as a parent.

Dave and I are reading The Chronicles of Narnia to C (our 7 yr old) and she’s really enjoying it, as are we. We’re on the book “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.”

Lately our 4 yr old, A, has been into a series of books by Susan Meddaugh, about a talking dog named Martha. Martha Speaks, Martha Blah Blah Blah, Martha Walks the Dog. Great stuff!

As for the adults, we’re thinking about FOOD. Do you know where your food comes from? You might not want to know. If you would rather live in ignorant bliss, then don’t read The Omnivore’s Dilemma. But it might just astound you to read Barbara Kingsolver’s new book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. And if you’re feeling a little on the broke side, check out Not Buying It from the library. These books are quite complimentary to one another. The best among them, in my opinion is Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

The Old Woman and the Red Pumpkin, by Betsy Bang, is the latest in A’s slightly obsessive book reading streak. It’s a charming Bengali folk tale about a clever old woman who tricks three large carnivores into sparing her life. We read it twice today, and the way that A likes to do it is to “read” lines of it to me (she’s memorized it) — we trade off back and forth. There’s a part where the old woman sings and I made up a little tune and it really knocks me out that A sings it just as I do. She’s got a good ear!

I’ve read this book about 8 times in about half as many days. At first, I didn’t enjoy reading it because it has a lot of repetition (probably why A loves it so much). But after a few readings, it started to really grow on me. Then, having virtually memorized the text, I was able to appreciate the many intricate details in the illustrations. They are beautiful and quirky, possessing an imaginative and playful energy.

All in all, I’d recommend checking this one out of the library if you have a pre-schooler and if you ‘d like to increase the diversity of your kids’ literature. See if you can get a hold of the edition that is illustrated by Molly Garret Bang, the author’s daughter. The illustrations are really clever (the image above is the cover of the edition to which I am referring).

As for grown up books, I’m now reading A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, author of NYT Bestseller The Kite Runner. Both novels take place in Afghanistan and are well written, gripping stories that also introduce a rich and diverse view into Afghan culture and customs.

I haven’t finished The Human Story yet, but since I own it and its really quite large, I am in no hurry. I just read one of the Sandman comics, A Game of You, a graphic novel that D brought home from the library and suggested that I read. It’s the fifth book in a series, and I’d not read any of the first four, but each book is apparently quite readable on its own. It was fantastic. I am not super into graphic novels, or comic novels or whatever you want to call them, but this was superb. Then again, Neil Gaiman is in fact, my favorite author.

We finished reading C Time Cat and now we’re reading the Cat Who Wished to Be a Man, another gem from Llyod Alexander. Alexander passed away very recently, following his wife in death by just two weeks.

A’s obsession with Skippy Jon Jones has decreased somewhat, and she is enjoying hearing C’s chapter books, while also reading a great deal of Dr. Seuss classics. She’s especially fond of Horton Hatches the Egg, Horton Hears a Who, and the Grinch .

Skippyjon Jones in Mummy Trouble is A.’s favorite this week. She especially likes hearing the author, Judy Schachner, read it — a CD was included with this book that I bought as an early present for A.’s fourth birthday. Says A.: “It’s a really good birthday present.” Skippyjon is a siamese cat with a very large head, making him quite similar to A.’s favorite LPS toys. Skippyjon Jones daydreams about being a chihuahua. It’s wacky, off the wall, fun and funky; I really enjoy reading these books aloud.

We started reading C. “Over Sea, Under Stone,” or actually a friend who was babysitting started reading it to her, and I tried to continue but it’s still a bit out of reach as far as reading level for her to sit and listen to. So, instead we’re reading her Time Cat by Lloyd Alexander.

I‘m reading The Human Story, by James Davis. It attempts, in one volume, to tell the whole human story, from prehistoric times known through archaeologists’ guesses up to the present day. James Davis is a professor of history, and one of my clients, as well. I’m now up to the part of the book where it goes through the history as laid out in the Bible. I have to confess, it was interesting to me up until this part; I am not sure why he gives so much time to the Bible’s claims. I have my doubts about the accuracy therein, and wonder if he’ll also be writing about other myths with equal value. Anyway, the book is generally engaging, and I’m hoping it will give me some better understanding of how we got here. We meaning us people, us human beans, mankind and womankind, us little lice on this planet.

My elder daughter attends a private school that values highly having the children learn from one another, and learn to function in groups, so there are times when the youngest groups (like her K-1 class) mingle with even the junior high kids (6-8th graders). This sometimes causes amusing consternation that is taken in stride by all. Read the rest of this entry »