tuckova

love letters

Dear U.S. Dollar,
Knock it off! I pay taxes on you in two countries. Pull your socks up, sir, or ... or. Seriously, though.
With love, but just a little longer,

Dear Thanksgiving,
HAHAHAHAHA! Enjoy yourselves! The only turkey that will be consumed in this house tomorrow will be Wild. Otherwise, man, I'm saving all my love for the winter break, during which my goal is to fully indulge my inner bear and sleep and sleep and sleep. Eyes on the prize; we shall not be distracted by something that involves more cooking than eating.
Gobble!

Dear Internets,
I think you should be free like butterflies but I also cannot believe I do not have to pay you for the very fabulous experience of shoe-shopping with Squire and having him tell me which shoes rule and which shoes suck. And then I crushed him under my foot and said Stupid Boy Stupid Boy and then we collapsed in an agony of geek giggling.
I'm yrs, etc.,

freedom of choices vs. freedom from choice

NIGHT 1
ME: Tonight, instead of arguing, let's vote for which game we play.
FRIAR: Catan!
ME: Catan!
SQUIRE: I want to play Clue.
ME: But we voted.
SQUIRE: I don't care.
[argue argue argue; we play Clue]

NIGHT 2
ME: Do you want to play Clue or Carcassone tonight?
SQUIRE: I want to play TransAmerica, it's my favorite.
ME: But I offered Clue or Carcassone.
SQUIRE: [heavy sigh, with drama] I guess we'll do what you want to do anyway.
ME: Well... I want to play a game.
[we play TransAmerica]

NIGHT 3:
ME: Okay, how about if you narrow it down to two games you want to play, and then we can choose one of those two.
SQUIRE: I don't want to choose only two games. I want to choose five and then you choose one of those.
ME: O... kay?
SQUIRE: Catan, Carcassone, TransAmerica, Risk, or Clue!
ME: Any of those... I guess Catan or Carcassone.
FRIAR: Catan!
SQUIRE: I don't want to play Catan.
[we play Clue and Carcassone]

Whereupon it was determined by me, who is tired of this Every Single Night, that games shall henceforth be played in alphabetical order. HA! It's a very democratic approach the games, albeit not to the players. But it is more democratic than the dictatorship we were sliding into, and sometimes in a democracy we have to do things for the common good, and it's to everybody's benefit to not have a stupid argument over what game to play every. single. night. Amiright.

three

standing under the eaves in the rain, smoking
sitting inside watching the snow fall and drift into piles
walking down the middle of the street in the dark

11/44 = 1/4

We had the quarter-year parent/teacher conference at Squire Tuck's school. BOY do I like his new teacher. She just does so many small subtle things that I think are correct. Like she offered either individual private consultations or she said she could talk to us as a group. Offering to talk to us as a group says: We're all adults here. We're all working on the team that wants our kids educated. This runs circles around standing out in the hallway shifting our weight from one foot to the other for one or two hours, wondering what the hell was going on, and the teacher exhausted by the end. So we sat together and we all heard about little Vaclav and little Martin and little I don't know, some other kids' name that isn't actually a kid in the class. And then some parents stayed behind to talk about private concerns; I stayed behind to tell her I appreciated her approach and how much happier Squire was this year, and that I hoped she'd let us know if there was anything we could be doing.

It's always interesting to hear the parents' side of the story, isn't it? You learn so much. The mother who is defending her child's behavior is the one whose kid is a bully. The one who is surprised to hear that her kid is flailing is also the one who just had a baby. I am the only parent with a notebook for writing down what the teacher says, and I think at first that it is because one of my superpowers is Preparedness! but then it may also be because I'm the only one who can't hold a thought in her head for more than 5 minutes unless it's printed in front of me. I wonder what correlation that will be found between me and my kid, as I sit doodling in the margins of the notebook I brought and listening to the other parents.

No, yeah, I get it.

Out of the nine boys in the class, two have not yet been to the principal's office for discipline problems; one of them is our boy.The teacher says he's in his own world, and existing in that world keeps him from learning as much as he could, but he's not dragging anybody else away with him. It's both good and a little sad. The endless renderings of detailed spaceships, each window perfect, hold him drifting in orbit away from grammar and division; if he didn't have a tutor 3x a week, I doubt he'd be pulling in the Bs and Cs he's getting now. But it seems to me that now he's doing this because the schoolwork is boring and he'd prefer to draw, rather than because he is confused or because he needs the escape, so it's quite an improvement over last year. Baby steps, you know. And you could do worse than be a drawer of starships.

Last month the applications came around for the kids who want to transfer into college prep schools beginning next year. You were supposed to pay for the applications, and we didn't know, and I kept asking him about it and he didn't know, and we went rounds, and the date passed. I spent about 5 minutes being upset about it. Well, maybe a whole day. It's a door, closed, which always makes me want to kick at it. And Friar said: You cannot honestly think he could handle the workload college prep school when he can't even remember to tell us to order the applications. Which is: yeah.

This has been a Squire Tuck update.

got it want it need it

What you want is not what you get. What you get is what you get. You can feel as good or bad about it as you want to feel, but it will most likely not change what you get.

You can embrace what you have, what you got, what you will get. You can shout from rooftops or perhaps websites about your lucky draw and your happy hands and your pretty, pretty life.

Or you can alternately mourn what you do not have, have not gotten, will never. Keen and wail over it or suffer semi-stoically, baby martyr. Did dur baby have its feewings hurted. Whoa is you indeed.

The thing about martyrs is that they're only impressive to the people who believe what they believe. To everybody else they are terrorists, windmill tilters, demanding nonsensical whiners. In no case are they people who appreciated what they had. In no case are they people who get what they want. And the longing and the whining and the violence, the glass thrown across the room the plate smashed hair from the roots white gasp and the seam of blood dissolving in tears or flames temper temper takes from what you have, and what you have is consumed in the yearning for what you did not get.

Want what you get. For starters, it's easier.

dissing, decorating, and dressing

So one of the things I was afraid of happening if I returned to teaching? Happened. I was teaching a lesson about politics, as one of the things the students are expected to do is discuss the political systems of the US and UK and compare them to the Czech Republic. Which I'm sure you agree is a perfectly reasonable thing to expect 18 year old students to do in another language. ANYWAY. So there we were, and this one girl is slouched back in her chair so I went over to see if she was confused or what exactly, and she asks, "How much longer are we going to do this?" Well, I say, I thought we'd do it until it was finished. Why, do you have a hot date or something? "No," she answers, "but this is boring."

Ah. So I say entirely pleasantly that I'm sorry she finds it so but it is a required topic. Later in the class she was talking and the other students hissed at her to be quiet but she wasn't. Alrighty then. She had the quiet attention, she had the peer attention, she apparently needed more. So, you know, I gave her the full force of my level-eyed disappointment. I'm unpleasant when I'm angry but I'm apparently downright scary when I'm disappointed. She came up after class to apologize. I'm sorry to have had to do it, but I'm glad I remembered how. And that it's done now, so I don't have to dread it.

Over the weekend I turned out to not be quite so sick as I'd expected, so I washed windows and sewed some new curtains for the living room, and made some exceptionally pretty shelf coverings out of this fabric I bought a year ago because it reminded me of Klimt, but it was too stiff to work with as I'd wanted to. Friar hasn't noticed any of these things yet; another advantage to him is that all aesthetic decisions are made to please me and possibly the young Squire. It's like living alone, except with a place to warm my feet at night. Oh, I'm kidding, calm down.

Mistrust all institutions that require new clothing. I ordered a dress from the internets because I had a craving for something pretty to wear and couldn't stomach going out to try things on; also the shipping costs are blahblah-- I don't know, I bought a dress. I'm not gonna apologize for my motives. I attempted to branch out colorwise and went with "eggplant" instead of "burgandy" or "black". I expected a dark bruise-y purple, but it turned out to be a purple I associate more with Easter eggs than eggplants, very pale and ladylike. SIGH.  I know that I am not yet ready to tackle sleeves, but think perhaps I will try to make a skirt, since it cannot be that much harder than making curtains and it cannot be a more bizarre-for-me color than this dress. A skirt of leftover curtains, perhaps! Like Scarlett O'Hara only less so.

fevah!

For a non-atheist to see and enjoy "The Golden Compass" is the same as for a non-Christian to see and enjoy "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe". The Chronicles of Narnia are tasty and His Dark Materials are also delicious; beautiful movies are always worth seeing; also, and most importantly,  ideas can't hurt you*. Let's hug it out, shall we?

*banned in my house: anything that features more cussing than I can produce when I bang my head on a sharp corner; anything that features more violence than I can produce in a chili-fueled nightmare; anything that utterly lacks redemption.

Onward, then:

Squire said he felt crappy on Monday but I persuaded him to go to school, because I thought he was actually nervous that kids would tease him about his hair, which a couple kids did, and which was not that big of a deal, since we'd discussed all manner of potential insults and: whatever, he looks awesome. Tuesday they were going to see a documentary about Nicholas Winton, which he wanted to see, so even though he said he didn't feel a scrap better, he went. Wednesday morning his temp was 39.5 and so here we are, with a kid parked on the couch. He's fairly easy to take care of: he reads and generally stays covered up and tries to drink delicious tea because he is a good patient, and takes his temperature every 30 minutes that he's awake because he is my son.

So anyway, he's home for a few days, delighting me to bits and also probably getting me sick by means of being so sweetly warm and in need of forehead kisses. We burrow under blankets and watch movies. Yesterday we watched a movie in which a character evaluates a song by saying, "Well... I'm tone deaf"; Squire nearly broke his head open laughing, and then asked me quite seriously, "Wait, what's tone deaf?" which nearly broke my head open. Which is when I realized that I was not feeling a hundred percent.

If you are ever inclined to fill out an "ideal partner" form, in which you are given choices like "good looking" or "sense of humor" or "likes to dance" or whatever, I will tell you that you need to have one box checked and that box is: can take care of me when I am sick. Because I'm telling you, you can get your sense of humor ticket punched in a dozen places and your non-dancing partner is not going to mind your going out dancing with your easy-to-find dancing friends, but it's hard to find a friend who will come over and make you chicken soup or bring over a giant packet of soft tissue paper for you or stock up on spices to help you breathe again and stuff, much less one who will live with you while you are miserable and ugly. "Sense of humor", HA.

One time in Southern California I got the 'flu so bad that my mother actually flew down to take care of me and we still didn't realize I should have dumped that guy.

Anyway, my point was going to be that last night Squire was having a feverish bout of guilt that I might get sick from caring for him, and I told him that was okay because it was my duty and privilege etc to take care of him and this is parenting and it's actually fun to take care of him because he gets sick so rarely etc and that anyway if I got sick Friar would totally take care of me. Which he will. Which is something I'm not used to knowing, and so even though our relationship was pretty much cemented 5 years ago when he made me four different dishes to tempt me after a particularly nasty stomach... thing... still, it surprises and delights me to find that I am cared for, and even more so that I am becoming accustomed to being cared for.

I know: Awww.

Anyway. A bit woozy. Probably no cottage this weekend; probably movies that I'll get to pick, and possibly I'll even be read to. Sweet!