Xmas Reflections

So, another season of Christmas has just passed. I'm getting better at it. For those of you who don't remember, I was raised a Jehovah's Witness, and we never celebrated Christmas (or birthdays). So, Christmas season has always been like walking around in a foreign country to me. I don't know the words to songs, I'm not sure which decorations are appropriate (do people need frogs with Santa hats on them??), I sure as hell don't do church at that time, and present giving/receiving is difficult. The first year with El Hijo's family, I had presents all around me and up to my knees. I was overwhelmed, as stupid as that might sound, and I had a hard time enjoying myself. Last year I tried to escape from Christmas completely by running away to Acapulco. But the flights during Christmas were all gone, so I had to go the week before instead. When I got back, I still had to do Xmas, and it was miserable. I should've fled and begged for asylum at Meg's, actually, but for some reason at that time I thought she lived in Michigan. Anyhoo. I've made progress over four Christmases.

I've eased into it my way. Each year I added something new. I started out with these glass light up present boxes, which I thought were beautiful. So, I had those going, and it was my one Christmas decoration. That was also the year I began to figure out how the present thing worked and how to get my related family more than one thing without spending a fortune. Last year, I adopted the Charlie Brown Christmas music. I play it while I cook and wrap presents, and generally just drive everybody nuts. This year, I think I knocked the present thing out of the park. For one thing, I did a huge chunk of my shopping in the few days after Christmas, when a lot of things were on sale. I just horded them back. That worked out really, really well, and for the first time, it looked like we were reciprocating. I hate getting ten things when I only gave one, no matter how much the giver thinks its OK. This year I managed to generate about four things per person. And I paid cash. :) Well, I used the credit card, but I can pay it all off in one swoop. So, I rawked the gifts this year. I was even able to include people whom I normally cannot buy for, but it had been a better year for us even in spite of the recession.

Quickish story about gift giving. I had gone into Kentucky at Thanksgiving, and sure enough, it was as swampy and depressing as usual. To avoid having to see relatives I'm not close with, as Mom likes to line people up to go through the motions, I skeetered away and went to see the people back home that I'm actually close to. One of those people was my best friend from home, whom I love dearly, but we haven't spoken in a very long time. It's always been cool, and we can just pick up where we left off, but that's not how I want it to be. Anyway, she works in a daycare. My son goes there when he comes in for the summer. She has two kids, F & M, who are about eight and four now. When I went in, I hadn't seen the four year old since she was about a year and a half. Of course I didn't recognize her. I talked to my best friend for a while, and then I knelt down where M was "resting" on the mat and hugged her and talked with her quietly for a little bit. When I stood up, I asked about F. I dearly love F, even though I haven't spoken to her in the same amount of time. I have known and loved F since she was an infant. She feels like a daughter to me. I helped F read--got her these little books and sat at her kitchen table and helped her go through them when she was a kindergartener. I have secret plans to help F go through college and get the hell up out of KY. She's one of the reasons I dress up a bit when I go into KY. I want her to see what kind of life is possible outside of KY. Yes, I'm purposely constructing the context so it will seem glamorous to not be in KY. She doesn't have to know that my gorgeous leather and fur coat, for example, was an *awesome* find at the Salvation Army for $10--she and everybody else just think it looks like a million bucks. I'll tell her that secret when she's older. She was probably about 4 1/2 or 5 years old the last time I saw her. I didn't expect her to recognize me. My BF pointed her out across the room and called for her to stand up. When she did and looked my way, her eyes got really big and she said "OH!" And came running over. I figured she mistook me for somebody else. She gave me a really big hug, and I laughed and said, "You don't even remember who I am." "Yes I do!!" she said. "OK, then, who am I?" I teased her. "You're Virgil!" She whispered really loud and buried her head in my coat. Holy shit. That little girl and sister got Christmas presents this year. :D

As my one new thing to add, I made a wreath this year and put it on the door. Here's what it looked like:


D/B swung through and put a string of lights on my front balcony. It was simple, so it didn't freak me out. Next year's project I think might be a Christmas tree. Maybe. I've been giving it some thought, and I think in year five, I could potentially handle a tree. Then I got to thinking about what kind of tree, because since it's me, it can't be normal, necessarily. I think I want a tree with nothing but bird ornaments. A tree full of birds would be pretty to look at, especially since those round globe ornaments kind of freak me out for unknown reasons. So, who knows? Next year I might have a bird tree to report. I have a full year to get used to the idea.

We had Christmas day dinner with some friends and their little girl. I found out that I can both use the "good china" and make a mean spread. We had basalmic chicken (turkey seemed too stressful), garlic mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, broccoli casserole, spiced apples & squash, crab cake appetizers and I baked a red velvet cake. I made the chicken and the potatoes and the cake, they brought the crab cake and the green bean casserole, and El Hijo made the other sides. I had both wine and low test "sparkling" grape juice, because the other three are not as...high octane...as I am. It was a really good dinner. Martha Stewart should totally watch out.

Earlier that morning, we opened gifts. Here's a pic of the living room before:

And that doesn't include the stuff that you can't see in front of the entertainment center. If you look carefully, you can find the cat ass in the picture as well! I even had a few presents stuffed in the liquor cabinet (where one of the light up present boxes also is). Apparently people either love us or feel very obligated toward us. El Hijo and I bought each other about three things. That's typically what we do. The rest is from other people, mostly family. El Hijo's family is particularly generous, but they can afford to be, I guess. I got things I really wanted/needed. His parents got us a set of knives, which we really needed. I got pyjamas that I'm lounging in now. I got a few great books, including Girls from Ryadh & Jaguar Smile, which I'm super excited about. I love travel/journalism/social/political stuff. When a book combines all of that, I think it's made of win!

I'm leaving for San Francisco early tomorrow morning. I'll be back just before the New Year. San Fran is holding a national conference for all the English/Language academic types across America. It's bound to be full of material for hilarious posts!

-- DV

Might As Well Be Homeschooling Again

I had a recent conference with Dante's 5th grade teacher, and he is improving, thanks in large part to parental vigilance and reteaching at home. He still has to have behavior reports that come home every day, but that's because he has to be kept on his toes and worry that I'm going to know he's diddling around at school in order for him to stay focused. At home, I help him study for tests, I remake worksheets for him to do, and I create extra practice for him. I currently have his reading book so that I can copy the reading he has as well as a fat packet of all the upcoming vocabulary they're working on, because both of those points are his current weaker spots. At school and with everyone on his back all the time, he's a solid 'B' student. He's capable of making A's, but he has to have internal motivation kick in first, which sometimes happens. Mainly, he's at B's and C's. Which I'm OK with. Every parent wants their child to be "superior", which is what an A stands for, but most kids just can't be "superior" in every subject. That's unrealistic and unreasonable.

I think that's what I miss the most about homeschooling--the ability to throw off slaving after grades in favor of working toward understanding. Being able to cough up points on a worksheet or a test is not a true measure of whether a student understands something or not. I should know--I get roomfuls of people each semester who've been able to pass tests to get into college but can't think their way out of a paper bag. It's depressing. But because they probably got A's & B's, they think that's enough to make them "smart". One of the things they talk/write about all the time is how high school was so easy that they never had to study to make A's (seriously, in AP Physics????? not once??), and now college is kicking their soft little asses hard. When we homeschooled, it was about whether or not you "got it" rather than how you did on a worksheet.

Homeschooling failed as a choice for me & Dante for a number of reasons. I think the main reason was we simply didn't give it enough time. It takes time to figure out how to work things out as a family, how Dante learns best, how I can be comfortable with what we're doing. We didn't give it enough time, and he was miserable up here and wanted to go back to KY for a while. So, we aborted. Towards the end, before he went to KY, he was improving scholastically. When he started school there, he was reading above grade level (the first and only time that's happened--he's currently reading below grade level, which is why I have the book and the vocab sheets).

We also failed at homeschooling because of the decompression/starting in the middle problem. I don't know anybody on the net or in my life who homeschooled anywhere but from the beginning. It's different when you start in the middle--much different, especially if you have only one child. And going to kindergarten or even first grade, in my opinion, doesn't really count as starting in the "middle." Once they've had two or three or more years of public school, unless they are just abjectly miserable at school, coming home to school is a difficult transition. And the only advice people could really give me is that he needed to "decompress" from public school, one month for every year he had attended. He had finally started decompressing a bit just before he left for KY. He was beginning to work out his own schedule. On Friday mornings, pretty early, really, he would get up, bundle himself up, and drag all the library books we'd gotten the day before into the living room and there he would be, reading them one after one while I got breakfast ready. Fridays were reading and project days for us. But truthfully, we were still in transition when he left. I think we were doing better, but there were plenty of tearful days and arguments, which contributed to another reason why we failed at homeschooling.

The rest of the family was against it. I know this is true for most people, but your own core family has to be for it or it just won't work. My side of the family, Dante's father and family, and El Hijo's family were all against it, and when that happens, people are just waiting for a chance to jump on situations that prove their biases to them. It didn't work because El Hijo was also against it. I don't resent him for this. We were newly married, and he was still figuring out what being a husband and a stepdad was all about, while we were figuring out what having a husband and a stepdad was all about. I didn't expect him to co-teach, a lot of families have only one person who oversees the learning. But he wasn't really very interested in what we were doing, either. And when you start out by yourself on a homeschooling venture, there can be a lot of self-doubt. It doesn't help if the answer to all your doubts is "Maybe you should just quit, and put him back in school." He didn't know how to help us resolve disputes and he didn't know how to help me figure out what path to take. Dante also wanted to be back in school for the social elements. Even though we were busier socially and did more things with other kids when we were homeschooling than at any time that he's been in public school, his perception of "socialization" (as is most people's who don't know much about hsing) was that it equals sitting next to other children for six hours a day. Even though you get into trouble for talking and socializing with those children, it's the sitting next to them that counted to him, and that's what he wanted to do. So, trying to open up his view on those sorts of things on top of being told on all sides "This is wrong, and you should stop" probably didn't help us succeed.

What sucks to me personally is that I'm basically doing at least half the effort I was putting into homeschooling now with him in public school. I think it hit me a few days ago when I was in a craft store finishing up plans for one of El Hijo's Xmas presents. There was an atom and molecule set that you could buy--plastic styrofoam balls with rods. Dante has been doing atoms in science recently, and I picked up the box, looked at the contents and was busy thinking about how this would probably be of use in the near future in explaining chemical compounds and such. And then it hit me that it was the exact same thing I would've done if I had been in charge of his science at this point. And then I reminded myself that I was still on the hunt for a small and cheap microscope and was still making plans to rearrange his room a little bit so that he could have table space to work on. He has a natural interest in biology that I want to encourage, but now I have to figure out how to sync up with what he's going to be tested on in school, even though I really wanted to linger over the unit they were doing on plants, and so did he. We made a geography board out of a plastic placemat I found at WalMart with a map of the US on it (it's still there and it's only 99 cents, if you're interested) and a bunch of football symbols from his ESPN kids magazines. I cut out the US map and put it on a corkboard, and then we thumbtacked the football helmets with symbols on them, etc. to pieces of black string that pointed to the states they were in, in an attempt to get him to think about US geography. They're going over the American expansion westward in school right now, so I'll have to see how I can sync up the map we made with the maps that are coming home from school.

It hurts that we didn't work out, because I worked so hard to make it work. We still have the history timeline we did while he was homeschooling up on the wall in the library--El Hijo hung it there like art. It breaks my heart a little every time I look at it. We had labeled the period of time and gave it an approximate date, and then drew a corresponding picture under that. He worked particularly hard on representing the story of Gilgamesh, which we read out loud, and he liked quite a bit. He also got into the weirdness of the Egyptians, and drew a bunch of their gods and goddesses under their entry. I had figured out towards the end of it that Dante did a lot better if drawing or clay or music was involved, if he could move around a lot, and if you gave him lots of chances to be physical. We did a lot of little experiments outside. I remember we made deer ears out of construction paper to talk about sound and how they were different from human ears. Little stuff. I mean, sure there were days when he sat himself down in the hallway and squalled at the top of his lungs that he wasn't going to DO IT AT ALL; but there were also days where he piled all of his books on the couch, curled up, and did it all by himself.

I wish we could do homeschooling again. But I don't think it would work, because all those things that made it fail are still in place right now. Add that to the fact that I have to work because we don't have enough income for me not to, and you get a big, fat scheduling conflict. And I'm postitive that El Hijo is uninterested in being a co-teacher, which is well within his personal rights in our relationship--it's not like we talked about it before we got married. Well we did, but not much. So, that puts more of a burden on me to figure out how to do it by myself, to come up with the planning and the resources and to figure out how to do it during the time that I have. But what kind of pisses me off is that this is what I'm doing now anyway for public school. I'm the one who oversees 9/10ths of the homework, who does the extra planning to make sure he's up to speed, who puts down the money and investigates the outside of school activities (like art classes) to help round him out.

I might as well be homeschooling. In fact, that's my secret dream. I'd love to take another shot at it. But as much as I want to do that, I don't have the emotional resources to fight that battle all over again by myself. It's honestly the only thing I think I'll regret not having done in my life. I don't see as I have a choice. So, I guess we battle on as best we can. But there is my Christmas wish, if you will. And since it's the one thing I can't do by myself, it goes undone.

-- DV

*blush*

Note to other Professional Academic-Type People:

Just because you think the entire third floor of your building is empty because it is the week after grades were due and all the offices looked dark does not mean that it's OK to crank up the Tupac gangsta rap and bop around your office (and potentially the hallway) singing along with "Every other city we go/Every other videooooo/No matter where I go/I see the same ho-o-o-o". That might attract attention. It might attract enough attention to draw a small crowd to your door just in time to hear you rap out "I won't deny it/I'm a straight rider/You don't wanna fuck with meee-ee-ee." It probably doesn't matter that you think it's funny that an English teacher sees a metaphor between "writer" and "rider."

It will likely draw you some of that there negative attention. No one believes you when you say you're the Lyrical Gangsta, and no one will likely buy your excuse that you are tired from having done grades and are trying to catch some relief from your current work on your own professional portfolio. You can try the excuse that you are also doing research for a paper, which sometimes works, but probably won't, since they caught you dancing as well.

You will likely also not want to try to explain yourself by continuing to talk in Tupac, including saying things like "Only God can judge me now" or "the blind stares of a million pairs of eyes looking hard will never realize that they can't see THE P!!!" You could accuse them of "playa-hatin' 'cuz we be bailin' with Death Row." But that will likely make things worse. At that point, pull a Hail Mary (which is also a Tupac song) and try to explain that "Shorty wanna be a thug" is really a serious social drama that allows a unique look into the process of inner city demoralization (it so totally is). They'll be so impressed when you point out the song talks about the incoding and scripting roll the judicial system plays in jading the younger generation in a way that both startles the narrator, a jaded participant himself, and calls attention to the way in which the middle class is beginning to become absorbed into the process through culture. They'll be so impressed they'll leave.

As they're walking away, you can say, "Money over bitches" to their backs, and go back to bobbing your head, there, ragtop.

::smooths skirt::

Almost as embarassing as the time I got caught war whooping after I got hired for this job. But at that point in time, I didn't care, because it was such a punctuation mark to a few hard fought years.

-- DV, straight writer

Thanks, Yo

So, She Who Shall Remain Nameless drops by my office ever so casually to tell me that, you know that class you'll be teaching next semester? Well, those were her kids, and gosh darn it, she just couldn't bring herself to fail any of them. Even though there were a few in there who probably deserved it. Well, it's pretty much split down the room, actually. Half are pretty good, and half are pretty bad. So, you'll be getting a mixed bag next semester, {chuckle}, but you can always email her if you have questions about them.

Thanks, yo.

Never mind already that the class will take place in the dreaded "dinner hour", where they're thinking about nothing but lunch anyway and whether I'll let them out early to stuff their gourds with what passes for meals here. Now it's going to be populated with half a set of losers who have been encouraged to continue their loser ways because another teacher confirmed and coddled that behavior. They're going to have a false set of expectations that I'll have to dash now, thanks very much, which of course will be chalked up to me being the bad bitch of a teacher, and why couldn't we just have Ms. Blondey McNumbnuts again? She was so nice, never made you work hard, you could hand things in whenever you wanted to and even though you knew you'd failed the class, by golly, she just didn't have the heart to do it to you. Not like this current devil's minion, Prof Lucifer McHatesalot, who must have simmering coals in place of a beating human heart.

Nevermind also that this is the same person I ended up beating out for this job, who moved herself out of the office she was supposed to share with me (which was OK, because it was already awk-ward!), and who I ended up having to hold a meeting with about the progress/point of the project we were all on. At this same meeting, she told me with more than a little snark in her voice, "Do you expect me to teach any differently, just because these students are supposed to be different?" I bit back my initial response, which was something along the lines of "Um...yes", followed by a soapbox rant on how you probably needed to adjust the way you taught no matter what class you were teaching to meet the learning needs of the students, followed up with a commentary on why she likely didn't get the job. But instead, I just gave some basic info about the kinds of academic challenges this demographic tended to have, along with a general warning to be alert to the fact that they may have extra difficulty, and forewarned is forearmed, blah blah. Which she followed that with "Well, they're not expecting us to grade any differently, are they? I mean, they're not expecting us to be more lenient with them just because they may struggle?"

The answer, of course, was no, and I wouldn't have signed on for the job if it included that. But I'll just let the irony of her snarky meeting comments marinate deliciously side by side with what she ended up doing to me for next semester.

Class is in session, bitches. Oh, and to my "colleague"? Santa is totally leaving lumps in your stocking. I hope they're the brown, smelly kind.

-- DV

Woot.

Grades are done. This weekend is all about final Xmas shopping, conquering nations via Civilization on the computer and maybe taking a stab at climbing Mount Laundry. All paperwork has been filed for them, and next week begins the mound of paperwork to justify me to the department.

Oh, as well as listening to the cries of my enemies and the lamentations of their women, er, I mean the litany of whiny email that is likely to unfold when certain parties get hold of their grades.

-- DV

Grade Bailouts

Seems like an appropriate title. After all, adults who should have known better and done things differently are all lining up at Washington to ask for a financial bailout. It should be no surprise that the current college generation exhibits some similar traits when it comes to grades. Both are equally taxing. (Har.)

No, I will not go back and magically erase those absences you have. Yes, they could impact your grade, as per the syllabus. Failure to ignore reality is not going to earn you a bailout.

I think it's amusing that you just now noticed with your keen powers of observation that you're missing "a few" assignments, considering the ultimate semester deadline was a week ago, and those assignments were due in some cases two months ago. No, you cannot just "pop by the office and drop them off." They're not a box of doughnuts, they're grades. I'm sure everybody else in the class would've loved an extra two weeks to two freaking months to put their assignments together. They had a plan, you didn't. Pretending this is no big deal is not going to result in a bailout.

Lobbying me constantly via email and with cutsey comments is not going to make me improve your grade. I didn't fall off the turnip truck. Nor will showing up at my office at the crack of dawn improve your results--especially when you send me an email wondering why I'm not there at the crack of dawn (I was in a fucking meeting). There is a reason I said we would give them back at 1:30 in the afternoon. I don't like lobbyists. You don't get a bailout.

I'm not sure why your grade didn't "show up" via the online system that requires YOU to take the quizzes which then magically appear in the online grade book. I have nothing to do with it--it's all the wonders of the internet. If it didn't show up, that likely means YOU didn't do it. Why should you be bailed out for failure to do something?

Yes, it in fact does "suck" that you spent the whole semester putting things off until you forgot that things were actually due. We agree that you suck. But why, if there has been no change in your day to day operations, should I invest in you with a bailout? Won't you just have the same academic bankruptcy five months later?


-- DV

And in the middle of my tirade on the ones who suck this semester, in walked one of the good ones just now with a big fat Xmas present and a homemade card--candy/treats that are made in her home state and her undying gratitude for having somebody so far away from home (she lives on the West Coast). Aw.

An Ethical Grading Dilemma--Or Not

Sigh. I have a struggle. It's grading time again. (JP, Batmite!, quit your snickering.) I'm nearly done with grades. Everything has been tabulated, I just need to write out the response sheets, do all the copying for the administrati and log grades into the system. That's what I'm doing tomorrow. But I have one folder left sitting on my desk.

Normally, grades are pretty clear cut. If you've been working consistently over the semester, it's almost impossible for you not to do well, unless you screw up and shred half of your portfolio. If you've been dicking around all semester, well, you're probably going to get the dicking you deserve when grades come out, unless you've worked your hind spot off at revision. Some really crappy writers have passed this class when I thought they just didn't really have the mental capacity to go on simply because they checked all the boxes they needed to check in order to pass the class. It's not very good. But it followed the instructions. You can't fail for grammar here (and I don't think that's fair anyway), and you can't fail a person based on being a really boring writer. Nor can you fail them because they sit there and stare at you blankly with an open mouth, no matter how much you want to; because in the end, they did turn in the required number of papers with their own opinions on them/required number of research citations/the minimum number of points on the grading rubric passed to go on. Even if reading their work is like watching paint dry, that's not considered relevant. And then, some really bad writers have surprised me with the amount of work they put into their final product, and they improved their grade accordingly.

Shifty Sherry is none of the above. She is a special case unto herself.

She disappeared about halfway through the semester and would pop back in sporadically. Never heard a peep about missing work, she never asked how she could catch herself up, and she never offered any reasons as to why she was missing, either through email or by coming to my office or staying after class. When our final project came up, which is a group project, she had missed so much class that we had forgotten she was in class. So when she came back (once), I put her in with a group that was good enough to "adopt" her. She promptly missed the rest of the sessions and went incommunicado on emails, causing her partners much stress. The class when the project was due, she stayed afterward and told me she "had" to pass this class, how worried she was, blah blah blah; she actually tried to blame her partners, who'd put the project together with limited help from her, for her poor grades. Then she told me she'd missed my class (both of of the classes I teach) because she was basically having weird woman troubles. It probably didn't help her that I was having my own woman troubles that day. I know people who have severe period problems--those people go to the doctor and get excuses. She said she had no doctor's excuses for the time she'd missed in class. A few days later, she basically admitted she just didn't feel like coming to class some days, so our massive bleeding emergency got downgraded to the blahs. I have the blahs all the time and I still end up coming to class.

So, this drags on for the next few classes (we didn't have many left anyway). She managed to squeak by in U101 (although I still have to go back and make sure that's the case), and she gave me a major headache about how many absences she has. She wanted me to basically drop everything I was doing and calculate her absences posthaste to see if it would make a difference in her grade, because she "just couldn't fail." Here's the problem. I'm pretty sure that for the days she was absent, I didn't send around an attendance sheet. I know I could fail her on absences, but I have to provide documentation for it, because I know she'll challenge it. I can feel it in my skinny little bones. Her portfolio had absolutely no revision to it. I gave her an F for participation (because you have to be there to participate, and she slept through one class) and that includes the partner project which she went AWOL on. I ran the rest of the grades she had coming.

She's on the cusp of failing.

I could basically massage the grades a teensy tad and she'd fail. Or, I could leave them as they stand and pass her by the skin of the skin of her teeth.

I think I'm failing her.

A part of me feels a little guilty about that, I guess because I know I'm going back and looking at the numbers again, partly because there is an element of subjectivity to grading but partly because I'm justifying failing her, when most times it's so obvious whether a person has or hasn't. But mostly I just can't find it in me to pass her. I'm still kicking myself for forgetting those attendance sheets (or losing them), because that would make this so much simpler. And there is also the irritation factor--if you really cared about your grade, you'd have contacted me any of the other gabillion times you missed class to give me a heads up. When I gave her an email asking her to get her butt in gear and contact her partners, she didn't even bother to contact me, and she certainly didn't go on to contact them. She blew off her midsemester conference with me where we were supposed to talk about why she was failing other classes besides mine. She even rescheduled with me twice and didn't come to any of the appointments and gave no explanation. So, getting all teary-eyed now just means she's just realized the royally screwed position she put herself in. And that she thinks she can manage to pass this class because she's reasonably certain she's failing her other classes, and she "needs" this one to salvage her GPA/not go on academic probation. I've been around long enough to know how that game is played.

So, I think I'm failing her. But I'm going to have to write a good defense, because she'll definitely try to challenge it. And so I feel less like I'm doing something arbitrary. I'm not. It just feels that way because I have a personal feeling about the grading. Most of the time I have no feelings whatsoever about grading--grades are grades, and you get what you get. That's why I use rubrics so I can check boxes yes or no instead of using the "shrug and slap a B" on it method, or whatever. But yes, I have a "feeling" about this grade, and so my action needs defending.

Speaking of which, funny thing: she wants to be a lawyer.

-- DV

X-Mas LOL

From an email forward from Sister:

Christmas Story for people having a bad day

When four of Santa's elves got sick, the trainee elves did not produce toys as fast as the regular ones, and Santa began to feel the Pre-Christmas pressure.Then Mrs Claus told Santa her Mother was coming to visit, which stressed Santa even more.When he went to harness the reindeer, he found that three of them were about to give birth and two others had jumped the fence and were out, Heaven knows where.Then when he began to load the sleigh, one of the floorboards cracked, the toy bag fell to the ground and all the toys were scattered.

Frustrated, Santa went in the house for a cup of apple cider and a shot of rum. When he went to the cupboard, he discovered the elves had drank all the cider and hidden the liquor. In his frustration, he accidentally dropped the cider jug, and it broke into hundreds of little glass pieces all over the kitchen floor. He went to get the broom and found the mice had eaten all the straw off the end of the broom.Just then the doorbell rang, and irritated Santa marched to the door, yanked it open, and there stood a little angel with a great big Christmas tree.

The angel said very cheerfully, 'Merry Christmas, Santa. Isn't this a lovely day? I have a beautiful tree for you. Where would you like me to stick it?'

And so began the tradition of the little angel on top of the Christmas tree.


-- DV

Other Women's Dressers

One of the things that fascinates me about women is their dressers and what's on them. My mother in law has a vast assortment of cosmetics, jewelry and perfumes scattered and piled up everywhere. There are tubes of lipsticks with no tops, powders and blushes open everywhere. You can't see what the dresser is made out of because it is covered with product. There is nothing on there that belongs to my father in law. Which is really funny to me, because my m-i-l doesn't appear to actually wear any of that--at all. Her dresser is absolutely covered with it, but it's the opposite of her personality. It looks very high dollar and high drama, which she is very NOT any of those things. It's ludicrously contradictory.

My mother's dresser, on the other hand, is very formal and clean. She has a bottle of perfume and her jewelry box along with some artfully placed pieces of JW propaganda and a fake flower arrangement. Usually her purse is set on the dresser, a piece of furniture which is *enormous* and made out of cedar. She has a dish that holds whatever jewelry she might take off. It is very structured and very formal, just like her. Of course, this is the same woman who had a dual picture frame with my sister's picture in one side and the generic picture that comes with the frame in the other side until I pointed out what interesting relatives we must have; and then she stuck my picture in there. She kept the generic picture in "my" side for years. Her dresser makes perfect sense to me.

My dresser has a sort of his & hers side, which I haven't noticed on most dressers, with a "neutral" middle ground. El Hijo's side is usually piled up with books and magazines, which used to bother me initially, but now it seems like a regular part of the house. We also have a dry erase board where we keep our money goals and track what we need to save money for, so we don't spend it all on eating out or something else. The middle has a pitcher for flowers and a little dish with paper things in it--Derby tickets, phone numbers, a credit card so I won't use it, Dante's picture pin that I wore to basketball games (Go #5, woot). Every now and then it has spillover of a lipstick or jewelry, if I get in a rush. I have pictures on my dresser--one of me and El Hijo in front of the Biltmore House when we were newly married, and one of Dante and his little step sister when they were younger. I also have seven little Buddhas because they were cute and gathering dust among El Hijo's things. I have multiple bottles of perfume, because I love perfume. I also have a little piggy bank in the shape of a house, to remind me of what my long term financial goal is. My grandmother's sewing machine sits underneath my dresser. Me & El Hijo reupholstered the little bench seat together (with a piece of expensive fabric and a staple gun, lol), and I used to sit on it, but now it's a stand for one of my favorite pieces of art that I bought for myself over a decade ago and for a book that El Hijo bought me for our wedding anniversary.

What's on your dresser?

-- DV

Excuses I Never Want to Hear Again

Ah, that time of year when the smell of grades is in the air. It makes students realize their bacon needs to be saved, and then the excuses come forthwith. There are three in particular over the years that enrage me and do nothing to promote a student's chance of getting a better grade.

• I'm not getting anything out of this class. It's not our job to edutain you. Frankly, I could put a twelve course gourmet meal in front of you, but unless you pick up the fork and try the dishes, you're not going to get anything out of that, either. I usually only hear this when grades are close to coming out--a thinly veiled attempt at passing the blame off on the professor. Besides, a prof could be dry as dirt, but that doesn't matter--because you're not paying to be entertained. You're paying for access to someone else's expertise. If you're not getting anything out of it, that's probably because you mistook the clicker question
for a remote control (think of the thingy that audience members get to vote with on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? That's basically what a "clicker" in the classroom is.). Wake up and get your Ipod out of your ear, or the rest of the crew who do get it are going to swiftly pass you by.

• I don't see why I have to take this class. The answer lies in the statement, sweet snowflake. Seriously, the fact that you can't figure it out probably means you desperately need to take it. The thing about a liberal arts education is that it's supposed to make you a more intelligent and engaged citizen who happens to have a speciality in a particular field. If you misunderstood that a university was supposed to inform you about history, science and the context of the culture in which you find yourself, you should've probably applied to a trade school. I had this argument with my favorite former student, Drew--the boy from the summer who went through a tragedy. He was one of my hardest working students and he still came to my office, no less, to bitch about his Spring schedule. After a few rounds of this particular argument, I finally choke-slammed it by asking, "So, please explain to me why you don't want to be a better and more broadly informed person?" Honestly.

• I have to get an A in this class. I would like to stab this excuse with a rusty spoon and watch it slowly die of tetanus. Actually, what I would really like is a snazzy comeback that incorporates all of the arrogant ballsiness and responsibility-evading of the student version. Sort of the academic equivalent of "Well, I'd like a gold plated toilet seat..." or "Let's wish in one hand and shit in the other, and see which one fills up faster." I'm open to suggestions.

-- DV