Not a Wasted Word

I got that letter written today, the one defending my program. I’m going to have my husband edit it before I show it to the other foreign language teacher in our district, and then to my principal and AP. Hopefully I’ll be sending it off to the board and superintendent later this week.

I feel better now that I wrote it. And I’m glad I went to the professional development day. I ended up running into my junior year Spanish 3 teacher, who was also at the training. It was really great to see him, and we had lunch, and it was just a really awesome way to spend an hour of my day. We had a really interesting and substantive conversation, and I walked away feeling better than I had in a long time.

I also saw some other people I know, like the Spanish teacher that just left my mom’s school last year, the woman who long-term subbed for me when I was on maternity leave with my daughter, and the French teacher at the neighboring town’s middle school (who came to watch me teach last year). It was nice to be reminded that I am a part of a kind of professional community, even if I’m alone on my own campus. Maybe if I keep going to these trainings that feeling of community will grow (there are four more sessions that I already signed up for this year and then I can go to different strands in the coming years).

I got a lot done this weekend, and it feels good to check boxes and cross things off my lists. We are headed to Legoland this weekend for our son’s birthday, which involves taking Friday and Tuesday off (Monday is already a holiday for us), so its nice to feel like I’m almost caught up before the packing and sub planning start.

My husband was out of town for part of this past week, and it was also the book fair at my daughter’s school (which I had to staff every afternoon), but all in all things went pretty well. Obviously I had backup from my parents on Saturday, which was awesome, and they also helped at the end of week with taking my son to school (I had someone cover my first class one day to take him, but my parents came up the other two mornings). My inlaws have been in Texas since August, but now that my mom is retired my parents can help so much more. We are so, so lucky to have so much grandparent support.

And yes, my parents helped a lot, but I also managed a lot, and it was not that hard to manage it all because my kids are getting bigger and it really does get easier as they get bigger. And yes, bigger kids, bigger problems, but also significantly reduced day-to-day exhaustion. I wonder why the parents of bigger kids are so reticent to admit that it does get easier, they always seem to pull that big-kids-big-problems card, and while I understand where they are coming from, it doesn’t seem to tell the whole story and I wish they’d just admit that it does get easier.

So here I am admitting it: In my opinion it is much easier to parent an 8yo and an almost-5yo than it was to parent a 5yo and an almost 2yo. Way, way easier. I think it would have helped me get through those harder years if someone would have just said, oh yeah, that first bit is really shit but I promise, it gets better. Why did no one say that? I swear I was desperate for someone to say that to me and no one ever did. And I’ve had conversations with other parents who wholeheartedly agree and are also enjoying parenting a lot more now that their kids are older.

Maybe I’m just in that sweet spot, and in 3 years, when my daughter is a tween, I will think it sucks again. All I know is that right now, the days don’t feel as overwhelming, even when I’m parenting alone for a little while.

Which is good because everything else in the world feels overwhelming right now.

Speaking of overwhelming, I would like to overwhelming recommend you read Rebecca Solnit’s new book Call Them by Their True Names. I think you should read anything by Rebecca Solnit that you can get your hands on, but this new collection of essays is truly remarkable, and so, so necessary right now.

I’m at a professional training today. I signed up, and paid for it myself. I’ll get no credit for it, and while I’m attempting to get out of a few 1.5 hour professional development meetings at my school with this, it’s just me doing it because I know there is always more to learn to become a better teacher.

But being here, I’m faced with my professional self-perception, which has taken quite a beating in the past few years, and which isn’t very positive right now. I have a lot feelings about myself as a foreign language teacher, and most of them are negative.

It sucks to feel like you aren’t very good at what you do.

I don’t know. I’m in a dark hole this week. I know a lot of us are. Maybe I feel so shitty about myself professionally because there are so many people in this country trying to make me feel shitty about myself personally, just for being a woman. It’s hard to build yourself up when everywhere around you people are tearing you down.

I’m having a hard time writing the letter to the school board and superintendent defending my program. I just can’t seem to find the words, and the deeper I dig the more I question myself and my choices.

It’s just a hard place to be. I know I’ll get out of it. And who knows, maybe being here will help me get out of it. I hope it does. I need to feel positively about something right now, and my job would be a good place to get started.

Seriously, how many times have I titled a post Blerg? So. Many. Times.

Things continue to feel really hard, but I know they aren’t actually really hard and it seems silly to come here and talk about how they are, so I don’t write anything and long stretched appear between posts.

My husband is similarly struggling. We are both tired and we have no energy or time to connect.

My son has had such a hard transition to TK. We’ve had so many conversations and meetings with his teacher. This week he’s doing better, after the installation of a “star” chart, but I worry he hates school and will always hate school. As someone who always had a pretty decent relationship with school, I hate thinking that my kid might be miserable throughout his academic life.

I know it’s just TK and it will probably get better, but he always complained about the “academic” components of his preschool too. He HATED circle time. He HATED art (when they practiced their fine motor skills with drawing and cutting). Now he hates most of his day, and wails when he’s told it’s still not the weekend.

He has made friends, and does talk fondly about school (aka recess) sometimes, so I don’t think the program, or teacher, are a bad fit. I just think he doesn’t really love doing the school thing. I hope that isn’t always the case.

Meanwhile he’s developing in leaps and bounds. He started listening to all the Ivy and Bean books (a return to a household favorite) over and over again, and runs into my room when something interesting happens to tell me about it (again). He definitely still misses subtleties in the story telling, but his comprehension of longer books has grown substantially. He is also really into music and dancing, and spends week compiling the perfect mix on our spotify accounts, then listens to it constantly (never mind that all the songs are from Transformer and Ninjago soundtracks, plus the new Teen Titans Movie).

He lost his first tooth today. I am so not ready for my baby to be losing teeth.

My daughter is rocking 3rd grade. She hit level L in reading in Kindergarten and then basically stayed there for the next two years, so this year I’m enforcing a 30 minutes reading requirement every afternoon, and she has to read a novel (she loves big non-fiction books with lots of pictures and while she does read some (maybe even a lot) of the text, she is not developing the stamina necessary to succeed in upper elementary school). At first I was getting a lot of resistance to this requirement but now she is loving the reading time. She still gives me a shit when it’s time to read a Spanish book (she has to switch between English and Spanish) but even that is mellowing out. She has a lot less written homework this year, which REALLY helps. Thank you 3rd grade teacher!

We started classes at a martial arts dojo this too. We’d heard such good things about it from a few different sources, but I wanted to wait until after our summer traveling to start. The classes are great, and I know my kids need this experience with things being hard but persevering and then eventually achieving a goal. They could also use the body awareness, quite frankly. It’s hard for them, so they don’t LOVE it yet, but they are always willing to go so that’s liking it enough for me.

My favorite part is the respect and consideration that is expected to be shown to teachers and peers. They need to respond with Yes Sir! and Yes Ma’am! to their teachers (or a student helper), and to look them in the eye and respond when they are spoken too. These expectations are held gently, but also firmly and consistently and I am almost relieved that someone is doing what I’ve lacked the consistency to do myself. I take mental notes while I watch their classes and am using some of the phrasings at home now. I hope that over time what they learn at the dojo will find its way into our house.

I might start taking classes their myself, though I don’t think we can really afford it.

Side note: I really do not know how people have their kids in multiple extracurricular activities at once – both logistically and also financially. I have always felt like my kids did less than their friends (they do), but honestly, I can’t handle more than one thing at a time. We always stop swimming lessons when we travel in the summer and usually don’t start them again until the new year. With martial arts classes I don’t know if we’ll start them again at all. And every time I get an email about Girl Scouts I try to convince my kid to quit (yes, I know, I’m a monster). So far it hasn’t worked yet.

But seriously, how do people afford all these activities, and how do they get their kids to them (and then home and fed and into bed at a decent hour) without going crazy (or bankrupt)?!

So there you go. I wrote a post. Happy Friday!

I’m still really struggling with the start of the school year, and I’m not pleased with the ways I’m managing the overwhelm. I need to develop new coping mechanisms for when I’m very stressed out, because I don’t feel like my current methods are effective, or sustainable.

This weekend a friend prompted us to take a hike with our girls, instead of having a play date at her house. We ended up walking to a beach I’ve never been to. It was a beautiful day (there haven’t been many of them in the city this summer), and the views were breath taking. It was so nice to remember that this is where I live, and maybe it’s even worth all the bullshit.

I think I need to add walks on the beach to my list of coping mechanisms. It is totally doable, because this is where I live.

We are now the owners of a bright blue Bolt EV. It had 3 miles on it when we bought it. It had never even been for a test drive.

It’s a really nice car. I’ve never owned a really nice car. And in the eight years since we last bought a (three year old at the time) car, A LOT has changed. Also, a lot of things were broken in our old car and we never fixed them. Did I mention we’ve been putting a portable speaker on our dashboard to listen to music from our phones for three years now?!

Now I plug my phone into the car and it shows up on a big screen. If I want to make a call it will take me through all the steps, orally, so I don’t have to look at the screen. When someone calls me I can answer it without looking at my phone, or even moving my hands. It’s amazing.

When I back up I can see how close I am to the other car via a camera. I almost never look at that because it’s HARD to back up while your body is facing forward. I haven’t managed to do it yet — my body just instinctively turns to right — but it is cool for when I’m parking really close to another car and I don’t want to hit it.

Speaking of parking, it’s so much shorter than our sedan. I can fit it in so many tiny spaces.

And yet inside it’s surprisingly spacious. I think part of it is that there is just less stuff taking up space (the engine is super small, there is no gas tank, etc), and also the space is utilized really well. It’s kind of like a tiny house car in a way. We’ll see if there are moments when it really feels like there isn’t enough passenger or cargo space.

It has a regenerative braking mode and when you are in it, the car starts stopping as soon as you take your foot all the way off the pedal. It took me a little while to get used to it, but now I LOVE it because I can basically drive without ever moving my foot to the brake pedal. I also get great range in that mode because I’m producing energy anytime I lift my foot even slightly off the pedal.

So far I use about 40 miles worth of charge a day, even though I drive a little more than that. Obviously the high speeds of the freeway burn through a lot of energy, but driving around in the regen mode I get great “mileage.”

We sit higher in this car than the sedan, which I like.

We have a month of free Sirius.XM radio, which I hate, except now I found a 90’s pop station and I hate it a little less. We’re definitely going to cancel that subscription when we need to start paying.

We have three free months of On.Star, but we’ll be cancelling that as well.

It’s weird just pressing a button to turn on the car. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve reached for the key when it’s time to turn it off. And I swear the shifter only moves in the ways it does to give you the semblance of shifting, they could have just as easily put buttons somewhere to move from P to D to R.

Also, it’s a hatch back so you don’t have to pull the trunk door level like in my old car. I’ve honestly reached down for that more than I’ve grasped for a key that isn’t there.

When you do put it in park, it stays absolutely still. No rocking back and forth gently. That still weirds me out.

It doesn’t use gas so I don’t need to change the oil (it has no oil!), or get a SMOG check. And of course, I never have to get actual gas either. I am so excited about all of these things.

It gets around 250 miles on a charge. So far I’ve been able to charge it to full at night (starting at 11pm when rates go down) without the level 2 charger, but we are still getting one put in. The electrician came today and said it should be fine, despite our crappy electrical infrastructure and small main panel, as long as we charge it at night when we aren’t using electricity elsewhere. I don’t think I’ll use the level 2 charger all the time, but it will be nice if there is ever a night I forget to plug it in, or when we come back from a longer trip and we need to go from zero to full more quickly. It also is super charge compatible (that was an extra $1K) so we can get about 150 miles in 30 minutes on the road (at a super charge station). Living in California we have more infrastructure for electric cars than most states, especially in the Bay Area.

All told, it cost about $41,000; $35,600 for the LT model with the secure driver package ($550 for the backup camera which my husband really wanted), the super charger  port ($1,000) and the color ($400), plus taxes (almost 9% here) and a $2500, 5 year/100,000 mile warranty (that was $4000 off sticker, plus an educators discount (nice!) and a little more off because our credit union works with this dealership a lot). We’ll get $7500 back from the feds and $2500 back from the state, so it will be $31,000 + some interest when all is said and done. We put down $10,000 and got a three year loan (at 2.26%) from our credit union for the rest, but we expect to pay it off in two years. I haven’t calculated exactly how much we’ll be paying in interest, but it’s not that bad. (I’m including all this in case anyone is interested and wants an idea of real cost.)

We will save $2,500 a year on not buying gas, but also spend more in electricity (not sure how this will look yet). Also our insurance went up A LOT ($800 a year), as this car is worth 10 times what our other car was worth at the time of the switch, but it would have gone up no matter what kind of newer car we bought. Still, we’re paying as much in car insurance now (about $2,000 a year) we were before we switched to State Farm from AAA (when we had an older car), so it’s not that bad.

Do I wish my old car had been worth keeping for another 2-4 more years? Absolutely. Am I excited (and totally nervous!) to have a brand new (for the first time in my life) electric car? F*ck yeah. Mostly I’m excited to not be using gas. I’ve driven a 45 mile commute 180 days a year for 14 years, plus all the driving I do around the city and the suburb where I work. I feel a lot of guilt about that. Yes, I’m still a single driver in a car on the road, but at least I’m not burning gas to get around. When we get solar panels I’ll feel really good about things.

So yeah, that’s our new car.

I wonder if it will ever feel natural for me to watch a movie like Lady Bird (so amazing, I highly recommend it) and relate more to the mom than the daughter (or to relate to both equally). For my whole life I was the latter, but now I recognize myself in the former, and it’s so disorienting.

I didn’t see my own parents as actual people, with faults and backstories, until I was a sophomore in college. Will it take my daughter that long?

My mother lost her own mother at the age of seven and I wonder how she watches a movie like Lady Bird. How did she have any idea how to mother when she never had one herself?’ Her father was a schizophrenic alcoholic so she wasn’t learning anything helpful there…

It’s hard. To be both. It’s complicated. We are always all parts of ourself, even if we know others don’t see us multifaceted beings.

I watch a movie like Lady Bird and I see all the ways I am not the parent I want to be, all the ways my humanity assures I will fall short.

So humbling.

Coherent thoughts are not my strong suit right now. Let’s hope I can focus on one topic at a time enough to get through some bullet points.

– My 20 year high school reunion was fun. It felt rushed and was over before I got to talk to everybody in a meaningful way, but it was good time. It made me happy to see people that meant a lot to me a long time ago, but I was also reminded that we don’t have a lot to talk about after so many years apart. I’m definitely glad I went, but it felt like a little of a let down.

– I’m having a really hard time getting my engine back on the PTA track, and without me leading the way, the rest of the train isn’t going anywhere. We ended up losing four people that were either on the board or helped a lot last year, and I doubt we’ll find the manpower to replace them, so we’ll definitely have to cut back on our projects this year. We also lost our main point person at the actual school, and they didn’t hire anyone to replace her, because of a big community-oriented program that is being put into place via a massive grant. So despite having the same administrators for the first time in our four years at the school, it’s still a pretty big transition year, at least as far as the PTA is concerned. I’m having a really hard time getting motivated, but hopefully once I get started it will be easier to keep going.

– It’s been a hard week of returning to our old routines (my daughter and me) and adjusting to new routines (my son) these past weeks, and it really didn’t help that my daughter got a gnarly cold last week, but we eventually made it through. My daughter seems really happy in 3rd grade, and I’m really pleased I was able to get her class changed (I was NOT impressed with the teacher she was originally assigned). My son’s teacher is great and his class is incredibly diverse, which makes me happy, but his after school program has not impressed me at all. What sucks the most is that I have my prep during 6th period, so I could leave work early to avoid him spending too much time there, but then I’ll get behind at work. I hope they eventually get their act together so I don’t feel so guilty about him spending time there (it’s just chaotic, and I never see them doing an activity or even playing, they always seem to  be sitting and waiting (for what I don’t know), despite me showing up at varying times throughout the afternoon).

– The afternoons with the kids, after work, are really wearing me down. They are tired and hungry and grumpy. I am tired and hungry and grumpy. I am requiring 30 minutes of sustained reading from my daughter and she struggles to sit down and stay focused. My son is all over the place. We also pushed up bedtime because they are both so exhausted, and it’s hard to be ready to really start bedtime by 7pm, and that is with us getting home by 4:30 or 5pm most days. I don’t know how families that don’t get home until after 6pm do it.

– It’s nice to have my classroom back. I think I’m already taking it for granted, and I’m trying hard to really savor how amazing it is to just stay where I am during the 3 minute passing periods, and to leave some stuff on the table at the end of the day.

– It’s still really hard to commute to the other campus. This year I drive during my lunch and then eat after all my classes at 2:15. It’s hard to make it that long without a real meal, but I’m learning to make my 10:30 snack last.

– I’m not sleeping great these days. I either can’t fall sleep for hours and becoming increasingly agitated as I toss and turn, or I take a sleep aid, fall right to sleep and wake up at 4am. Either way I’m lucky to get 5 hours of sleep and it’s starting to get to me. I hope after the car stuff is behind us and I’m back into the school year routine I’ll start getting better rest. (I’m finishing this post finally thanks to insomnia.)

– We may pick up the car this weekend. The color I really wanted (orange) wasn’t available in Northern California, but we got our second choice (blue). The size of this purchase continues to stress me out, especially as I factor in sales tax and fees (and installing the level 2 charger in or garage, which I’m still not sure our shitty electrical infrastructure can handle). Having said that, the prospect of never filling my car with gas again (or getting my oil changed or a SMOG check again) makes me positively giddy. I really hope we love this car.

– Yay for a three day weekend! We all need it around here.

We decided to retire our Honda Accord and get a new car, and while we’re leaning heavily towards a 2018 Che.vy Bo.lt EV, we’re not decided.

I never did get another estimate for the work, but I absolutely trust my mechanic (I’ve been bringing my cars there since I was 18) and know he’s giving it to me straight. I think if I hadn’t gotten behind on the 150K maintenance and replacing the windshield, and had already put that $1.5K into the car, we would be replacing the axles, struts and tires. But I did get behind, so now, all together, it would cost at least $4K to do all the necessary work to keep it running safely, and the fact that no one can tell me how or why our front axles got bent (meaning maybe it’s a defect and could happen again), we think starting fresh is the best option. Also, we don’t have a way to connect our phones to this car anymore (we’ve been using a portable speaker to play music for YEARS), and some other stuff is broken (the inside ceiling and dashboard lights are out, the key fobs only work intermittently) which were simply annoying before, but now make getting another car that much more enticing.

Still, spending that much on a car is freaking me out. The only thing that makes me seriously consider it is not paying for gas again. I spend $50+ a week on gas, and that is if I don’t go down to my parents’ on the weekend or have any other random driving to do. So we’d be saving AT LEAST $200 a month on gas, more if the prices go back up in the $4-4.50/g range (which they do frequently here). So we are looking at around $2500 a year in gas savings. That is nothing to sneeze at. And California offers a $2500 tax rebate on top of the $7500 federal rebate, so that is helpful. And yes, we will be paying for the electricity to charge the car, but I’ve been wanting solar panels for so long now, hopefully we can get them soon (and people I know who have EVs have said they didn’t notice major changes in their energy bills).

We’re test driving a Chevy Bolt this weekend and we’ll see if we like it. It’s REALLY small, much smaller than my sedan, and I worry about its cargo space since it’s our only car. But I absolutely want to make it work, because while hybrids are great, they don’t save THAT much gas if you’re primarily driving on the freeway (41m/g vs our Accord’s 32m/g). And my work doesn’t have charging stations (or even a way to run a cord out to the parking lot) so I can’t drive something like the Prius Prime without burning fuel on the way home (they can go 30 miles on a charge and my work is 25 miles away). California also has other incentives for driving an EV, which helps.

In the end, an electric car is so much better for the earth, and I’ve done so much damage commuting alone 50 miles a day, 200 days a year, for 15 years (I shutter to write all that out). If we can afford an EV, it really feels like we should get one.

We still have so much work to do to make getting a new car happen – and a lot of decisions to make, the most important being how we’ll finance this fantastically expensive endeavor. We could produce all the cash, but we’d be decimating our emergency fund, plus taking money from some other accounts we’d rather not tough. I’d rather find a 0% APR for 48 months deal and pay it off with the money we’re saving now that our son’s not in daycare. Also, our credit union offers a 1% APR loan for new cars, so we could do that. It will probably end up being some combination of cash and financing. We also have to figure out what to do with the old car. I can’t imagine we can sell a car that’s blue book value is the same as how much work has to be done to it. Perhaps we’ll donate it to a good cause (that is what I did with my last car). Any suggestions?

I still can’t believe we are doing this. I absolutely thought our Honda had another 4 years left – I was planning to drive it for 250K miles! I feel like a deer caught in the headlights with all of this, but I’m so thankful it happened now that we have a more cash available each month. It could have been much worse.

I am a mess right now. This week is absolutely kicking my ass.

I come here to write, but I can barely keep my thoughts together in my head, let alone corral them into a post. I just can’t do it right now.

I am so incredibly distracted. Today I walked to my car with my bag, realized I didn’t have my keys, left my bag next to my car (on the sidewalk, near the passenger side), walked back to my classroom and got my keys, walked back down to my car, got in on the driver’s side and drove away. It wasn’t until I wanted water that I realized my bag wasn’t there. I was almost on the freeway. Luckily the bag (with my work computer) was still there when I got back. I “only” lost 30 minutes on that epic brain fart, but it could have been so, so much worse.

I can’t believe it’s only Thursday. The week has been so, so long. I cannot wait for tomorrow afternoon, but I also know the weekend will be way too short.

I can’t remember if the beginning of the year always feels this awful, but I’m really, really struggling. Things should be great. I have my classroom back! My son isn’t in preschool anymore! Both my kids are asleep by 8:30 every night because they are exhausted! But I’m in this horrible head space that I can’t shake. It’s a vague feeling of dread; I can’t even determine where it’s coming from.

I keep telling myself that it’s just the beginning of the school year and it will get better. I don’t actually know if that’s the case, but I’m faking it until I need to reassess.

Sorry this post provides no updates on things I’ve written about lately (*cough* car situation *cough*). I hope to post something on that stuff soon.