Geeky Mom

We broke down. Days of cold and wet and rain and we had to do it. We also put flannel sheets on the bed. I’m nice and cozy.

A whole day without blogging! Oh my! I’d blame it on the apple pie, but I can’t. I did make apple pie on Sunday. It’s now almost gone. I use the recipe on the Pilsbury dough box. Once I made pie from the Silver Palate cookbook. Mr. Geeky hated it. And since he’s the reason I make pie, well . . .

Can I just say how much I love my students? I have a classful of them, it’s true, but I also have many others that worked for me or are working for me. I love that they come by and talk to me. We talk about everything from politics to our families to shopping. I also love that they read this blog and leave comments. I like that they add me as facebook contacts. They really make this whole job worthwhile. That was true at some other teaching jobs I’ve had as well, but I develop a different relationship with students when they work for me. We spend a pretty intense summer together. It’s kind of hard not to develop a close relationship. I have one student right now who’s been working for me for three years. She was in the very first group of summer students. She’ll be graduating this year and I’ll be very sad. I’ve had other students graduate, but I haven’t known them as long. This will be a first. When I talk to my students who work for me, I don’t really think of them as students. I think of them a coworkers or colleages. In many cases, they know more than I do about technology. Their work is exceptional and always amazes me. It’s just exhilarating to be around such bright and talented people.

I completed my first upper body workout yesterday. Boy, I’m a wimp. I did get compliments on my biceps though, so there’s that.

We still haven’t turned the heat on. It’s 64 in the house. Not bad, but they also just turned the heat on at work. Only problem. My office still has no heat. It might be warm by today, but I kind of doubt it. Guess I’ll layer up.

So, when we last left our heroine, she was attempting to corral the chaos that is her home. Can she do it? Or will the stacks of papers and books and socks(?!) self-organize into a monster of horrifying power?

So far, so good. Videos are put away (though some should just be sold). Chairs have been listed on Ebay. Board games have been put away. The biggest challenge now is pictures. My mother in law is big into pictures, formal and otherwise. Every couple of months, we receive pictures from them, and at Christmas, we usually get several framed pictures. The result is we have no less than 50 framed photos of ourselves and our kids around the house, most in the living room. This is too much! I feel like we have a little shrine going. My plan is to gather all the framed photos, decide which ones should stay in their frames and which should be put into an album and replaced. Things that will stay: good wedding picutres, newborn pics, classics and recent pics of the kids. Things that will go: random snapshots that no longer hold meaning, most of the formal pics, group wedding photos, formal pics of relatives. I plan to replace these with some of the digital photos I have lying around. One of the results of all these pictures being given to us by the inlaws is that there are more of them in the pics than of my side of the family. We need some balance. And I’m going to spread the pictures out. I don’t really want to stare at them in the living room all the time. Maybe I’ll hang some on the walls.

It’s a big project, but I think I can do it. And now, I’m off to pay the bills–yippee!

I took the kids shopping for Halloween costumes this evening. Geeky Boy is wearing the same thing as last year–grim reaper outfit. Geeky Girl, however, is going as Sydney Bristow. First, we went to the Halloween store in the mall. Geeky Girl refused to go in and stood behind a pillar while Geeky Boy and I went in, with one of us checking on Geeky Girl every couple of minutes. GG had given me instructions to find spy stuff. No luck. Witches, princesses, devils. No spys. So we went to the toy store. They had an entire collection of princess outfits, to which GG said, “Eeww, yuck, too pink and frilly.” So we went to Target. Again, no luck in the costume section. Apparently girls *only* want to dress as pink frilly princess things for Halloween. Or Divas. So we went to the toy section. There we did score a spy watch. But no spy dress-up clothes. I mean, come on, who doesn’t want to be a spy? So we went to regular clothing and decided that spies need to dress in all black. We got a black skirt, a black top and sweater. We also got a pair of black boots and black tights. And, we got sunglasses (all spies wear sunglasses).

Here’s the resulting outfit:

Meanwhile, I had hoped to buy some things for myself, but we didn’t have time, so I had to purchase a few things online–knee-high boots, a velveteen skirt, and a couple of shirts. When I unpacked my winter clothes yesterday, I realized I had whittled it down quite a bit and I whittled it down by three more sweaters that are just old and worn out. And yes, I’m continuing the girly theme.

The kids both said this was the best day they ever had, which was really funny, because they were with babysitters half the day, then I dragged them out shopping. But GB said he liked it because it wasn’t really planned. We just kind of decided to do stuff. Tomorrow we’re making apple pie though. It’s the pixies’ fault.

I’m on a girly kick. This started a few months ago, sometime over the summer. I started wearing skirts, heels and makeup. It’s really been an evolution, a sort of gradual shift.

When I was in college, I rejected all of this stuff. Because, back then, girly stuff was a marker that you accepted the status of women as inferior beings, beautiful toys for men. So I dressed all in black, no makeup, no bra. I stuck to this basic dress code in graduate school, dressing slightly better when I was teaching. When I got a corporate job, I went back to heels, skirts and makeup.

Over the years I’ve vascillated back and forth between these two extremes, finally settling for something in between. But I felt kind of blah. Just by pumping it up a notch, I feel very different. It’s odd. In college, if I wore “girly” clothes, I felt disenfranchised somehow, like I was following somebody else’s rules. Now, I feel just the opposite. It doesn’t make any logical sense, really. I do feel, though, that trends have changed. In the 80s, women entering the work force tried to dress more “manly.” Now, they don’t need to in order to be taken seriously. Certainly, there is certain clothing that is unprofessional looking (for either gender), but in general, women can wear more feminine clothes and not be harming their professional image.

I don’t really like to reinforce the idea that it’s what’s on the outside that counts, but I think you can’t discount a first impression. People do judge you based on how you look, even if they modify that judgement over time. And you know, I just like being a little bit girly. It’s fun.

Earlier this week, I made a smart playlist of songs I’d never listened to. There were 199 of them! Many of them are Christmas songs and since it’s not Christmas yet, well . . . Some of them I just don’t like and I’m ridding myself of the truly horrible ones. But here’s a list of some:

“Wishing Well” Terence Trent D’Arby
“Fuzz hill” Noodles
“Funk Exploration” Fredalba
“January 1979″ mewithoutyou
“Not The Strong” Novembers Doom
“Alone” Josh Martinez and Sleep
“Panik” Metal Urbain
“Honeymoon Blues” Robert Johnson
“Major Instruments” Seaflea
“Bookends” Simon & Garfunkel

There were two good posts from yesterday concerning the defining characteristics of the elite. The first, from Laura at 11D, tries to explain the cultural differences between the elite and the not elite (for lack of a better term). I can completely relate to her situation. We also live in a blue-collar suburb of a large metropolis. The people around me are plumbers, carpenters, insurance adjusters, real estate agents, administrative assistants, nurses, and the like. There are no “professionals”–lawyers, doctors, architects, etc. Usually, I stand out at the bus stop with the kids and their parents, but for the last two days, I haven’t. The bus stop is right in front of our house. I can watch through the window. And frankly, I’ve run out of things to say to my neighbors. The regulars are a grandmother, a firefighter, a nurse, an administrative assistant, and a part-time real estate agent. Sure, we exchange pleasantries. “Nice day.” “How was your weekend?” But, yuck. Sometimes I can’t stand that.

One of the main differences I’ve noticed between myself and my neighbors, even the ones who *are* professionals (but have working class roots) is what they have planned for kids college education vs. what I have planned. I fully expect my children to go somewhere–well, elite–you know, Harvard, Dartmouth, Duke, Swarthmore. Even when their children are quite smart and obviously could look forward to attending a great college, my neighbors talk about them going to a local university that has a bad reputation, academically speaking. We’re surrounded by schools like UPenn, Haverford, Bryn Mawr, Swarthmore, but they don’t even think of those. And forget thinking of similar schools elsewhere. I’m always a little shocked by this. Just like Laura’s aggressive stance toward her school district, I have an aggressive stance toward college admission. I know how it works, how to help my children navigate the system. This is knowledge my neighbors lack. When they did go to college (and many of them didn’t), they went to a nearby school. Most of them have lived in this general area their whole lives.

The other post, by Elizabeth at Half-Changed World, concerns the rates of SAHM’s among the poor vs. the elite. My experience in this neighborhood, probably with people mostly falling below the $75,000 mark is that there are few SAHMs. I do know one doctor’s wife a few blocks over who stays at home full time. She has five kids. In the neighborhood I moved from, where incomes were much higher, there were more SAHMs. Interestingly, among the faculty, there are a lot of male faculty with SAHMs. From an income perspective, it doesn’t make sense, but from a work load perspective, it makes absolute sense. I wonder what kinds of factors play into rates of SAHMs. Income can’t be everything.

Yay! I just found out that tickets for Iron & Wine go on sale this weekend. Death Cab for Cutie is playing next week. Why, oh why do they have to have these shows in the middle of the week? Maybe they’ll come back?

My battery in my car died a few weeks ago and we had it replaced. Unfortunately, we have one of those stereo systems with theft protection. When the power was disconnected, it went into lock mode and of course, since we bought the car used, we don’t have the code to unlock it. So I’ve been driving around for a while without any sound in the car. I have to say, it’s a little unnerving. The voice in my head is way more distracting than the radio ever was. I’ve been thinking about so many things to and from work. I’m not sure that’s good. I can’t really concentrate enough to do something about the thoughts floating around my head, but I can’t really get rid of them either.

It makes me wonder how much we try to distract ourselves from the noise in our heads. Does listening to music, watching tv, or (gasp) blogging keep us from dealing with complex thoughts and ideas? Would it be possible to go silent for an extended period and what would you do with all those thoughts?

I hate it. Going back to standard time will help temporarily, but eventually, it will always be dark at 6:30 am. And it’s cold. Of course, in anticipation of seriously high fuel bills, we are waiting until the last possible moment to turn on the heat. So far, we haven’t. The coldest it’s gotten is in the 40s, which is completely manageable with warm pjs and blankies. The kids’ rooms, being in the attic, are pretty warm anyway.

I have a kind of love-hate relationship with winter. I’m not a fan of the cold, but I do like snuggling in front of a fire with a warm cup of cider or cocoa, and I like snow. If only it could snow at 50 degrees. Some people really love the crisp, biting air. I do admit that I kind of feel more alive when my face is freezing, but I can’t take that for long. Me? I prefer the stifling heat of summer. I actually like humidity. Hey, I grew up in the south. I’m a little nostalgic for such things.

So, I’ll have to muddle through the winter, deal with getting up in the dark, and have plenty of hot cocoa on hand.