A bushel of lemons or a pound of flesh?

Tonight marked yet another negotiations session with the district. But as I write that phrase, it seems an ill fit to what actually happened at the table tonight. Negotiations implies a certain give and take, a back and forth, a collaborative effort to reach agreement. Maybe what it actually was could be labeled instead as formalized begging. In my mind, it sounds a little more like this:

ASSOCIATION: "Oh District, we know there are still two grains of rice in our humble beggar's bowl. Yet we know too that you have little rice to spare. We will  give you one and a half of these grains back to feed the whole, but please, oh merciful District, leave us but a mere half a grain to sustain our families."

DISTRICT: "Oh, pitiful beggar. We absolutely appreciate the thoughtfulness of your offer and the movement you have shone over the past two months. You started by asking us to add four grains of rice to your earthenware bowl, and have now come to us offering up what you already have. Unfortunately, we do not believe that your offer is enough. We will come back on Thursday, probably to ask you to give up the other half a grain. And we hope you will agree."

This assessment, too, is not quite fair. I have seen a collaborative spirit emerge in the past week with several members of the district's negotiations team. There has been a great deal of discussion of the finer points of the contract, a sharing of numbers, a general understanding that in order to salvage the education of our students and the livelihood of the district's teachers we must work together. And maybe it is this collaborative effort behind the scenes that I have been privy to that makes tonight's meeting all the more difficult. Because I know there are those sitting across the table from me who see our sacrifices, understand our reasoning and logic, and genuinely want to do what is best for our students and staff members.

The teacher's association is trying to be reasonable. We have agreed to taking lesser insurance plans. We have agreed to not get full step increases for next year. We have agreed to provide members with a small incentive to opt out of insurance coverage to save the district massive quantities of money. And we even agreed to give back nearly $30,000 to the district next year if there are unused tuition monies so we can try to save the jobs of teachers, this after we reached agreement on this point with the district earlier in the negotiations process.

And while we are working feverishly to come up with a financial bottom line that we all can live with, we have to defend our reasons for wanting a percentage stake in insurance premiums (a cost that we currently share with the district, the employees paying 7.5% of the monthly premium, the district paying the rest). Really? We can volunteer to take a lesser plan and keep everyone's costs under control, even save the district money at the cost of higher deductibles and co-pays, and you have the gall to ask us if we won't consider a dollar cap? Or an even cheaper insurance option? What more do you need from us? An arm? A leg?

I get the fact that the economy is not rosy, and that there is little hope that the state will find even a little bit of sugar to sweeten the bitter drink that education is being force-fed, but how much more can teachers take when they have given so much already? The district has painted a picture of the association on their website as being unwilling to move from their previous financial packages (this because we decided to wait on a more detailed budget analysis before we came back with a response--we wish to be reasonable, after all). And now, now that we have given up so much, and done so to save jobs, salvage benefits, and keep our students in school, we have...what, exactly?

No agreement, that's what.

Does Hallmark make a "Thanks, but No Thanks Card?" I imagine it might sound a little like this:

"We appreciate your efforts,

and what you say you'll share.

We recognize your compromises

And see clearly you care.

But when the rubber meets the road,

After all you say and do,

We can only disagree

And yell a big "Screw You!"

Again, this is harsh (maybe).  But after four months of this, it's hard to not be cynical, to see the glass as half-full. Full of what--lemonade or flesh--remains to be seen.

Food Paralysis

I've never been afraid of food. As a little girl, I was every mother's dream (my mom, however, may  beg to differ) and ate most everything you put on my plate. Fruits. Veggies. Meat. You name it, I probably ate it. At least, that's what I remember.

Granted, there are some foods that to this day turn my stomach. Like butterscotch. Talk about vomit reconstituted. And while I love the taste of shrimp, the tails kind of give me the willies, so much so that I will leave half the meat untouched just to make sure my lips NEVER get anywhere near that tail. And then there was that period in high school when I gave up on eating the sandwiches that my father invariably packed for my lunch. It really only took one deviled ham sandwich topped with an over-sized dose of mustard to really put me off my feed, permanently. So, rather than tell him that the thought of eating another of his sandwiches was akin in disemboweling myself, I simply hid the brown paper bags in the trunk of my car until I had opportunity to dump them in the garbage cans on trash day. Some days, this meant that I went without lunch, or took my babysitting money to go out with friends. Eventually, the bags of rotting sandwiches were discovered, and I had a lot of explaining to do. And a lot of garbage to get rid of.


Outside of butterscotch, shrimp tails, and deviled ham and mustard sandwiches, I was game for just about any food you put in front of me. In some homes, parents had rules about cleaning your plate at dinnertime, and if it was a rule for me, I honestly don't remember it (probably because I usually ate it all without complaint). I was a growing, active girl.

Unfortunately, it might have been this same "eat what you are served" philosophy that landed me in weight trouble. Sure, very few of us reach our early 30s still weighing what we did in high school. But for me, a former varsity athlete, the change was drastic. In the final days of my pregnancy with my daughter, I tipped the scales with 110 more pounds than I carried my senior year of high school, just 11 years before. I'm not proud of this fact, especially considering that most of that weight was gained in just six short years. And, certainly, measuring one's weight when in the final two weeks of pregnancy is never a good measure of one's overall health. But one year after her birth,  I still was lugging around 70 pounds more than I had in high school, and that fact was sobering, depressing, frustrating, and embarrassing. I have to say, typing out these numbers for the whole world (or, more accurately, my online friends) to see is incredibly difficult. We Americans tend to view weight as that dirty little secret that we only let out into the light of day when on the way to Weight Watcher's meetings. And sometimes, not even then. 

When my daughter finished nursing at just over a year, I decided it was time for a change. For me and for her. I needed to begin to take my health seriously. My blood pressure wasn't getting any better, and I really didn't like seeing who looked back at me in the mirror every morning. Plus, I didn't want to be one of those moms who inadvertently set a bad example for their daughters. I was already making the healthiest choices I could for my daughter (breastfeeding her and making her baby food myself) because I wanted her to grow up healthy. But I wasn't making those choices for myself (nothing like eating take-out from McDonalds while feeding your baby homemade organic green bean puree). And I wanted to be a woman who was healthy, okay with her weight and body--something that is all too rare these days, it seems.

So, on October 26, 2009, I joined Weight Watchers. And began my own personal food revolution. What, exactly, did this "revolution" entail?

• I joined a "Vote for Real Food" group on Facebook, started by one of my favorite colleagues, and began engaging in an ongoing discussion about food. 
• I watched Food, Inc., an unsettling documentary about the industrialized food system here in America (Did you know that the chicken you buy at the store, in addition to being pumped full of hormones, grown without ever seeing the light of day, and genetically engineered to so breast-heavy that they cannot move around freely, is washed in ammonia to kill bacteria?) Can you please pass the Windex? 
• I read two of Michael Pollan's books (In Defense of Food and The Omnivore's Dilemma), both of which is highly recommend to anyone serious about learning about the food they eat and why a change is necessary.
• I was a religious follower of Jaime Oliver's Food Revolution on ABC this spring.  
• I gave up soda pop and margarine. 
• I vowed to buy organic/local products whenever the option was presented.  Even Linda, one of the checkers at my neighborhood Safeway, knows to ask me when I check out whether each bag of produce I am buying is organic or not (I think she kind of secretly dreads when I show up in her lane on Sunday nights).
• I began frequenting the Portland Farmers Market (and am counting down the days--six, to be precise--until the Scappoose Farmers Market opens).
• I started shopping mostly the perimeter of the grocery store.  
• I rediscovered my love of cooking (not just re-heating pre-processed foods).
• I paid into a community shared argiculture (CSA). The half a farm share we purchased through Dart Creek Farm in Yankton, OR provides us with a box of fresh produce every two weeks, grown locally. 
• I'm committed to putting in a garden this summer (granted, it is off to a slow start as our yard is still majorly under construction, but I can still hope and dream).

And while I knew that the changes I had made in my life were drastic (I have now lost 48 pounds since the end of October and am within 7 pounds of my ultimate goal weight), it hadn't really struck me how far I had come on this journey until last Sunday night. My daughter was home in bed, my husband listening to the monitor while completing reading for his master's class. I hadn't had a chance to get the weekly grocery shopping done (thanks to a temper tantrum--not mine, but by the end, almost--in Wal-Mart over an over-sized inflatable ball). But now that the little fit-thrower was successfully down for the count, I took the chance to grocery shop in peace and quiet (this, my friends, is better than a day at the spa).

In the mood to stretch out my shopping adventure, I decided to head into Scappoose and the local Fred Meyer. In the past, their produce section, especially organics, seemed to put the piddly assortment at Safeway to shame. Add that to the rather large section of health food, tofurkey, and other vegan offerings, I was prepared for an organic, whole-food orgy.

But what I experienced when I walked in the doors was not the nirvana that I had hoped for. Instead, I was faced with a display nearly 35 feet long full of apples. Red delicious, Fuji, Granny Smith, Jonagold. Perfectly polished, stacked deep. The bounty of America was laid before me, washed, waxed, and ready to be consumed.

And I had to force myself not to run from screaming out the doors away from this nutritional "wonderland."

It took me a minute to realize why I was reacting so strongly to the sight of these apples. Maybe for a less-informed consumer, this apple-rific vision sends all the right messages to the incoming shopper--about the bounty that nature has provided to us, a reminder to us all about the importance of eating our fruits and vegetables, a "whole food" taking over the coveted entry access spot that could have been filled with boxes of fake cheese crackers (i.e. corn with a side of corn). But to me, it felt like these apples were not just passive participants waiting patiently for some hapless consumer to pick them up and feel good about their healthy purchase. Instead, these apples were relentless demons, genetically altered to be sweeter but considerably less nutritious than those grown in the United States just 50 years ago, grown with so many chemicals as to prove seriously dangerous to those of us who eat them:

More than half of the 610,000 children ex-posed to an unsafe dose of OP insecticides each day, get that dose by eating an apple, apple sauce or apple juice (Table 2). A child is just as likely to eat an apple with 9 pesticides on it, as he or she is to eat one with none. The aver-age one year old gets an unsafe dose of OPs 2 per-cent of the time he or she eats just three bites of an apple sold in the United States. Some apples are so toxic that just one bite can deliver an unsafe dose of OPs to a child under five.

My reaction to the apples was merely a precursor to my dissonance with the rest of my shopping trip.  I was horrified with the lack of fruit choices in the organic food department, and left the two shriveled mangos on the shelf, opting instead for one chemical- and guilt-laden one.

As I struggled to pick out two gallons of organic milk--one for my husband and me and one for Lilly--I got hung up reading the labels. I wondered, really, if the cows that produced this organic milk ever got to spend time outside, or if they were simply given organic corn feed (a substance that cows were NEVER designed to ingest in the first place, but which we in industrialized society feed them because it 1) makes them fat quickly and 2) is cheap, dirt cheap. And it's not until later this summer that the USDA is changing its regulations about organic milk to reflect that the cows that produce it must get at least 30% of their food from pasture). I wondered about whether "ultra-pasterized" milk means that all that is good and whole and valuable about drinking milk has been stripped away. I wondered how vitamin A and D are added to "organic" milk without anyone making a fuss.

My paralysis didn't stop there. I completely avoided the butcher counter altogether (thanks to Food, Inc., I now have a freezer of home-grown beef, three broiler chickens on order from Dart Creek Farm, and a pig being raised by my in-laws for slaughter this fall).

I struggled to buy eggs. I usually buy eggs from Dee Creek Farms out of Woodland, WA because they are pastured chickens and the eggs are divine (rich orange yolks that stand up proud in the pan and cook up like no eggs I have ever seen). But I hadn't been able to run into the Portland Farmers Market in a couple of weeks and had used my last egg that morning making breakfast, so I was forced to choose between organic eggs, cage-free eggs, and free-roaming eggs. I knew that the truth was that all of these birds still lead miserable existences inside cramped henhouses where they chose not to venture out of doors--who would, really, when the stream of unending food is conveniently placed right under your beak? After five minutes, I picked out a dozen eggs, feeling like I had sold a portion of my soul to the industrialized devil.

I won't bore you with my indecision about pasta, canned black beans, and whole wheat sandwich bread. But I will tell you that I felt utterly defeated and not the least bit hungry when I left the store with groceries that I was loathe to put on my table.

I know to some of you this whole rant about food may sound snooty. I would have thought so just a few short months ago. But now, knowing what I do, I question my food. Most every bit of it. And as a result, even more of my time is taken up with the act of providing food for my family, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I make breakfast every morning, and it consists of one of the following four basic meals: scrambled eggs with wheat toast, old fashioned oatmeal with raisins and brown sugar, homemade banana waffles topped with slices of the same fruit, or pancakes from scratch with some fruit topping. Add a side of fruit and a glass of organic milk, and you have breakfast in the Arnold household. I pack a lunch for myself and Lilly (Corey's a big boy and can make his own lunch if he so desires). There are not fruit snacks or pudding cups to be found--instead, we find organic yogurt, fresh or steamed veggies, fresh fruit, and a sandwich or leftovers. And don't even get me started on dinners.  Check out my notes on Facebook if you really want more details about what we're eating at suppertime and try them for yourself. The meals are much more satisfying (and healthy) than anything you can buy in a box, bag, or microwave-ready carton.

By no means does all this mean that we are "above" getting a pizza now and then, or going out to eat. But I always have a little nugget of guilt left over after such a splurge. It's hard for me to be ignorant of the food I eat anymore. When I am forced to be ignorant, I can't help but feel that I have somehow voted in favor of all those things I don't approve of--like factory farms, feedlots, and chemical pesticides. That makes those ultra-sweet Fuji apples that much harder to swallow.

Michael Pollan writes in his book In Defense of Food that the rules we need to choose the right food are really quite simple: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." How sad is it that even trying to follow these easy but basic rules leaves me sick to my stomach when shopping--for food--on a Sunday night?

Something has to change in this country. For our health, for our environment, and for our increasingly obese children. So, do you want another portion of chemically-laced, uber-processed, hormone-injected MEAL-ON-A-STICK (if so, it's on sale in nearly any aisle of your local supermarket)? If not, I say we chuck it all in a brown paper bag, toss it in the truck of a beat-up Buick Skylark, and start making a better choice (for a cleaner, healthier plate).

Tapping my inner BIG MEAN GIRL

As I was sitting in a professional teaching seminar this morning, one of the presenters asked us to reflect for a moment on why we became teachers in the first place. His ultimate point was this: We didn't go into teaching to be a glorified presenter (which we are, by his account, if we are only concerned with what we teach), but rather to help all students learn (thereby making the learner outcomes the most important measurement of us as teachers).

And I suppose on many levels, what he says it true, and speaks a great deal about those of us in the great teaching profession. I don't know a single teacher who would say that the learning of their students pales in comparison to their delivery of an articulate lecture or the sheer genius of their lesson planning. By and large, we are there for the students.

But who, I wondered, is truly there for us?

I mean, seriously. Everywhere I turn it seems that teachers are reviled, held up for public scorn as filthy bloodsuckers more concerned with financing their responsibility-free summer escapades than in educating America's youth. We educators -- not TV violence, not drugs, not absentee parents -- are the most to blame for the perceived "failings" of our youth and our society as a whole. How dare we ask for more than our due (which, according to the many fanatics who feel compelled to spew their hate at the bottom of online newspaper articles, is not much. We should not even dream of asking to make a wage that reflects our own educational attainment, to be given salary increases that are commiserate with our experience in the field, let alone receive benefits that allow us to receive medical care or retire)! Every time I read an online newspaper article about education, I pause at the bottom, wondering if I really need to read the comments down below. And while I hope that the hate mongers who write negative comments about how overpaid, underworked, and greedy teachers are single-handedly destroying public education won't appear, I am always disappointed. And once the written mud slinging ensues, I can't stop reading. I wade through the arguments that I am what is wrong with public education. My benefits cost too much, my salary is extreme, my salary is much too high, "my" test scores are much too low. And those brave souls who dared to write that about how teachers are NOT was is wrong with education today--I have seen their cases drawn, quartered, tarred, feathers, and otherwise eviscerated for defending the job teachers do.

And while public teachers are often targeted as one of the reasons why public education doesn't work, there is one other entity that seems to inspire an even deeper hatred. An organization that is, in the minds of these armchair "soap-boxers," unequivocally responsible for the spiraling demise of education.

Unfortunately, it is this abhorrent evil that I have embraced as the answer to my question above: who is truly there for us that draws even more hate speech than being a member of the teaching profession (and while it is not technically a four-letter word, mothers, you may need to prepare yourselves to shelter the ears and eyes of the innocent and, supposedly, under-educated children who might be reading this garbage over your shoulder [that is assuming, of course, that their teachers actually did their jobs and got off their spongy butts].

The union.

That's right. Not only am I a dues-paying, sustenance-sucking, card-carrying member, I also work tirelessly on behalf of the organization (but more accurately, for the teachers it represents). Why, you might ask?

Because I really feel like someone, somewhere ought to be looking out for those who look out for our nation's youth. Because someone needs to stand up for educators and advocate for them to be treated with respect, as professionals, as vital stakeholders in education. Because someone must stand up against the ravenous masses. And that someone might as well be me.

Truth be told, I take great pride in the fact that I am a grievance-filing, hard-negotiating, rights-defending, contract-toting bad ass. Yeah, that's right. I said bad-ass. "Union Tonya," as some of my friends refer to me when union business crops up, doesn't pull punches, mince words, or bow and scrape to anyone when the rights and livelihoods of fellow teachers on the line. I guess those years of being known as BIG MEAN GIRL (a nickname bequeathed to me by my brother's 3rd grade YMCA basketball teammate after spending a scrimmage being guarded by an older, taller, scrappier player) were just training for being a teacher advocate.  

The truth is, to do the work of the association is to take the hate-speech and disrespect that is so often directed at teachers and place it on broader, stronger shoulders. And while teachers may be one of the public's most wanted, there is no doubt the teachers' unions are public enemy number one. Want proof? Take this comment (just one of many, mind you) posted in response to a recent oregonlive.com article about the ill-conceived Race To The Top (RTTT) educational grants:

The lecherous teachers union, hugely supported by members, could care less about many things except maintaining exorbitant salaries and benefits. When they scream for more money, "It's for the children, blah, blah, blah...", it's only to provide themselves additional compensation.

Let's talk about this "exorbitant" salary that I make as a "worthless" school teacher. I will have been teaching for ten years this fall (and have the grey hairs to prove it) and hold both a bachelors and a masters degree (and not to toot my own horn, but I have YET to receive anything less than an A in any of these courses). I'd like to think that I am one sharp cookie and a darn fine educator, though according to the presentation I was at today, I'm not sure I have the conclusive evidence to claim that my students "actually" learn what I "teach."


Then I compare myself with my husband. He's a darn smart one too. He's working (and almost done) with his masters in business administration and has been working in his field of software programming for the past six years. And what he makes now, as a relative newbie in the field, is more than the most experienced, most educated faculty member in my school district will ever hope to make...over $15,000 more per year. And don't get me started on the fringe benefits (like 401K matching, stock options, annual bonuses, vacation time, and incentives). It makes my PERS contributions, my two personal leave days, and my four credits of partial tuition reimbursement look like what they really are--the scraps that those who are passionate about teaching, students, and learning are willing to accept for the greater good.

Educators are not in the profession to "harm" students, to suck the teat of government, to fail to do their absolute best for our society. I couldn't do the work of the association if I felt otherwise. As such, I am unwilling to see these teachers go backward in terms of pay and compensation (offering teachers a 0% raise when the consumer price index creeps ever upward and insurance rates--which we pay a portion of out of our pockets already--are going up 26% next year). I am unwilling to just sit by and let these soldiers of our democracy suffer the blows of biased evaluations, inappropriate discipline, and malicious complaints and hearsay. I am unwilling to let them fight the good fight alone, without an advocate in their corner to make sure that their rights are afforded and respected. That's why I belong to and work for the union (and for my fellow teachers). I think that Clarence Darrow says it quite well:

With all their faults, trade unions have done more for humanity than any other organization that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in man, than the other association of men.

My respected colleague and personal sounding board, Dusty Humphrey, says this and more well about the role of teachers, of teachers' unions, and what we (the St. Helens Education Association) are fighting for in our school district. Consider the following reading your homework assignment, class: http://pleadingforsanity.blogspot.com/2010/04/caucus-caucus-cau-cus.html.

If I (and the association) don't fight for them, who will? The modern-day muckrakers who feel the need to smear their teacher hate (check out http://teachersunionexposed.com/ and prepare to be offended)? The school districts, who seem, at times, more concerned with maintaining ending-fund balances and boosting state assessment scores than fighting for a quality public education? The politicians who are elected on a pro-education platform and then institute unfunded mandates, develop copious testing that do little to nothing to improve instruction, and implement competitive grant programs (such as Race to the Top) to "improve" the quality of education we offer to students?

So I go back to the question that was posed today in my conference: Why did I become a teacher? Because I care about kids. Why did I become a union rep/bargainer/president? Because I care (deeply, whole-heartedly, passionately) about those who care about kids. Because I believe that what they take home in salary and benefits can never truly compensate them for what they actually "make."

Sunflowers, worms, and other (potentially) dead things

I gasped in horror at the window ledge. Oh, god, not the sunflowers.

I had checked on them Monday night as I worked on the dishes. At that time there were three perky sprouts bobbing happily in the kitchen window.

And then disaster struck Tuesday morning.

There they were, hanging limply over the edge of the peat pot like the scraggly turnip greens in the bottom drawer of my vegetable crisper. I didn't want to look too closely, fearing that the cats had taken down another innocent victim. My cats, you see, rule at destroying all things of value in our household--our leather couch, our dining room table, our wooden blinds, our carpet, our sanity. It made sense that the little innocent seeds that Lilly admires on a daily basis would be the next tragedy to add to their growing rap sheet.

I couldn't help but survey the damage that my furry felons had obviously causes (and plot how to best get back at the cats for killing my daughter’s green joys). And, to my shock, the delicate stems were unsnapped, the leaves unmunched.

As I stood back from my close inspection, I realized what it meant. We'd forgotten to water the seeds. WE HAD KILLED LILLY'S PLANTS! I quickly doused them with water in the hopes that I could still revive them, and placed them back on the windowsill. Maybe they would perk up quickly before Lilly had a chance to notice.

"Plant broke?" I heard behind me. Lilly toddled into the kitchen and followed my gaze to the kitchen windowsill. "Plant broke?" she said again, concern knotting her brows."Plant? Plant!"

I picked her up and showed her the wilted seedlings: "I'm sorry, sweetie. The plants got too thirsty and fell over. Maybe they're not dead."

This was the second time in less than 24 hours that I had to talk with my daughter about death. Okay, so it's not like her cats got run over (though at times I secretly hope they escape and get eaten by coyotes, particularly after they do something extraordinarily heinous, like crapping on the floor just outside their perfectly clean litter box). We were just walking home from school. The weather had turned sunny and dry for a whopping two days (is that a record for western Oregon in April?), and in the gutter just off the sidewalk lay a dehydrated and crispy worm.

Worms are probably tied with cows and lions as Lilly's favorite animal. Ever since I took her out in the driveway during a rainstorm to look at them wiggling across the driveway, she's been looking for them every time we go outside. Since our front yard looks like we are recreating the landscape of Europe during WWI, complete with trenches and foxholes, there are plenty of opportunities to see the slimy pink creatures lurking in the earth.

Despite looking like a RonCo food dehydrator experiment gone wrong, the worm in the gutter still caught Lilly's eye, and over she went, bending down to try and pick it up. It crumbled like a mummy at her first touch before I could haul her back onto the sidewalk.

"Worm?" she asked, sounding somewhat puzzled.

"Yes, sweetie, that's a worm. But he's dead." Those words kind of caught in my throat. Dead. I was talking with my toddler about death. She's nineteen-months old, for goodness sake. Granted, it was just the death of a worm. But even as an adult who understands that death is a natural part of life, this kind of choked me up. That worm could have been Lilly's buddy. For her, a worm is a friend, something to be cherished, and admired, and greeted whenever she sees one. And that worm was never coming back from from its blacktop tomb.

Yet there it lay. And here I was, trying to figure out on the fly what to say to my little one about the shriveled carcass lying in front of us. I know that even if I had explained what "dead" meant she wouldn't have understood, but somehow, that conversation seemed too mature, too difficult, to real to have on the sidewalk on a warm April day. But I didn't want to lie either, to cop out and tell her the worm was sleeping (the crispy sleep of a deep-fried raisin), to sugarcoat what was lying there in the road (yuck, makes me never really want to eat a sour gummy worm again).

So I took a breath and said the only thing I could come up with at the moment: "We don't touch dead things. They're icky."

"Worm icky" she repeated several times, and as we walked away, she twice looked over her shoulder and into the gutter.

And while teaching my child that we shouldn't touch dead things isn't a bad idea (gotta teach that personal hygiene before they contract e-bola from poking a pickled rat gizzard with their big toe), it felt like the easy way out.

So when the sunflowers presented themselves in a similarly compromised state, rather than cover up the truth, I, at least, said the "d" word tempered with the optimism that Mommy could make it right. And make it right I did. By the time we arrived home on Tuesday afternoon, the seedlings were standing upright and leaning toward the afternoon sun (or at least in the direction where the sun would have been if it had not been for those dastardly rainclouds).

Yet sometime in the near future, she'll be big enough, old enough, smart enough to know that Mommy can't always work miracles. Then I'll have to find the courage to say more than "dead things are icky," or "maybe they're not dead," or “the kitty must have run away" (or, for you Oh, Brother Where Art Thou? fans, "r-u-n-n-o-f-t") . And while I could just stick in a VHS copy of The Lion King and have Timone and Pumba help explain the circle of life ('cause I don't think that South Park is really going to work on this one, especially since that damn Kenny keeps getting killed and rises again in the next episode), I know that too will not work. It's a conversation that, I must admit, I am not really looking forward to—it’s probably in the top 10 discussions I'd rather not have with my daughter but must unless I want her to grow up sheltered, diseased, maladjusted, or knocked up.

But as long as I can remember to water those seeds, maybe it's a conversation I can put on hold for another few weeks, right?

What's in a name?

By the time my husband walked in the door last night, I'd been at it for hours. Not folding laundry (it was still in the basket, growing cold and wrinkly). Not doing dishes (which I absolutely could and should have been doing for hours). Not sleeping (which is the much treasured pastime of parents of toddlers everywhere).

Nope. I was here, on the couch, trying desperately to come up with a name for this blog. Seriously.

I'd created a short and very odd list of possible names. Mommagami. Bite Reality Back. Done Got Edumacated.

What was I thinking?

No much of value, obviously, becauce the truth of the matter was that they all sucked, and I knew it. I wanted something that came as close to being me as any short sequence of words can be. But trying to define your entire self in words that some other equally unoriginal blogger hasn't used is a nearly-impossible task. I was just about ready to give up, despite the prompting of my friends and fellow bloggers who promised me that I might have something to say that was worth reading.

I wish I could say that it was when I was mucking around in the darkness for a title that inspiration slapped me upside the head. But I can't even take full credit for the title. Okay, I can only take credit for the "red pen" part (2/5ths of the title if we really want to be mathematically accurate). I had something lame like Save the Red Pen on my list when Corey got home from his class, and it was he that found the words that finally worked. I'm not sure he knew it at the time, but OH MY GOSH does that title work. Want proof? First, the obvious reasons:

1). In my TV watching days--which I think are basically behind me with the exception of Jaime Oliver's Food Revolution and The Vampire Diaries (sad, but true)--I used to adore The Young and the Restless (a fact that is even more depressing than my ongoing obsession with the vampire smut genre). Where the Red Pen Bleeds sounds like some ridiculously trampy daytime drama set in a small Midwestern city where the major characters own competing newspapers that constantly write libelous trash. And, some days, my teenage-wrangling, union-thumping, mommy-hairpulling sounds, if not trampy, at least dramatic.

2). It references literature--depressing dog literature. Not exactly my favorite book of all time, but I read it back in junior high, so there's no accounting to taste. But at least it speaks to my love of reading. At the moment, I'd much rather cozy up with a Michael Pollan book about the garbage we ingest on a daily basis (otherwise known as food substitute), a novel of young-adult fiction, or (once again) vamp lit.

3). I'm an English teacher. I like red pens. I make papers (literally) and students (figuratively) bleed.

It's the reference to the work that English teachers do with their mortal instruments that makes the title really work, though (not bleeding papers and students dry...though that sounds like something a vampire English teacher would do). Think about it. We English teachers spend our days, and nights, and weekends marking up student papers. Our comments, our thoughts, our insights are marginalized, crammed into the one-inch MLA-issued margins or squeezed into the spaces between double-spaced lines. The white space of students’ papers is no place to really write, or think, or engage with the real stuff of our lives.

So, I am taking this blog as an invitation to move beyond the margins; to say what it is that I often do not; and write about what it means to be a vampire-loving, organically fanatical, sleep-deprived, bookishly obsessive mother/teacher/wife/me.