Archive for November, 2008

We say in this family that stuff like a dog ripping up a shirt is minor. One of my favorite jokes about dog damage went something like this:

“We came home and found little pieces of the couch all over the floor.”

“That wouldn’t ever have happened if you’d gotten a Doberman.”

“What, Dobermans don’t chew?”

“No, you wouldn’t have found any part of the couch.”

Okay, first day of work. I come home exhausted, as much from my state of panic about going to work as from the labor of substitute teaching. I open the door and the chili I’ve been making all day in the crock pot smells a little strange. Oh no, did it burn? I go to check on the dog in the laundry room. I open the door and I realize instantly that the floor is covered with water and there is a major gas leak in there. I glance beyond the dog, who’s overjoyed that I’ve come back but honestly looks quite guilty, at a trashed laundry room, with ripped up dog bed, ripped up ironing board cover, and like I said filled with the smell of “clean burning natural gas.”

 I know that it’s a bad idea to stay in any room with that much gas blowing around in it. I grab the dog’s leash, clip it on, and run. Outside, I call 911 (thankfully, had my cell) and tell them what happened. They say they’re sending the fire department. 

The fire truck arrives quickly, with four hunkly firemen aboard, wearing shorts (it’s a pleasant fall afternoon). They quickly case the joint, open the doors to the house, go in, inspect the damage, tell me I’ve got water leaks and gas leaks, and turn off the water and gas mains. “Call the plumber,” the senior fireman says to me, the lady with the delinquent dog. 

Just one of those things I “wish I didn’t know now that I didn’t know then:” gas leak? Call the plumber. 

Luckily, due to living in an older home (1952) I have a standing relationship with the plumber and miraculously, a guy is there in 20 minutes. Joyner Plumbing, by the way, if you need a super-competent and yes, reasonally priced Fort Worth plumber. He comes out, looks at the damage, and tells me:

“Lady, you are lucky the dog didn’t blow up himself and the house. He must have chomped through that gas line so strongly that the pilot to the water heater in the room there went out instantly. Otherwise, we would have been reading about this on the news.”

He identifies the broken hose, the broken water line, fixes them (all this for only a little over $100, which was way less than I was fearing) and tells me I’ll be okay. Unless.

“Unless what?”

“Unless he gets to it again.”

The next morning, husband makes an executive decision. Dog goes in crate. And with only a minor growl, the dog does. I’m so grateful he did. Because at this point, if he wouldn’t crate, he couldn’t stay. I mean, you can’t be taking chances with your house getting blown up and all.

Fort Worth Renaissance has received its first “pingback,” from another blog. www.floralshoes.com linked the most recent Fort Worth Mom Blog, so we had to go over and visit them in return.  We found a blog which treats how to find the right shoes and how to get good deals — my favorite article was http://floralshoes.com/3-steps-to-shoe-success/ in which the author acknowledges something that, at least, is true for me — shoes have to look good and be in style, but if they don’tfit well or aren’t comfortable, the result is going to be that they stay in the closet, so be careful.

Of course in Fort Worth, those shoes may very well be cowboy boots. The same basic rules apply

My first day of substitute teaching actually went pretty well. The mystery of what they do in school began to be revealed to me. I arrived, as I was instructed, at 7:40, signed my time card.  “Go to room 302,” the secretary told me.  As before, I was filled with a feeling of wonder that they thought I could handle this job without supervision.

I arrived and everything was in place. The schoolroom had laminated apples on each desk with the children’s names on them. and Inspirational posters on the walls. The board was about half full with permanant notes. I also found a stack of teaching guides and a lesson plan on the teacher’s desk. Thank God. Here at last were instructions.

Of the techniques we learned from sub training two ideas stood out — follow the lesson plan and don’t loose control of the class. “If the class is running through the halls, you’ll get a complaint from the principal asking you not to come back,  our sub instructor told us. If you get three, you’re sacked.

“Where are the children?” I asked the teacher next door five minutes before school was scheduled to begin.

“They’re in the cafeteria.”

Was every last one of them eating breakfast at school? Somehow this made me more concerned.

There were three special ed kids in the class, I learned from the special ed teacher who came by next. “You have any trouble,” she said, “You just call me, I’ll straighten them out.” 

By they’re just first graders, I thought. Surely they can’t get into real trouble in frist grade. Then one father walked his son into class, so no, not every child was eating a school breakfast, and five minutes later 21 students arrived in a rush and began putting away their backpacks. As I watched them, doing these rote tasks, putting books away, and led them in the pledge of allegiance, it was like the wind of teaching instinct — because I’ve had 16 years of education, I am, like all the other teachers, a college graduate — picked me up and carried me and I knew that I could do it.

I followed the lesson plan. I gave a little extra attention to two boys who I noticed had their desks placed at opposite ends of the room, but kept getting together even so. Near the end of the day, the kids were finding it harder and harder to listen and do their math. And these two boys finally went too far and I put them on “yellow” on the discipline chart. 

They were frightened. I kept them back at recess for five minutes, as you’re supposed to with students under discipline. I told them that if they found a way to avoid trouble for the rest of the afternoon they would be returned to green. One of them, who had huge eyes like Claude Rains, was particuarly anxious that no report go home about his behavior. And they made it. At the end of the day they were switched back to green

I wasn’t sure this was the right thing to do. But the sub is lenient, I’ve learned. If she can be.

“What do your parents do if you come home with a bad discipline report?” I asked the class as we got ready to leave.

“Give me a whippin,’ one boy said. 

I was sure he was speaking metaphorically. Nevertheless, no one got a report on my day teaching that class. And the special ed lady never had to come in. So I guess I succeeded. I was exhausted, and when I got home I had dog trouble (I’ll try to post on that tomorrow). But overall, I had changed from someone who thought she might not be able to sub to someone who knew she could.

General:  K-12, Coed, Private Preparatory School. Mascot is the Falcon. Colors are Red and Blue.

To tell the truth, being a mom was supposed to be my ticket to avoiding going to work.  But as we say around here, the truth hits everybody, times are tough, my youngest went to kindergarden, and I’m starting substitute teaching tomorrow morning at 7:40 a.m.

My feelings about this are right in there with my feelings, twenty-one years ago, about labor and delivery. I’m willing to suit up and show up, I’m just afraid I’ll die. 

My bravado about teaching tough kids has evaporated. I signed up on-line (thank God subs can now surf the web for their assignments, instead of using the infamous Central Calling System) at two very local elementaries, for grades 1, 2, and 3. So, maybe I have doubts about my authority with kids? I mean, the fourth graders, I thought they might be too rebellious? 

I saw Middle School assignments, I was like “oh, come on, no way.”

Okay. Stay Calm. I can do this. I looked around the room when we were at substitute teacher training and the people I saw did not look markedly different, smarter, or stronger than I was.  If they were going to live, I probably would too. I mean, substitute teaching elementary is not supposed to be on the most dangerous jobs list. So why am I so afraid? I woke up in the middle of the night, having dreamed that I’l forgotten to go to work, and felt all of the vivid terror of the dream where you fall off a cliff.

Well, each season of life has its dreams and drama. My dreams?

1) I’ll be good at substitute teaching.

2) The money I earn will make life better

3) Working three days a week will stimulate my writing and housecleaning, not kill them.

As for my fear, I’ve got a plan for dealing with that. First, I’m going to get everything ready for tomorrow today, then, have my mother take the kids to school the first day I work, prepare my sub pack complete with a list of steps to leading a class in case I freeze up the first time I face the kids, pray, and tell myself that other subs made it so the odds are I will too. 

Wish me luck.

I’m listing this blog on Technorati, and in order to do that I need to post this little strip of text (all bloggers immediately become familiar with little strips of text, which somehow almost never quite work the way they say they will on the site where you copy them from.)

<a href=”http://technorati.com/claim/hirsxnjq9c” rel=”me”>Technorati Profile</a>

This allows the blog to be listed on Technorati and searched on that site. According to my SEO research which I have been torturously conducting, an hour or so at a time, those who have a blog should be listed there, as the more places that link to you from the blogosphere and web, the higher ranked your blog is, the more likely to get ‘hits’ from google, the more likely you’ll get the kind of viewer stats you want.

Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharoahs

Dallas Museum of Art

3 October 2008 – 15 May 2009

Review by Dean Cassella

A bit of hysteria has surrounded King Tut ever since Napoleon’s Egyptian foray of 1798, when Egyptian-inspired jewelry graced the figures of Parisian women. When word of Howard Carter’s monumental discovery made its way to the European and American press in 1922, sundry products made their way into the marketplace, and for better or worse, have set the lay public’s perceptions of ancient Egyptian culture. Both Carter and Lord Carnarvon (the former’s patron) were besieged with demands for licensing agreements.  The discovery of a sandal, for example, led to several requests to make reproductions.  Fashionable flappers began to sport mummy-style togas, and there were even proto-Walk Like an Egyptian dance routines and songs (e.g. “If you Sheik on Your Mama, Your Mama’s Gonna Sheba on You”). 

1.      Keeps me from enjoying life two ways: one, if I do it, I don’t enjoy life because I hate doing it, and two, if I don’t do it, I hate myself.

2.      In Fort Worth, women are more house proud. So if you don’t do your housework, it means you’re an even worse person than you are in the rest of the country. 

3.      Additional members of household have exponential effect on amount of housework.

4.      Training other family members to do housework brings markedly inferior results, unless a) they are girls, and b) they are over 13 years of age. And sometimes not even then.

5.      People come up with unrealistic expectations. Like, they decide to keep a zoo full of animals in their room and then think you can still keep it clean.

6.      No matter how well you do your housework, you only feel you’re just good enough, not great, and then if you live with other people, that good-enough feeling will last only a couple of hours until it’s messed up again.

7.      Cleaning the house exposes the dwelling’s other, more serious flaws.Such as missing curtains, dripping faucets, soft spots in the floor, you get the idea.

8.      You sons will not put their clothes in their dresser drawers. Either you put the clothes in the drawers or they will stack everything on top, then come to you because they can’t find their socks. Which fell behind the dresser, of course, but by that time, getting them out is a major undertaking. 

9.      You try to get the kids to do the dishes and they just shove everything in the dishwasher without organizing it or rinsing it off, resulting in a machine full of dishes with food particles permanently baked on.

10. Notice there are no jokes about husbands when they try to do housework. Enough said.

Please, tell me I’m not alone. Feel free to add your own top reasons!

General: Upscale and central, Tanglewood is a highly desired neighborhood in Southwest Fort Worth. Once, it was a prime location for TCU professors and their families, today, it attracts more professionals and businesspeople. The neighborhood’s large trees give it a feel of a suburban childhood long left behind. The neighborhood surrounds Overton Park, a long thin open space with a bike trail running along a creek where turtles, ducks and squirrels are numerous. The park is a magnet for dog walkers, joggers, and bicyclists.

 Location:  The neighborhood is bordered on the west by Hulen Blvd, on the north by the Trinity River, on the south by South Drive/Seminary Avenue, and on the east by the steep embankment which was formed by the ancient floodplain of the Trinity River, which today is a formidable obstacle to bicyclists and even cars on icy days. 

Housing Types:  Large ranch or traditional style homes, mostly single story, and most more than 3,000 square feet. Built around 1970, these houses show all the features of the heyday of the modern suburb: large rooms, large windows, kitchens which are spacious and practical, large closets and bathrooms – with many upgrades such as skylights, garden tubs and granite counters. 

Price Range:  The average house here runs a half million dollars, or to put it another way, $1.50 a square foot. Cautionary tale: property taxes here are serious business, running about 3% per year. The Tarrant Appraisal District will reassess you at your purchase price the year after you buy, and further raises are possible every year thereafter.   

Lot Sizes: Large lots of a quarter acre or more. 

Transit Access: Good access to the Trinity Trails system, and yes, you could ride your bike if you work downtown. TCU is about a half mile, so if you work there, you could walk or bike as well. By car, downtown is 4.2 miles. Freeway onramps are not particularly close, but most of what you’ll want to see in Fort Worth is, so it doesn’t matter too much. Closest bus service is the Hulen 25 bus, which runs from Hulen Mall to Camp Bowie.

Schools Access:  Public system: Elementary school is Tanglewood; Middle School is McLean; High School is Pascal. Private system: Country Day is 4 miles; Trinity Valley, St Peter’s Classical, and Fort Worth Academy are 7 miles; All Saints Episcopal is 9 miles.

Commercial and Retail Access:  The area is situated between TCU and the Tom Thumb shopping Center on Hulen. By traveling south on Hulen, you will find yourself at Hulen Mall and in the maze of big-box stores in the area; if you go north to Camp Bowie, you will find the best of boutique shopping.

11:15 a.m.

They say we’ll be heading up to the staging area for the Score-O tournament at 12:15. I’ve succeeded in drying out Brand’s extra socks. Since we’re apparently hiking through the brush for three hours this afternoon, the idea of going in only my topsiders with no socks was scary. Had I not been successful in reclaiming Brand’s socks, I might have had to go to Walmart or borrow some. But they are dry, so I am home free on socks.

Back at the pavilion a discussion bursts forth about the paying of tuition for a private school when you could get the same thing free by living in Aledo. This made me so mad. I tried to set the person, the same one who went on about the awfulness of California – straight, and he pretty much wouldn’t take no for an answer. Tensions ran high; and no two schools are really alike so it’s all foolishness, really. But that didn’t stop me from vociferously defending our school choice. Be true to your school, as the Beach Boys said.

I think the scoutmasters do a good job with the kids. The parents are here to hang out and camp. That said I do feel alienated by the way other parents talk about retirement. I am terrified by this concept. Retirement! They also discuss workplace privilege and anger at co-workers who are not doing their jobs. Modern parents suffer a lot from worry and general irritation. Including me.  Definitely me. 

A train whistle blows in the distance. Whatever track is out there, it surely is busy. Now the humming of the train increases. I find it soothing, a sound I heard at home. The sun beats down and begins to be pleasant. Time drags when you are on a campout. You hear car doors slam, feet crunching on gravel. Sounds become more distinct.  A small plane flies out over the lake, a cricket chirps, the beeping of a car alarm is turned off.  

I look across the street and see the troop’s scoutmaster pulling out the driver’s side mat from his small white SUV, which is hitched to the gear trailer. He shakes off the mat, cleaning the car even today on a campout. A fastidious man, a teacher who used to be an attorney, he wears wire rimmed glasses, short gray hair, a t-shirt and hiking shorts. His boots are topped by black and blue nylon gaiters that run down from his knee and tie under his instep. I look at them, and assume that this is his system for keeping all burrs and other irritants away from his legs. It’s a be-prepared kind of outfit, and I have to hand it to him for embodying the Boy Scout motto.

Me, on the other hand, I am the most lousy scout on the block, couldn’t even remember a flashlight or my suitcase. I’m about to go hiking in a pair of topsiders. Where other parents have uniforms with badges, I have a pair of jeans I’ve now worn for three days running. Now I am keeping warmer by grabbing my son’s school sweatshirt he left in the back of the seat. I am not prepared. Resourceful, maybe, but not prepared.

And another thing: I am worried I am coming down with a urinary tract infection. I am drinking a bottle of water, then will return to the pit toilet to make sure I’m not getting worse. There are not very many practical circumstances that frighten me, (my fears run more to the fabulously unlikely) but getting caught on a campout with a full-blown UTI is one of them.