Perspective

I was humbled the other day, and I thought the story was worth sharing because I think it's good to have your perspective widened and adjusted every once in a while, to be reminded that not everyone's life is like yours. I am even more aware of these things now that I have a child, because there are so many good things in our lives that she will grow up with that I take for granted.

I support a child in Lesotho, Africa, through World Vision, and I get periodic updates about what World Vision is doing in the community through their Area Development Program. Among the things that the ADP assisted with in the community this year:

• Participation in a Children's Mock Parliament, where children were able to debate child welfare issues, including lobbying for a law to prevent child abuse
• Birthday packages that included school socks, notebooks, pens, and paper for covering books
• Training on property rights for orphans 
• School textbooks
• Learning to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS
• Once-a-month prayer clubs for children, where they learn about God's love through the Bible
• Construction of a school building so children can learn without being distracted by adverse weather
• Construction of teachers' living quarters so teachers can focus on their work and not traveling long distances every day
• Teaching those affected by HIV/AIDS about accessing social grants and improving their nutrition through proper preparation of food

I was excited to see what exactly was going on in the community with my monthly $35. At the same time, I realized what a different world Lesotho, Africa is.

I NEVER wonder whether Alexandra will have to regularly sit outside on a cold day to learn, or possibly not have access to a textbook she needs for a particular subject. I live in a country where there are already laws against child abuse. Notebooks and pens were everyday items when I grew up; that's not something we would really even consider a birthday present. I had parents who taught me what I needed to know about God and the prevention of HIV/AIDS from a young age; I truly can't imagine not knowing that Jesus loves me or that there are easy ways to prevent STDs.

So I had my perspective changed, and as I read the letter from the program manager, one Morake Rakhoba,  I came across this line: "We appreciate the sacrifices that you have made, especially in these challenging economic times, to better the lives of others less fortunate than yourself." And I stopped reading.

I haven't made any sacrifices. I can give $35 a month and still have a warm house, two cars, all the food I want, eat out once or twice a week, go to Starbucks once a week, buy new clothes whenever I need them, feed my dog and take him to the vet, have access to healthcare and vaccinations for me and my daughter, buy Christmas presents for friends and family members, and drink, bathe in, and even bathe my dog in clean water whenever I want.

I am truly not trying to make anyone feel guilty. Please don't! Guilt is usually not productive. But I do want to encourage you that if you've been thinking about giving to a charity or a good cause, please do. Using what God has blessed you with to bless someone else can only help make you more grateful and offer a healthy, humbling perspective. I've found that viewing most of my life as a luxury rather than a necessity actually makes me happy, and more willing to give to those who don't even have the necessities. Generosity is truly one of the areas where God gives the most joy.

So Far, So Good

This is my first full week as a full-time stay-at-home mom. I didn’t work last week, but I didn’t really feel like I was playing homemaker because we had some friends from Iowa come into town on Sunday and leave on Monday. Then, of course, Thursday was Thanksgiving, and on Friday Ian and I went into the California woods with some friends to cut down our Christmas tree (all legally, of course; we stopped in Hallelujah Junction to buy our permit).

So with all of that going on, it was a nice distraction from not being at work anymore. I have to admit, even though I missed Alexandra every day and wished for a less hectic schedule, part of me was a bit nervous about being home all the time. I wondered if I would get bored, or if my brain would start to turn to mush. After all, housework and interacting with Alexandra can be challenging, but not in a way that seems mentally stimulating. I wondered if being at the house would make me go stir-crazy in a matter of days.

But so far (three whole days in!), it’s been great. Obviously, the best thing about it is time with Alexandra. She is fun, happy, beautiful, and learning new skills every day. I love making her laugh, discovering that she loves carrots, and watching her babble at her toys. I realized that I only have a limited time with her (God willing, eighteen to twenty-three years, and unfortunately I don’t think I can expect to remain her favorite person in the world that whole time) and I am determined to enjoy as much of it as I can and be grateful for every second. She is such a precious gift from God and I never want to take her for granted. It’s crazy to me how much you can love one person, and it’s something you never know until you have a child (sorry, Ian :).

Also, after playing Working Mom, I am realizing the advantages of Stay-at-Home Mom. For example, even though your day consists of repetitive, mundane tasks such as laundry and washing dishes, most days you have time and energy to read a little, write for fun, play the piano, or catch up on episodes of Star Trek: Voyager while you eat lunch. You can take walks because you’re not at work the whole time it’s light, and unless baby is having a napless day, a bit of midweek exhaustion can be cured with a short siesta. 

Goodbye, Fun Students

It’s over. My time at the Davidson Academy is done. 

Okay, maybe it’s not quite as dramatic as the above sounds. After all, I am remaining on the substitute list, so I may show up every once in a while. Also, I still have some final assignments to grade and return to the regular Spanish teacher, so I have to come by sometime next week. 

The students were great. I felt very loved and appreciated on the last day, which is a great feeling for a teacher. So often when you’re teaching, some days end and you feel discouraged, untalented, antagonized, disrespected, tired, or all of the above. While I had relatively few of those days over the last several weeks, it was still great to be encouraged at the end. I got a candle, a sweet card, and a Starbucks gift card, and many thanks and affirmations of my teaching. 

A couple girls also made me a video, which is a great gift, because not only do you receive the encouraging messages, but you have a lasting memento of your students’ faces and voices, and you get to remember their mannerisms and the little things that make them fun and unique. They interviewed various students from my classes and recorded both things the students like about me and humorous things they remembered from Spanish class. It was very touching and SO much fun to watch.

(It also made me realize I should maybe be more careful about the random things I do occasionally, because one girl said one of her favorite memories was when I told the girls that once they had been pregnant, their belly buttons would never be the same. Also, one student has pictures of me sitting under a desk, gripping its legs and demonstrating my fake terrified expression, taken during an earthquake drill. It was fun at the time but not very dignified in hindsight.)

They are very thoughtful students, and I feel really grateful for the time I got to spend with them. And now I am looking forward to all the time I will get to spend with my daughter!

Thanks, Anne Lamott

I have been reading Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott. It is her book about writing, and I am finding it to be very helpful, not just in writing but also in life. I always thought I would enjoy her books, because I am a huge fan of Donald Miller and I once heard him described as a male Anne Lamott, and it turns out to be true. It is so nice to read someone who either expresses things you've always believed or puts into words for you things you didn't know you believed.

Also, I can relate to a lot of what she says. I don't know if it's a writer thing or a human thing, but I tend to go around talking to myself a lot. Not out loud (what would people think?), but if I turn off one conversation another one pops up, so unless I can be distracted by an imminent and wholly engaging task, I don't bother trying to stop it. And lo and behold, I read in Bird by Bird the following: "Left to its own devices, my mind spends much of its time having conversations with people who aren't there."

It's not just me!

I also read these lines this week: "Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life...." True, I think. I keep reading quotes and hearing speakers who deal with taking action in life, doing what you know you're supposed to do, having difficult but necessary conversations, taking risks at your job or hobbies or relationships in the hopes of making them better, and so I think maybe God is hinting something to me.

I have always been cramped by perfectionism. 'Tis better to never try and never fail than try and maybe fail, is often my motto. I am beginning to believe it's false, because most of the best things I've done in my life have been somewhat risky (or at least their outcome has), and I would have regretted never doing them. Even when the risk didn't necessarily pan out to something good, I was glad I did them.

The moral of the story: don't let perfectionism keep you from trying.

Eavesdropping on Genius Kids

So, I haven't done much blogging lately because I started my long-term substitute job, and it turns out working almost full-time and having a baby doesn't leave much time (or, perhaps more importantly, energy) for blogging. But I am teaching at a school for profoundly gifted students, and I had an experience the other day that sort of summarized the culture I am in. In a lot of ways these kids are just typical kids, but they are also very smart, and sometimes I overhear things that remind of that.

The other day we learned the word for "kiss-up" in class, and someone asked if the word meant "brown-noser."

"Sí," I said.

"What's a brown-noser?" asked a different kid.

"A sycophant," explained another.

"Ah, okay."

All was explained.

Why I Love My Job

I realized that I perhaps ought to clarify why I love my job, instead of just stating that I do love it. So, here are the reasons I love teaching Spanish:

1) I get to do something different every day. Not just different tasks. Some days involve more direct instruction, other days involve student-led activities. If a particular topic is difficult or boring, the next section of grammar or vocabulary is often interesting. I love my job because I don't feel like I'm doing the same thing over and over, and there is progression.

2) I can move around! I can be in my office, in the classroom, at my desk, at the whiteboard, standing in the back to watch student presentations, roaming the room to make sure everyone is speaking Spanish, etc. Once upon a time I had a job as an editor. The company for which I worked was great ("Fun" was one of their top ten core values) and I had great coworkers, and of course I enjoy editing, but every day I would arrive and sit for several hours at the same desk in the same cubicle staring at the same computer and doing similar, repetitive things.

3) I get to interact with people. Again, as much as I love reading, writing, and proper grammar and spelling, being alone eventually makes me feel isolated and sullen. Interacting with people gets me outside my own brain and gives me new perspectives. Plus, people are just plain interesting.

4) I have creative control. This is similar to being able to do something different every day. Even though I usually follow a syllabus prepared by a world languages department, I can take the day's topic (exciting things like "Indirect Object Pronouns" and "Food-Related Vocabulary" and do almost whatever I want with it. We can play games, have conversations, perform skits, fill out worksheets, create menus, role-play, or do a number of things. It's a fun challenge trying to guarantee that neither my students nor I become bored with material.

5) I get to help people. (I must note here that a number of my students might claim that forcing them to learn Spanish is not helping them. They are wrong.) There is nothing more fun that seeing something click in a person's brain. Through explanations, input, guided practice, and structured output, I can help people learn to communicate in another language. Students go from knowing very little Spanish to writing entire compositions, and there is something so exciting to me about being part of that.

That's why I love my job.

So now my question for you all is (and this is assuming you love all or part of what you do): Why do you love your job? Whether you work full- or part-time time, inside or outside the home, why do you love what you do? It's fun finding out what people enjoy because then you get to know them better.

I Want My Brain Back

I've always been a little spacey. My husband would probably say that I am very spacey, but I'm not sure that being spacey and unobservant are the same thing. Anyway, I am already off my main point.

I became even more spacey when I was pregnant. It was like my brain was continually in a fog, and I would misplace things, forget appointments and anything in my schedule that was even slightly out of the ordinary, misspeak, and be unable to remember details, words I wanted to use, the last thing that was said to me, or the second half of the sentence I was in the middle of uttering.

Well, finally I wasn't pregnant anymore, and my brain seemed to emerge from its foggy surroundings, but unfortunately the spaceyness is just as bad as it was when I was pregnant. This is not due to surging, raging hormones, but rather to the lack of sleep and the fact that I'm now keeping track of details for two people instead of one. I don't feel like my mind is foggy, but rather that there are huge black gaps in my thoughts. I am still losing things, forgetting things, and trailing off in the middle of sentences while a smile slowly spreads across Ian's face and he finally repeats what I've said so far so I can remember where I was.

I became especially frustrated yesterday evening when I opened the cabinet, excited about my evening snack of a banana with some Nutella, and discovered a half-full gallon of milk in there. I don't remember having milk since my morning coffee (not that my memories mean much anymore), and the milk was room temperature, so I can only assume it sat there all day. I neither noticed the milk in the cabinet earlier nor noticed its absence in the refrigerator. And Ian doesn't drink milk, so unfortunately I had no hope of blaming him.

Ahhh (<--that's supposed to be a sigh). I can only hope that as I adjust more and more to motherhood, I will gradually recover the use of my brain and eliminate both the fog and the blank spots. Maybe my mom friends can give me hope that even if my mind never fully returns to normal, I can at least operate around my new levels of spaceyness.

I Heart My Job

I do! I've been feeling grateful because I didn't even realize how much I like what I do (teaching Spanish) until this summer. I opted not to teach any summer session courses at UNR because I wanted to spend the whole summer with Alexandra. I am very glad I did so, because I love hanging out with my baby girl and I don't think I could handle working just yet.

But I have a friend who teaches Spanish at UNR and who is currently teaching one of the summer session courses. He's going to be out of town for a couple days next week, so I'm teaching his classes one of those days. He's not giving me anything for teaching his class, and I had to make sure that Ian could watch Alexandra, and I'll have to get up early and teach an 8:00 a.m. class that lasts two hours on a day that is typically my most busy day of the week.

And yet when he asked if I wanted to cover his class, I felt like he was doing me a favor.

And that's when I realized how fortunate I am to be able to do what I do. It's fulfilling and fun, and I'd want to do it even if I wasn't paid (and I could afford to not make money, of course).

I love my job! 

She Smiled

Yesterday I dropped Alexandra off at my mom's house so my best friend (Kristen) and I could go shopping for my bridesmatron dress for her (Kristen's) wedding. Before I left, Alexandra smiled and my mom caught it on camera. My baby girl smiles often, but I haven't managed to photograph a smile yet.

Here it is!

On Doing Nothing

Sometimes I like being sick.

For example, yesterday I woke up with a cold and bad allergies. Usually I get up at 6:30, because that's when Alexandra likes to wake up and eat, but yesterday I got up briefly to feed her and then went back to bed and slept while she slept. I also took an early afternoon nap while she napped, then a late afternoon nap when Ian got home. I watched some movies and read more of Hebrews and Harry Potter, but other than that and caring for Alexandra, I didn't do much.

Normally this kind of day would drive me crazy, but feeling sick and needing to rest gave me an excuse to feel okay about doing nothing.

The most difficult adjustment I've had to being a mom is how little I get done on some days and how unpredictable my schedule can be. I started to realize within the first couple of weeks after she was born that I might not always be able to shower before noon or finish all the thank-you notes in one day or mop the floor as soon as I would like. I know the routine will come eventually, but in the meantime I have to put my agenda on hold.

I never realize how much I base my self-worth in completing tasks until I'm not getting anything done. Besides the tiredness of caring for a newborn, part of my "baby blues" included the feeling that I wasn't being productive. I experienced a similar sensation when my husband and I first moved to Iowa and I didn't have a job. It's fine to tell myself that my worth is based on being made in the image of God, in who I am and not what I do, but that's hard to believe when I think I'm not doing all the right things.

So again I'm learning the lesson that my worth is not found in society's measures of productiveness, which tend to value tasks and accomplishments over people and rest. And in reality I'm not doing nothing; I'm taking care of my baby!

But sometimes it's still nice to have a reason (such as being sick) to enjoy just holding my sleeping baby while I watch TV for an hour instead of thinking about what I should be doing.

Blogging, Attempt #2

Introduction/Recap

So, the last time I had a blog, I didn't keep it up. Partly it was because of busy-ness, since I had four part-time jobs (I taught Spanish at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, taught a homeschool Spanish class in Winterset, taught piano lessons, and was freelance writing). I tend to be a procrastinator, and when it comes to writing I'm a perfectionist, and the two traits combined mean that I don't want to start things unless I am convinced I have enough time at one stretch to finish them completely and perfectly. Writing is scary enough as it is, because it's never exactly what you want it to be. Unless you have a deadline, you could work on a paragraph forever to make it say exactly what you want it to say, and of course with a blog there's not really a deadline. A procrastinating perfectionist's nightmare.

So what made me decide to start blogging again?

1) Several people asked me to/said I should.

2) I want to be able to keep my friends and family up-to-date about what I'm doing even if we don't see each other that often or they live far away.

3) I will attempt once again to get in the habit of writing regularly.

4) I enjoy reading my friends' blogs, because it's fun and enlightening to view life from someone else's perspective.

Topics

And what will be the topic of this blog? That is more difficult. They say that blogs should have a topic and a theme, that you should write what you know. So I'm going to make my everyday life my topic. Too broad? Perhaps. But I will likely focus on five categories:

1) Teaching Spanish.

2) Writing.

3) Being a new mom to a baby girl.

4) Funny things that happen to me.

5) Things I am reading and learning. These may be serious, like my current study of Hebrews, or they may be fairly light (almost enough so to spell it "lite"), depending on what fiction I am reading. (Right now it's Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which I would put in the category of light but not lite. It does have its dark and deep moments, but it's certainly no Brothers Karamazov, which I will finish someday.)