not the best day

It was a rainy morning. Which means I slept very well, and found it difficult to get up. In fact, I shut off my alarm and just lay in bed until Miles woke me up (which I knew he would do sooner or later). We were lazy in bed together until Eleanor joined us. I asked her to go potty, but she refused to do so without help, and I was just too drowsy. Until she started crying that she peed in her diaper, and - waddling like a bowlegged duck - finally agreed to go to the bathroom. Then I had to get up.

I skipped my workout (it was too late, after all) and decided to do creative projects with the kids: namely, I chopped up a cardboard box in to millions (actually 121) tiny pieces, and with their tempera paints, painted different colored numerals on each one. It was my intent to make a version of the "Math-It" game I played with in my homeschooled childhood, to encourage Miles to learn his addition facts. And the game creation went pretty well. The kids entertained themselves for an abysmally short time stringing beads onto necklaces with the new blunt needles I had bought especially for the purpose. Eleanor then went around whacking things with Miles' plastic ruler. And I kid you not, twelve seconds after I said, "Nora, please don't hit things with the ruler; it might break and you would hurt yourself," it happened. The ruler shattered, and one piece grazed her eyeball. She's crying, I'm panicking, and Miles is screaming his head off that she broke HIS ruler! Her eye bled a tiny bit, but she stopped crying rapidly, and it looked like just a scrape on the white part of her left eye. She seemed fine, but I dutifully called the pediatrician to see what he thought, and NATURALLY he said he thought I ought to take her to the ER to get checked out. We don't mess around with eye injuries, he says.

OK, fine. Miles is still howling about his broken ruler, while Nora is excitedly repeating, "We get to go to the doctor now? I get to see the doctor. He will look at my eye. Can we go now, Mommy? My eye is OK. But the doctor will look at it. Let's go to the doctor!" You get the idea.

IS there a good ER to go to with small children? I dread it. Swedish Covenant has a nice waiting room, but nary a toy or a children's magazine. The attractive fishtank amuses for a while, but not for an hour and a half, I'm afraid. Anyway, after 90 minutes of trying to keep my whining, overactive, and starving children from drumming on the backs of grouchy sick people's chairs, tapping on the fishtank glass, swinging on the velvet ropes marking out the place to stand in line, running laps around the waiting room, and slaloming around frail old ladies in walkers, we finally got in for our 30 seconds with the doctor. She looked at Nora's eye, said "She seems fine, right? I don't think we need to bother checking the cornea. It looks fine to me. Here's a prescription for some antibiotic eye drops just to keep infection at bay."

OK, my doctor could have done that. WAY faster. And cheaper. (Did I mention how long we had to play Ring-around-the rosy, London bridge, and "let's pretend we are seeds growing into plants" in the tiny cubicle before the doctor even showed UP?)

What a waste of a day.

Now I'm sitting on the sofa feeling VERY frustrated with my attempt to translate Mandan (an almost extinct Native American language). I'm supposed to be presenting my "findings" at a symposium in three weeks, and I don't HAVE any findings, and it's ruining the precious remainder of my spring break. Why did I sign up for this?

disillusioned

I was working on Eleanor's hair the other morning (is it just me or do a lot of my anecdotes start out like that? Somehow I think this hair thing is consuming more of my time than I realize.) Eleanor, bored, starts fiddling around with the plastic container of shea butter (for her skin, not hair).

Eleanor: Thank you, God, for this!

me, thinking to myself: how sweet! Something is sinking in!

A few moments later, Eleanor still can't get the plastic tub open.

Eleanor: This is too hard, God!

me, thinking to myself: oh look, and now she's taking her little problems to God. Wow!

Another moment passes.

Eleanor: I am God.

me, thinking to myself: oh, dear. So much for that.

a touching surprise

This afternoon, I heard an unexpected sound: my doorbell. I wasn't expecting a student, and didn't see the UPS truck out the window, so I figured it was some marketing/sales type, and grudgingly went to open my door and say I wasn't interested.

Instead, I found two of my former ESL students! And I am ashamed to admit, one of my first thoughts was, "Oh no! High-context culture (theirs) means I have to invite them in, feed them, and sit and chat for AGES when I have a huge presentation due tonight that I intended to spend my precious "naptime" hours working on."

Anyway, I smiled, hugged them, and proceeded to, yes, invite them in, offer something to drink, and sit down with them. Incidentally, I had never had these students in a class per se, but last summer I hosted a conversation practice/lunch group at my house on Saturday mornings, and these two guys were among the most faithful attendees. They told me that they had come up on purpose to see me, because they missed me at ESL classes. (I am not teaching this semester because, frankly, the every-Saturday from 9-2 commitment became too much for me since that's just about the only family time we have, with me in school or singing nights, Scott traveling for work, and then naptimes in the afternoons and church on Sunday mornings. So I resigned. But now I'm sort of rethinking it!)

We sat and chatted for an hour or so before I sent them home with a couple jars of homemade strawberry jam; high-context culture means gifts are appropriate, right? Conversation is a bit of a struggle, since they're definitely still English language learners, and I haven't spoken Spanish since the AP test in high school, not to mention that I'm not especially gifted in making small talk anyway. But it turns out they want to invite me to a party (the end of the year ESL party) and had lost my contact info but remembered my house. They also want to know if I like roller coasters (yes) and want to come to Six Flags with them sometime this summer. Arturo brought me a DVD (he's a DJ, and I think it's his demo disc) which has his email address on it, so I wouldn't lose it again. Both guys were just amazingly sweet, and kept telling me how much they appreciated my teaching, etc. Vicente kept reciting English idioms we had worked on last summer - "better late than never" was a favorite, as well as "a penny saved is a penny earned."

I was just incredibly touched. These guys went out of their way (I think they took the bus up here!) to come thank me and offer a way to include me in their lives again. I almost got all teary. And you know what? That hour of conversation was a blessing. And my presentation went just fine.