Wow. That black keyhole-backed dress is fantastic. Tight, short, great opaques, nice boots, very attractive beige bra hanging out the back - HOLY CRAP WOMAN, DID NO-ONE TELL YOU THAT'S UNDERWEAR?
We're in the bar, birthday celebrations (not mine) well underway, when she strolls in with boy and promptly turns her back on me to embrace someone. If the bra was black and lacy, ok. Maybe. But it's a dingy beige that once pretended to be SOMEONE's skin color. Functional rather than attractive (the two have been known to meet in one garment, but not this one).
And the beauty of this keyhole dress, showcasing several vertebrae, is that it draws the observer's focus - BANG! - right onto the hooks-and-eyes mechanism that allows a bra to carry out it's function (usually lift and separate).
One glass of red drained and another on the go, my fingers are actually, perceptibly ITCHING to unsnap her bra. If I had suddenly found myself possessed of that boyish skill (unhooking with a it's practically single hand) I can't swear I would have abstained.
What would I have done in her position? Honestly, probably gone without. Or found something pretty and show-offy that screamed DER, of COURSE you're meant to see this, why else would I have worn a ruby-red lacy bra... or whatever.
... so why am I suddenly falling apart?
"Pop."
It was a quiet, innocuous kind of sound, except for it's location.
My left hip. Yeah, INSIDE my body. Bones still in their original shape (i.e. not broken) and still inside a meat case are not meant to make those disturbing kinds of sounds. Nor, am I sure, are they meant to feel like that. Argh.
It just slipped casually out of joint, as you might expect if doing something particularly strenuous, like walking down the street. Grind, grind, grind... and twenty-four hours later I'm realising just how damn inconvenient this is. Ballet? Yeah, oodles of fun. Touching my toes is painful, walking no bucket of joy, so let's not discuss attempting a developpe, or casually throwing one leg back into arabesque.
I suppose I'm a lot luckier than the parent currently on crutches for six weeks. She tore hip cartilage - sitting down. Yep. Ordinary is when we hurt ourselves. Ordinary is when we realise just how much we take for granted.
Ordinary is this damn chunk of my body throbbing (in a nasty way) as I sit on the couch bemoaning the stupid of my hip joints to the vast internets.
And if you tell me that this is the universe actioning my slow-down then I'll hunt you down and smack you. Hard. I may even club you round the head with
Hi. I'm Chelsea. I have a substance abuse problem.
It's the bread.
It's not like I'm a connisseur of those crazy light rye-sourdough-pastadura only slice on Wednesday loaves, or that I only eat homebaked bread. I like seedy bread. Soy and linseed, or four grain. Wholemeal's fine too. So long as it comes in a square (or has three squared sides) and will fit in the toaster/sandwich press, it's all good.
Which is why hub's purchase of some junky airy fricking CRUSTY white crap (which says a loud, clear HELLO concrete crusts post-toasting) which I can't cut into slices with structural integrity (read, it has AIR BUBBLES) has serious implications for my sanity. As in, goodbye sanity, have a nice vacation, I'll see you in a few months.
Of course, when the MAN handles the bread knife, he manages really nice, un-holey slices (because I already cut up the holey bit) .... until.
Butter.
Now, being something of a condiments nazi (ever tried spreading butter straight from the fridge? On room-temperature bread? No? Well, have a try and let me know how you get on.) I have my own butter. Pantry butter. Which, being pantry butter, is actually spreadable.
Not on this bread. Don't even mention the peanut butter. Having crunchy bits, that slice is tragic. The other sandwich (Promite, kind of like Vegemite but waaaaaay superior) is marginally better. And all the while I'm thinking Why can't you have just bought normal bread? You know, the kind we buy every other time we go to the supermarket? And if you thought "Hey, let's try this out!" then buy ONE loaf of this stuff and one of backup? You know? So if it just happened to be a load of airy white crusty crap it wouldn't be the end of the world?
I know what you're all thinking. Wow. She is so lucky. If that's all she has to worry about....
Actually, I feel the reverse is true. The one thing I might POSSIBLY be able to control about tomorrow is what goes in my mouth. The rest is really incredibly random. Which is why I like lunch to be a small pleasure in my day. I love nothing more than opening up the sandwich press on a small, golden, toasted piece of happiness. Knowing that my lunch will be good, will be under my control regardless of all the other random... well. The world could end tomorrow in an explosion of crumbs. You've been warned.
"How you liking it?" "Oh yeah, it'd be great if I could see anything," says the woman spilling over the edges of her seat behind my (rather tall, it must be admitted) beloved. I endure a few more of her snipy, pointed (and loud) comments before casually glancing over my shoulder to put a face to the snark.
(Retrospectively, I should have taken one of the vacant seats to her left post-interval. Then I could have made loud complaints about the crushing claustrophobia her bulk imposed on me. And no, I realise there are plenty of fat people who are not that way by choice. Trust me, he doesn't always love towering over people either. If you would like him to only purchase end-of-row or back-row seats in the future, maybe you should consider seating only dead centre of the row and taking your seat before everyone else so you don't crush them as you attempt to tippy-toe past.) Ahem. Sorry.
Aside from the ranting of the bitter twisted moron behind us who could easily have moved to sit in the vacant seats behind me (much more average stature), Jersey Boys was brilliant. Utterly awesome and great. I don't even like musicals.
The evening of wonderful continued into dinner. "That pho place on Swanston? Chinatown?" Beloved smiles, considers. "Blue train? Because then I can order anything, like pizza or steak, or..." "Sure." I like blue train. Over on Southbank, it's been our favorite after-theatre place for years. So we walk on over. Of course, it's packed. We wait for twenty minutes for a table, we scan the menu and wait for our orders to go through.
"Wouldn't it be funny if we walked all the way over here and waited and I wound up ordering the Singapore noodles?" He's grinning goofily, hamming it up. He's serious. "Not so much, no. I'm going to have the tandoori chicken." He performs another finger scan down the menu. "Yeah, uh... I think I'll have the steak." See? Simple. The waitress arrives and I triumphantly order my tandoori. His turn. "I'll have... The Singapore noodles. And some flatbreads to start."
Apparently no children make their own toast anymore. Goverment kickbacks cause deaths, not greedy human nature, and stupid people need the most help.
Let me explain: segment of Grade Three Science class features the projection of a jar, with the following multiple-choice question:
What force do we use to open the jar? A. Pull, B. Twist, C. Push.
I teach several children this age and younger and we routinely talk about the mechanics of sound.
They understand that the amplitude of string vibration is directly correlated to the amount of sound they output. They understand that the shorter you make a string (and thinner) the higher it will sound when plucked or played. They know that the hair on their bow comes from horses' tails' and that the cuticle looks like a lot of hooks on a pole and resin will make those hooks stronger and therefore make their bow feel 'stickier' against the string. I could go on, but you're all probably already clutching your heads and wishing I would stop.
What's my point? I don't want to send my children to school because it will make them stupid. Being smart is not the ultimate goal, don't get me wrong. But we treat kids like they're stupid and expect RESPECT? We expect engagement? Give me a break.
School is daycare. School is damn good training for the rigors of a workplace that want you to clock on, clock off, watch some tv and drink a few glasses of wine.
The families I know who have abolished a tv have a problem. Their kids can concentrate. They can create. And they no longer fit into the bite-size, life-support model of education perpetuated in the traditional classroom. Oops.
I can't believe how badly we fail our kids every day. That we have the nerve to call it education is preposterous; that no-one will stand up and try for a better model is a damning indictment on the complacency that has befallen the inhabitants of "The Lucky Country".
I don't know what to do about this. I don't know what I can do about this. Part of me wants to establish a Suzuki preschool, but as soon as these things are regimented and law-abiding somehow all the energy gets sucked into obeying the rules. Suddenly half our time is spent accumulating data by which to judge the achievement of benchmarks instead of leaping over the damn things in blissful ignorance of the limits they impose.
I know five-year-olds doing algebra. I know kids that can play classical repertoire from memory for HOURS on end, and read Tolkien well before they finish Grade 3. I was one of those kids.
No, I don't advocate hothousing. This is not about spending hours chained up - I will forthrightly tell you it was a rare day I spent more than three hours doing any type of academic work.
I advocate the right of each child to fulfill their potential. I advocate schools that will nurture the individual possibility and strengths of each child while challenging them to improve and conquer their weaknesses.
On the weekend I was told "To set the record straight, this is not a 'teaching method'. You cannot buy ten volumes of Suzuki books and become a 'Suzuki Teacher'."
While I couldn't agree more with this statement and have had to explain this to many parents in the past (usually parents criticising Suzuki because they'd not had a 'true' Suzuki teacher), the reason for making this statement bothers me a little.
In the last few years, the violin repertoire has undergone major revisions. There are many more photographic illustrations, exercises, technical preparations and instructions contained in the new books. So many more that it is difficult to understand the necessity of the apprenticeship model and hours of observation required in teacher training. I feel that the new books (which come packaged with a cd) make it easier for teachers to access the repertoire and teach suzuki method.
Shouldn't I be jumping up and down and yelping for joy? Hooray, give me the book, I'll work through it diligently with each student, they'll be ever-so-well prepared and my life will be easy. I won't need to innovate, to identify potential technical hurdles, or even demonstrate good posture - it's all RIGHT HERE IN THIS BOOK!
Wrong. I feel that these new books make it easier for teachers to access the repertoire and teach suzuki method while having little or no understanding of the philosophy.
I feel that including so many photographs will make teachers lazy about demonstration and perhaps make parents a little lazy too - I don't need to watch other children, learn how to hold the bow, integrate this information into my own nervous system -Here! It's right here in the book! Look at that! Do it like that! (I know, I'm so cynical. You try teaching for ten years and let me know how your idealism fares.)
And the exercises. Hm. The problem here is that not every child needs every point prepared. Some children need one skill presented fifty different ways. Some don't. Overteaching is the quickest and easiest way to kill a child's interest. They will have different standards of perfection and it's not our job to impose OUR standards upon them. Rather, we need to keep modelling what we feel to be desirable and accept that their opinion may be different - they may not yet be capable of reproducing information at that level.
What's my real beef? I guess I feel that many teachers are not passionate about what they do. Or that they have become limited to a box of ideas and won't venture beyond it. I find reading the work of other educationalists fascinating. The way that Steiner and Montessori link to kinesiology and BrainGym; Glenn Doman and John Holt; Reggio Emilia (and here ) and Suzuki's preschool and elementary school and the obvious resemblance to Kumon....
Ask why teachers teach what they do, why they do, how they do. And if they don't know, finding out may re-inspire them.
I may or may not have blogged about some random inebriated women who were malingering (that means "dancing" in such a way as to dislodge breasts from front of dress) at our dancing venue the other week.
I may or may not have (read DEFINITELY) danced in a particularly up-close-in-their-face way (facilitated ENTIRELY by my dancing partner of the time) but that was only because they were (a) standing in the middle of the freaking dance floor and (b) it was kind of fun nearly standing on them.
Cut to last night, leaving work and about to get into my car. Across the road, four women spill out of a four-wheel-drive. Three of them are sporting the same shade of peroxide blonde in an assembly-line crop. Literally.
For a split second I wondered if they were all wearing the same wig (well, clearly there were three wigs and they were EACH wearing one, but said three wigs were identical), because the women themselves were quite individual. Actually, that's a lie. The brunette was original. And maybe even sported a variation on her own hair color.
All four were adhering stringently to jeans-so-tight-they're-holding-me-up coupled with floaty tops and very high heels. The type that women totter in BEFORE their first alcoholic beverage.
Possibly the only reason the tottering decreases with the amount of alcohol consumed is that after the first falling over (ETA first two drinks) the shoes are removed and stuffed into tiny handbags. Which then form the nucleus of the "dancing" circle. Can you tell I've had a lot of bad experiences? (Correction: not "had" so much as "witnessed".)
Anyway, in tones best described as "galah" (as opposed to "dulcet") or even "cockatoolian"
they shriek at each other:
"That girl!"
"What girl?!"
"That girl over there with the hair!"
"What girl?!"
"That girl with the hair and the dancing!"
"That girl?!"
"We saw that girl at B____ last week? With the hair? And the dancing?"
"Oh, THAT girl! Is that THAT girl?"
"The dancing girl?"
All of this is accomplished with much flapping of tiny handbags and pointing; I am a little worried that one of them will fall victim to a passing car, but decide to finalise the torrid debate by waving helpfully and shouting "Hi!"
"HIIIII! You! You're THAT girl! That was dancing! At B____! We saw you! You're really hot!"
This comes in some kind of mishmash and nearly-taking-turns-speaking as they helpfully mash all the relevant information together and arrive at some kind of conclusion. "Thanks!" I yell back, and we go our separate ways, me doubled over in agony and muttering curses all the way home, them raucously cockatoolianing their way down the main street.
Note: It is physically possible to consume 2 litres of cranberry juice in four hours. I don't recommend it, but everyone should try it at some stage.
I give you a fragment of O’s vocabulary. He will be two in November. He climbs on phone books to paint or crayon at an easel, drags his high chair over to the kitchen bench to splash in the kitchen sink, and converses quite happily.
Suzukisinger and I have many discussions about the possibilities and pitfalls for parenting. She’s worried when she meets three-year-olds who identify garbage trucks, transporter trucks, big trucks, little trucks, cranes, bobcats and cement trucks as “truck”. Me too.
Clearly that’s all their parents think they’re capable of.
I worry that we live in a world that dumbs down because we think children are incapable of understanding complex concepts. They’re not. They might be currently unable to articulate them (and I am the first to admit that O’s exclamations occasionally confound me just as much as delight), but why limit their understanding by catering to their physical ability to articulate?
A good friend of mine was horrified when a father told his two-and-a-half year-old son “That’s a propeller. Oh no, that’s too hard for you. That’s a prop. A prop!”
Hmmm. Well done, dad. Baby talk is cute. It’s not so cute when you inflict it upon your child. I’ve decided this is effectively retarding your child’s development.
Who knows what a Galileo thermometer is?
How would you find out? Type it into Google? I’m currently offline, so can’t do this myself, but I hypothesise that among the top five sites will be a Wikipedia entry which will show me the thermometer, explain how it works, perhaps give me a hint to it’s origins and evolution… maybe even link to suggestions for it’s use.
It’s Wednesday. I’m at school. Lunchtime in the well-populated staffroom:
Grade 5/6 teacher to assembled cohorts: “So, does anyone know how a Galileo thermometer works?”
Principal: “What’s a Galileo thermometer?”
5/6: “You know, one of those glass tubes with all the little balls of colored water inside, and they change places when it gets hotter or cooler?”
Silence.
Me (because I have a habit of sticking my supersize oar into discussions WHENEVER possible and stirring vigorously): “Um, they’re not full of water. They’re actually different liquids; like, chemically different, with different viscosity.”
Someone else: “Ooh, you know that and you’re the violin teacher!”
(Now, that’s another rant all by itself - which I chose not to become distracted by at that point. I know. MIRACULOUS. I could probably get a week’s worth of blogs out of that, but then you’d all get very sick of me and no-one would ever read my ranting again. Very sad. )
Me (attempting to fill gaping pit of silence which has just opened with twelve teachers staring at me): “You could probably stick it into Wikipedia and get a fairly common-sense explanation that the kids could relate to, but I think the movement of the globes relates to molecular excitation and the way they vibrate at different amplitudes according to temperature… which makes the liquid more or less dense than water so they sink or rise.”
Principal (possibly a little peeved, hard to be sure): “And how do you know all that?”
(Note: she was smiling at this point, but I’m not sure if it was the canine-baring of an animal protecting it’s gaping intestines until it’s last breath or something more friendly.)
Me (remember that reference to vigorous stirring? Remember, I’m in a primary school.): “Oh, sorry, I was homeschooled. I guess I know all kind of weird, random stuff. But – you know, the internet - it’s so easy to find stuff out now.”
5/6: “No, it’s far to hard to explain all that molecule-y stuff to kinds. They’ve got no clue!”
And whose fault is that?
I didn’t say it. I nearly did.
Hilariously, last night when recounting this to my in-laws, between the three of us we immediately came up with accessible ideas:
Matching kids up with the liquids. Talk about how the liquid will change with temperature and then say “It’s getting hotter!” Who rises? Who falls? Who can jiggle about the fastest demonstrating molecular excitation? What happens when movement slows? This liquid is made up of smaller molecules and this is larger… what does that mean when THEY start to jiggle about? The possibilities are endless, and we haven’t even begun to think.
Oh my goodness… Some days I am so pleased and so proud of the kids that I teach for all that they achieve and all they understand, and other days I am devastated by the many ways we fail them every day.
How do we make our parents, teachers, schools sit up and realise that by continuing to expect mediocrity, we will barely achieve even that poor goal?
And what a Friday it's been. Today I've realised that one of the seven-year-olds I teach is in fact no ordinary child, but my nemesis. This epiphany was compounded by her cheery "Look, Miss Chelsea, I have hair cut the same as you now!"
Yes, yes you do. I generally don't have issues with challenging kids. I have rules, there are consequences. I'm happy to be the responsible adult that doles out tough love and kicks them into some kind of understanding about group activity, cooperation, participation, personal space, respect, manners, grammar, grooming, musicality, deportment, and oh yeah, ballet. Nearly forgot that one. It's a little hard to get onto sometimes when it's October and eight months on parents haven't taken the hint about writing R and L inside school shoes so their child sees this information five days a week. I wrote R and L on the feet of three girls today.
It's not that they're slow kids, or "too young" (HA!), it's that their parents have failed to provide consistent opportunities for this information to be assimilated and integrated. This gets me a little tetchy, as you might have noticed.
Evidence of their capability to learn and retain information: over the last ten weeks my littlies (predominantly six and seven year-olds) have learnt two ballet routines. They have not only learned the dances and spatial information (where to start, order to line up in, direction to travel and formation/pattern changes) but can sing the music. Yeah. Forty-five minutes once per week.
So, what's wrong with their parents/teachers/every other adult in their world? Is it just that the kids live down to their (the adults') amazingly low expectations?
In other news, celebrated six years of coupledom with my lovely hubs tonight. Yep, six years ago he decided that perhaps I was actually the girl for him and proposed some kind of going out arrangement to my skeletal and pathetic post-glandular self. The rest is history. He's remarkably able to view the world with a child's perspective. While sometimes this kills me, I'm reassured by his idealism and sunny disposition.
He's certainly a much nicer and more deliberate person than I will ever be, and I'm quite sure he will be a parent who teaches shoe-tying with infinite, graceful patience. (From my earlier ranting, the attentive reader will deduce this to be a compliment of the highest order.) uhnm, yeh. He's awesome.
Now, if only I could sneak him into ballet to deal with my nemesis.
We started out as teengers walking her dogs in the rain. Now we're adults living on different sides of Melbourne, but we still meet up, and yes, walk our dogs in the rain.
Ah, yeah. Hubs and I don't have a tv. When we moved in to our house we had millions of offers.
My parents: "You should take the spare tv that's just sitting in the laundry."
My parents have more tv screens than people in their house. Even their dog watches tv. We, however, still don't have a tv, after nearly three years. Nor do we have four children.
We DO have an obsession with West Wing and have recently discovered the fantastic that is Firefly (Joss Whedon, can I come and work for you in ANY capacity? Please?) but tv? Nope. Don't got one. Won't have seen that really cool ad for whatever, don't know about those so sad auditions for "So you think you can dance" and still don't have time to read/write/make/do all that I want to do.
Ok. So now you know my dirty little secret. Back to topic: it's very funny to have four adults discussing a tv show and trying to explain it to two others who have never seen it.
Scary thought: you know how you see people and think "Wow, why did you EVER have children???" What if they only had children so they had something in common with their friends? I'm sure I heard something about a teen pregnancy epidemic in some American town; maybe this is really something people do!
Have you ever done something because everyone else was doing it? I mean, I know that as teenagers we all had a drink (ok, mom, I know YOU didn't) or a cigarette (yeah, mom, I hear you) or SOMETHING. Currently all the media seems to be pushing for a baby boom.
This season's must have: a baby! You only have to wait nine months, and for an extra five grand you can choose the color! Accessories that last a lifetime!
Hm. Got a bit ranty there. I should probably chill it, listen to the magic podcast and get some sleep. I was terribly well fed; chicken parmagiana that was like half a chicken flattened across my plate beneath bacon, tomato and three types of cheese. Hubs ate kangaroo (yeah, we're such philistines we eat our national animals) and we each ordered dessert; him some amazing mangoapplestrawberry parfait with chocolate sorbet and macerated strawberries, me a dark chocolate-layered-with-sponge slice thing with strawberries and orange segments, topped with a scoop of blood orange sorbet. Mmmm-hmmm that is the GOOD dessert right there.
Oh oh OH! I nearly forgot to say, but I received my gift of jewels today and it really was a gift :) a delightful card, and letter, and the coolest gold bookmark, all the way from lovely South Carolina. Thank you, Connie, your gift was delightful and absolutely made my day. A mom mentioned that she and her family are reading The Little House on the Prairie and I think I'd like to revisit those halycon days. Your bookmark is going to be the perfect thing - and I won't mention the other sweet bit here because it might spoil the surprise... maybe I can update that tomorrow.
