It seems these days that some things aren't coming out of some people that should be and some things are coming out of other people that shouldn't.

For those of you that were concerned, the little angel both joined Toddler High full-time yesterday (farewell, Waddler B) and pooped TWICE.  Rock on.  You've got to love a daycare that, when you tell them your child is constipated, puts little smiley faces next to the circled letters "BM."  Ah, parenthood.

So anyway, I've got my own problems.  I called my OB-GYN yesterday to tell them about an unexpected event that happened a week early.  It sort of happened last month, too. I've suspected for a while that my birth control pills really don't work, but I'm loathe to change them because I hate the side effects of a new Pill.  The bloatedness, the tiredness - any little hormonal change wreaks major havoc on me, and I'm too damn busy to deal with it. I know - how irresponsible, especially considering that I don't want any more children.  So anyway, I wasn't too concerned about the whole thing until I mentioned this to two of my girlfriends/co-workers during a discussion of B's allergic reaction to Gain Hawaii Scent or something like that.  They thought I should call my doctor.  This was not really the "hell's bells, everything's normal" reaction I was hoping for.

I called my doctor.  The nurse called me back, told me nothing, then called me back again.

Nurse: (not Nurse Ratched - she works for the Judgmental Pediatrician, whom I fired last year) "The doctor wants you to call back when you're on your first day on the sugar pills and schedule a sonogram."

Me:  "A sonogram?  Why?  I'm not pregnant."

Nurse:  "He wants to look at your uterus." (implied:  You dumbass.)

Me:  "I understand.  Why does he want to look at my uterus?"

Nurse:  "Because you've been on the birth control pill for eighteen years without break-throughs, and because of your age."

Me:  "My age?  Am I old or young?"

She laughed.  I was genuinely confused.  I'm thirty-two.  I know they consider anyone over thirty to be "old" and anyone over thirty-five to be "ancient" in the OB's world, but in my head, I am still a pretty young thang of eighteen. 

The knowledge that "because of your age" might mean "because you are old and your ovaries may very well be drying up like raisins" was a little daunting and put a check on an otherwise sunny day.

I called my mother to see how old she was when she had HER uterus REMOVED. 

Ma:  "Why are you asking?"

Me: "Because I'm older than you were when you were done having children."

Ma:  "No, you're not. I was like THIRTY-TWO when I had your sister."

Me:  "MA, I'M THIRTY-TWO."

Ma:  "You are?"

Ugh.

So am I young or old?  And what is wrong with my uterus?  And do I care? Gah.

Two years of my daughter's life.

Four semesters.

Four hundred and fifty-one hours of second-job labor.

One thousand, seven hundred and fifty-five pages of grading.

Five hundred and eighty-five rubrics filed and recorded.

Sixty grades given or in progress.

Five episodes of classroom narcolepsy.

Two guest speakers, one video, one shot boyfriend, one fiance in a hospital, five children in a hospital, two unexpected pregnancies, one suicide attempt, one dead dog and one torched house.

Twenty dropped students.

Tonight, one of my students said he wanted to be a writer.

Success.

Last weekend, I bought my beloved and I new phones.  We have always just taken the shitty free phone that comes with the service (with the exception of one fabled birthday of my beloved's), so it was with a bit of trepidation that I plunked down $300 (with mail-in rebates that will only take $50 of effort to get in the mail by the deadline) for two, brand-spankin' new, shiny, hipster camera phones.

Before I bought them, though, I had lots of questions.  The salesman was eager to help me, sensing my desperation with my old phone. Also, the little angel was wandering around the store, pointing out the balloons and trying to touch everything.  I alternated between asking questions and wondering how much damage she could inflict if I turned my back on her long enough to listen to the answers. 

It was while I was tuned out, trying to keep the little angel from deconstructing a delicately-stacked display of car chargers, that he started talking about the Razor phone. It's really thin.  It looks cool.  I didn't buy it, though, because for the same price you could get a different one that had expandable memory. Before making this decision, I asked what the difference was. 

Thus began the conversation about bulging.

Him:  "Well, the Razor is so thin, you can't even see it in your pocket."

Me:  "Huh?"

Him:  (laughing nervously) "Well, women keep their cell phones in their purses, but men tend to put them in their pockets. Except, well, you don't want a bulge."

Me: (inside going MWAH HA HA HA HA)  "I see. Bulges are bad."

Him:  (not getting my gutter references)  "Yeah.  So you have to use a holster if you have a really thick phone."

Me:  "You wouldn't want, then, a noticeable bulge."

Little angel:  "BULGE."

Last night I had my students read "Marrakesh" by George Orwell.   It's an essay I read when I was in graduate school that has always stayed with me.  It speaks of streams of urine running down roads and donkeys who work diligently for a decade, drop dead, then are eaten by wild dogs before their bodies grow cold.  Mostly, though, it talks about Orwell's sudden awareness of the "brown people" who labor there.  He writes about seeing bundles of sticks walking by each day and only realizing later they were carried by old women.

I'm teaching the class to go beyond just a book report or a reaction paper to forming a solid thesis in response to a literary text.  It's a concept none of them seem to have been taught before, though they are the brightest class I've had in four semesters.  I could tell I was losing them when I began the lecture by waxing nostalgic on the fun in trying to invent a thesis that had not been done before, but when I had them read "Marrakesh," I could tell they were shocked I would introduce such an inflammatory work, especially since so many of them were brown or black and the essay speaks of the invisibility of the inhabitants of the city and the Senegalese army.  I reminded them that Orwell was writing in the late thirties, a time when Jews were accused of owning the world, even though in Marrakesh, they made only pennies a day.  I also reminded them that the world was not always so politically correct as it is now, and back then people just said the things that unfortunately I believe so many still think but do not say today.

The students all recognized what it is to be marginalized, but this new vocabulary and forum for discussion seemed new to them.  I take for granted that academia is a place to examine without emotion and bring to the forefront the things in society of which no one is proud.

On the way home, I was listening to the replay of "This American Life" on NPR.  They were talking in Act Three about Elizabeth Smart and how she walked the streets of Salt Lake City with her captors and nobody saw her.  She went to a party.  People talked to her.  Someone she'd known since she was four saw her at a gas station.  Nobody recognized her - partly because she was wearing a veil, and partly because they were so used to seeing her homeless captors that they ceased to see them, even when two became three there by the Burger King or Blockbuster.

Many who were interviewed for the story said that even though the third person in a veil was young, they never assumed Elizabeth was their daughter - they all assumed she was a second wife.  Those who were interviewed attached no judgment to their assumptions about polygamy.  The story went on to say that many in Salt Lake City have polygamous ancestors, and they accept it without supporting it with a combination of recognition and shame, not wanting to acknowledge what is so hard to understand.

Heather Armstrong of Dooce had a great entry the other day about her thoughts on polygamy and the new show on HBO.  I read the entry with interest and remembered it last night when I realized that the mixed emotions she describes are what enabled Elizabeth Smart to be invisible - not on Heather's part, necessarily - but on the part of those who were interviewed for "This American Life."

In much the same way, the Moroccans were invisible to Orwell.  People who clean office buildings are invisible to the white-collar workers. The homeless are invisible to commuters.  I think one section from "Marrakesh" on the topic of invisibility is the most disturbing:  "For several weeks, always at about the same time of day, the file of old women had hobbled past the house with their firewood, and though they had registered themselves on my eyeballs I cannot truly say that I had seen them. Firewood was passing-that was how I saw it. It was only that one day I happened to be walking behind them, and the curious up-and-down motion of a load of wood drew my attention to the human being underneath it. Then for the first time I noticed the poor old earth-coloured bodies, bodies reduced to bones and leathery skin, bent double under the crushing weight. Yet I suppose I had not been five minutes on Moroccan soil before I noticed the overloading of the donkeys and was infuriated by it."

See people today.

The class this semester, they crack me up.  To follow up last's week's tattoo-and-piercing conversation, we took on the subject of teething this evening to blow off a little steam before their midterm grammar exam.

Many of the people in my class, men and women alike, ranging in age from nineteen to probably early forties (my best guess - they have aged well), have children. Two, in fact, have four children each.  Another women is pregnant with her second child, and she found out today it is a second son.  She was mulling baby names for her in-utero offspring when another student, a bright young twin who was home-schooled her entire career up until now, brought up that her boss at Famous Dave's has sixteen children. We pondered the issues involved with that many children.  The youngest was an aunt before she was born.  They have a bus to get around.  And how the hell does anyone afford sixteen children when gas is over $60 a barrel?  I haven't heard of any hybrid buses lately. Obviously, the people with whom my students associate know more about money management than I, who bemoans the cost of the Emerald City at any turn to anyone who will listen.

My students know that the little angel is not what you'd call "a sleeper" and has been having some nocturnal rehearsals for toddler Romeo and Juliet lately.  They asked if she'd slept lately.  I told them she has been saying "owie" and pointing to her mouth. This confused me, because I (not so much a dentist), thought that she had all of her teeth.

Pregnant Student:  "Oh, no.  Those molars, they go all the way back, Ms. A.  You're in for it.  M's kids never had a problem, though.  She knows a secret."

Student Two (the one who had a belly-button ring through an entire pregnancy, which we discovered in last week's tattoo-and-piercing conversation):  "I have four children.  You need to put a little whiskey on the gums."

Student Three (M, who runs a daycare center and is now entering the classroom, late - a dockage of three points, but I overlooked it just this once, because we all wanted to hear her secret):  "WHAT?  You can be arrested for that."

Student Two: "Well, no one's come for me yet."

Me: "What's your secret, M?"  (all lean forward eagerly)

Student Three:  "Potato necklaces."

Me:  "WHAT???"

Pregnant Student:  "She does this all the time.  She's insane."

Student Four: (home-schooled twin): "I guess I could see that. They could chew on it, then."

Student Three:  "No, they don't chew on them.  They're just little babies. The potatoes have nutrients that just soak in and those teeth come right out.  None of my three babies had so much as a whimper."

(I consider giving extra credit to whoever can figure out the basis for such an odd practice, but decide that is probably unethical.)

Student Three:  "In a few days, they turn brown.  Then you just switch them out."

Me:  "Doesn't that attract, oh, bugs?"

Student Three:  "My mama did it on my and my sisters.  She also rubbed diapers on our faces to cure yeast problems."

Student Five:  "I heard some people rub the diapers on their tongues to cure thrush.  But you have to do that when they're really young."

(I begin to wonder if these people have little voo-doo dolls of me at home for when they get bad grades.  My palms begin to sweat just a bit.  My midterm is sort of hard.)

Pregnant Student:  "Yeah, I guess.  I've heard that.  Well, she does the potatoes.  Me, I just use Oragel."

Yesterday was my first day back in a real office, with real cubes, real dusty, germ-ridden telephones and real public restrooms.  I was of two minds all day.  On the one side, it was so nice to see all of my old friends!  Other working mamas!  But on the other side, I missed bitterly the extra hour and a half I used to have with the little angel.  There used to be no frantic rush in the morning to get both of us dressed at the EXACT SAME TIME, no little angel being last at pick-up because it takes Mama 85 years to unentangle herself from the construction site that is downtown Kansas City to get back to pick her up.  I resented having to do Pilates with the little angel begging for my attention, tossing dirty laundry willy-nilly around the living room. 

I resented the fact that my beloved didn't get home until an hour after I picked her up. 

I resented being back in an office, any office, but particularly that office so much that when the little angel accidentally head-butted me while we were playing Tent downstairs that I burst into tears that took me about ten minutes from which to recover.  I'm not sure why I was crying, but I think losing my angel time was part of it.  I was so tired yesterday - the little angel was up from one to two-thirty in the morning on Sunday night, and I with her - and so confused about how I was feeling and whether I was scared the contract ended in 90 days or relieved it did - and what will I do next?  I have no idea what I will do next.  All of it has been weighing heavily lately.

I went to bed early last night, and the little angel mercifully let us sleep until the alarm went off at 6:30 this morning.  I'm hoping to have an improved attitude today.  I feel sort of like a spectator in my own life right now.  I'm also hoping that changes.

Sybil went in for her well-kitty check-up yesterday. Since she's sixteen, we have cat health insurance.  Yes, you may laugh, but yesterday's check-up would have cost us $350 if we did not have insurance. I paid $42.  Yea, thank you Banfield Pet Hospital for this miraculous invention for those of us specializing in geriatric pet ownership.

If you recall, Sybil developed a thyroid problem six months ago.  Since then, we have been giving her thyroid pills once a day.  They also told us that she had a heart murmur.  We were terrified, but she's been taking her pills like a good kitty, and we think she's doing fairly well.

When we went to pick her up last night,the Morose Veterinarian came out.  I think she was shocked Sybil had managed to drag herself through the past six months since she was last seen.

Morose Vet:  "Well, she seems to be doing okay.  The murmur is not as audible now."

Me:  "Oh, good. So she's in the clear."

MV:  "Well, she IS sixteen.  We gave her another thyroid test.  The results should be back in a few days."

Me:  "Is her weight up?"

MV:  (very seriously) "She's holding steady.  We had a thirteen-year-old cat in here today who was only five pounds. He was a boy." (looks solemnly at Sybil)  "He should've weighed more than her."

Me:  "She weighs eight pounds.  She's good."

MV:  "For now."

My beloved wandered over with the little angel from where they had been examining the fishies swimming in their technicolor tanks. 

Beloved:  "What are these?"

Me:  "Those are the cat chews they recommended for Sybil's tartar."  (Until this point, I had not questioned this purchase.)

Beloved:  "How much were these?"

Me:  (starting to feel stupid) "Thirteen dollars."

He holds up the bag in disbelief.  "There are only thirty chews in here."

We take Sybil in her carrier out to the car, where my beloved starts griping about the size of the parking spaces, which he insists on referring to as "parkin' spaces." His capricious Iowan dropping of the end "g" in words drives me insane for some reason.

Beloved:  "So, we're talking like forty-three cents a chew here. I bet they told you to give her like two chews a day.  (Imitating Morose Vet) 'Even though we sell the greenies, we really think that this more expensive product is much, much better. In fact, we think the greenies might actually be made of left-over nuclear waste.'"

Me:  "Why are you so hung up on this?"

Beloved:  "I think that vet is just like an insurance agent.  Every time we go in there she manages to tack on like five extra things."

Me:  (preoccupied with my firstborn's health) "Do you think Sybil's okay?"

Beloved:  "That vet is like Jiffy Lube.  Every time you go in there, they tell you a belt's about to snap or your oil filter looks like hell.  It's all about the add-ons with vets and oil-change places."

Me: "She needs the chews.  Gingivitis is very dangerous for the elderly."

Sybil:  "Meow.  MEOW!!!!"

The little angel tries to reach through the holes in the carrier.  They are sitting next to each other in the back seat.

Little Angel:  "Pretty Sybie."

Me:  "Honey, we have to be very nice to Sybie and give her her mousie toys and chews when we get home.  Sybil had a hard day.  She got shaved for her test."

LA:  "Sybie shaved?"

Me:  "Yes, sometimes for medical procedures you have to have your fur shaved." 

The little angel touches her hair thoughtfully.   "Sybie haircut?"

Me:  "Yes, precisely."

Beloved:  "I'm surprised they didn't charge us for a highlight to make her MORE tabby."

Me:  "We love Sybie."

Little Angel:  "Pretty Sybie."

Beloved:  "It's a good thing she's pretty.  Her food costs more than yours does."

Sybil went in for her well-kitty check-up yesterday. Since she's sixteen, we have cat health insurance.  Yes, you may laugh, but yesterday's check-up would have cost us $350 if we did not have insurance. I paid $42.  Yea, thank you Banfield Pet Hospital for this miraculous invention for those of us specializing in geriatric pet ownership.

If you recall, Sybil developed a thyroid problem six months ago.  Since then, we have been giving her thyroid pills once a day.  They also told us that she had a heart murmur.  We were terrified, but she's been taking her pills like a good kitty, and we think she's doing fairly well.

When we went to pick her up last night,the Morose Veterinarian came out.  I think she was shocked Sybil had managed to drag herself through the past six months since she was last seen.

Morose Vet:  "Well, she seems to be doing okay.  The murmur is not as audible now."

Me:  "Oh, good. So she's in the clear."

MV:  "Well, she IS sixteen.  We gave her another thyroid test.  The results should be back in a few days."

Me:  "Is her weight up?"

MV:  (very seriously) "She's holding steady.  We had a thirteen-year-old cat in here today who was only five pounds. He was a boy." (looks solemnly at Sybil)  "He should've weighed more than her."

Me:  "She weighs eight pounds.  She's good."

MV:  "For now."

My beloved wandered over with the little angel from where they had been examining the fishies swimming in their technicolor tanks. 

Beloved:  "What are these?"

Me:  "Those are the cat chews they recommended for Sybil's tartar."  (Until this point, I had not questioned this purchase.)

Beloved:  "How much were these?"

Me:  (starting to feel stupid) "Thirteen dollars."

He holds up the bag in disbelief.  "There are only thirty chews in here."

We take Sybil in her carrier out to the car, where my beloved starts griping about the size of the parking spaces, which he insists on referring to as "parkin' spaces." His capricious Iowan dropping of the end "g" in words drives me insane for some reason.

Beloved:  "So, we're talking like forty-three cents a chew here. I bet they told you to give her like two chews a day.  (Imitating Morose Vet) 'Even though we sell the greenies, we really think that this more expensive product is much, much better. In fact, we think the greenies might actually be made of left-over nuclear waste.'"

Me:  "Why are you so hung up on this?"

Beloved:  "I think that vet is just like an insurance agent.  Every time we go in there she manages to tack on like five extra things."

Me:  (preoccupied with my firstborn's health) "Do you think Sybil's okay?"

Beloved:  "That vet is like Jiffy Lube.  Every time you go in there, they tell you a belt's about to snap or your oil filter looks like hell.  It's all about the add-ons with vets and oil-change places."

Me: "She needs the chews.  Gingivitis is very dangerous for the elderly."

Sybil:  "Meow.  MEOW!!!!"

The little angel tries to reach through the holes in the carrier.  They are sitting next to each other in the back seat.

Little Angel:  "Pretty Sybie."

Me:  "Honey, we have to be very nice to Sybie and give her her mousie toys and chews when we get home.  Sybil had a hard day.  She got shaved for her test."

LA:  "Sybie shaved?"

Me:  "Yes, sometimes for medical procedures you have to have your fur shaved." 

The little angel touches her hair thoughtfully.   "Sybie haircut?"

Me:  "Yes, precisely."

Beloved:  "I'm surprised they didn't charge us for a highlight to make her MORE tabby."

Me:  "We love Sybie."

Little Angel:  "Pretty Sybie."

Beloved:  "It's a good thing she's pretty.  Her food costs more than yours does."

First of all, I got a new contract job (and there was great rejoicing).  Today I'll have the pleasure of quitting my displaced, weird, old job and beginning to prepare myself mentally and physically (where the hell did I put all my office clothes, again?) for the three-month contract that starts on Monday.  What am I going to do AFTER the three-month contract, you ask?  Ha ha - you must be under the mistaken impression that I know what I'm doing with my career.  Silly Internet.

On to other things.  Last night I taught my class at the community college.  One of my students had just gotten a new tattoo (or really, SERIES of tattoos) on her foot.  It looked like dragonflies or really more like regular flies, but I thought it might be rude to point that out.  I told her it is actually illegal in some states to get a tattoo below your ankle - I know, I have one on the inside of my left heel.  That launched a lot of tattoo talk, and so many of my students were so knowledgeable that I ended up polling them by a show of hands to see how many of them had tattoos.  Ready?  Out of fifteen people aged 18 to probably around 50, NINE had at least one tattoo.  If you count me, ten out of sixteen.  We are a Tattooed Nation, people.

I knew we were hopelessly off-track, but the conversation was fascinating.  One guy (the cage-fighter), said his buddy got a tattoo and they used a machine with 36 needles in it to do the shading.  Some students said they regretted the unfortunate placement of their tattoos, now that they were out trying to get jobs and such.  A slight girl mentioned that her friend had a bunch of biblical stuff tattooed on his body, but he wasn't necessarily religious - he just thought it looked cool.  Considering I've been reading John Irving's Until I Find You, in which the main character's mother is a tattooist, I've been thinking about tattoos more lately than I have in years.

The tattoo conversation then lent itself, as tattoo conversations generally do, to a discussion of piercing.  One of the students in the back, a middle-aged father of two who works at Large Corporate Telecom, joined the discussion of tongue piercing by sticking his pierced tongue out.  It turns out it had been pierced for sixteen years. I'd certainly never noticed. He mentioned most of his back teeth were chipped from him playing with it.  Then we discussed how quickly a tongue piercing can grow shut. One student mentioned his had grown shut when he went to jail. 

Next came the belly-button discussion.  One woman, a mother of four, had kept her belly button ring in all throughout her first pregnancy.  When she had her C-section, they took it out, and apparently the hole grew closed before she could get it back in.  Three kids later, she says she'll get it pierced again in a heartbeat as soon as she gets her figure back.

I had to end the conversation and ask the students to please open their books to page 91 when one student then started to carry the piercing conversation into previously uncharted waters.  I do not want to know EVERYWHERE my students are pierced.

Ahem.  Community college - it's not for amateurs.