Last night I taught my last class for a while.  Well, I didn't really teach. I proctored my final exam.  They did really well - this is the hardest-working group I've ever had.  But that isn't what I want to talk about.

Two weeks ago, they handed in their final paper.  A bunch of them wanted me to grade them right away, so they'd know how well they needed to do on their final exams.  In my first semester, I would've just told them that of course they should always study hard and reach for the stars for any test.  Two years in, I just told them to talk quietly amongst themselves or study while I graded in the last hour of class, if they really wanted to know so bad.  I was secretly grateful for the chance to do it in class, as opposed to after putting the little angel to bed when I could be doing other great things, like reading The Bitch in the House or watching Big Love on HBO on Demand.

While I was grading, though, I couldn't help but eavesdrop. 

Student 1:  "So your daughter ran into the fireplace with her head?"

Student 2:  "Yeah - she's only two, but she's already a handful, just like her daddy."

Student 1:  "You'd better be careful.  You're going to have to sit at the door with a shotgun when she's sixteen."

Student 2:  "Nah.  I hope she dates a lot."

Student 3:  "You don't want that.  She'll come home pregnant."

Student 2:  "No, she won't.  I'm going to teach her all about that stuff."

Student 1:  "But then she'll just have sex!"

Student 2: "Exactly."

At this point, I couldn't pretend to not listen anymore.  I chastised them for distracting me with such a conversation, but I, like the other students, wanted to know why any hardcore father (he is hardcore - he even stayed home from class the night his daughters' dog died) would throw his baby girl out to the wolves that are teen-aged boys.

Student 2:  "The only reason I'm still married is because I had a lot of sex before I met my wife."

We were flabbergasted. We asked for MORE, MORE on this subject. 

Student 2:  "I know so many people who got married young, sometimes to the first person they'd slept with, and then ten years down the road,they wonder if they're missing something.  I am happy where I am because I know what I'm missing, and I'm just fine with missing it.  I want my daughters to go into marriage with their eyes wide open, and sometimes you have to kiss a few frogs along the way to get that perspective."

I went back to grading my papers, but part of me was thinking about my own premarital sexual escapades.  I did some really dumb things, and some even dumber people. It's true.  I also had my heart broken, stomped on and driven over with a Jeep Cherokee.  I did learn what worked and what didn't, how to switch it up, how to ride out the plateaus, and when to cut ties and bail...before I got married.  It is true. 

That said, I can't bear the thought of the little angel going through what I did, physically or emotionally.  I know she's going to have her heart broken.  I know she's going to like someone who doesn't like her back, maybe even love someone who doesn't love her back.  I hope she is pretty, but I don't want her to be too pretty.  I hope she is sensitive, but not as sensitive as I am.  I hope that by the time she gets married, she knows what she wants in a traveling companion and understands that no man can ever fulfill a woman. The woman, the person, has to do that for him or herself.

I'm not sure what my position will be on sex when the little angel is hanging around the condom basket in high school health class (she won't be going to school in Kansas, no sirreee).  I'm not sure how forthcoming I'll be about my own experiences, but I won't lie to her if she asks.  I hope she doesn't have to grow up too fast, but I'm not sure how she can avoid it, unless we move to a bubble.  Small towns are no safer, folks.  I grew up in a very small town.

I found K.'s perspective on sex education rather interesting, though. As a good Lutheran, I believe we should try as hard as we can not to sin - we should not plan to sin.  At the same time, as a good Lutheran, I believe in grace.  I hear the argument that preaching anything but abstinence is like encouraging your kid to fornicate.  But I also believe that the kids will be a fornicatin', and I don't want my child to get any horrible diseases or have a baby when she's still a baby, if it can be so easily avoided with a little education. Which is the worse sin?  Discussing fornication or withholding information that could save your child's life, literally and figuratively?

I'm also fascinated by this concept of playing the field in your youth as marital aid.  I can see his point.  I was just talking to my girls yesterday about how I would've liked to have been a younger mother in theory, but in practice, I was sooo enjoying the road trips on $50 and the beer-soaked parties and the roller blading and the sleeping late of my twenties.  In my twenties, I did not know what I wanted in a man - that was clear from my persistent pursuance of loner types who were long on sultry glances and short on phone calls.

I do know that I would never have clicked as well with my beloved if I hadn't learned the hard way how to recognize a good man, a kind man, a man who would treat me with respect and make me laugh instead of cry when he could.  You can't learn that stuff in school. You can't watch it on television and have it translate. You can't buy it in a store.  You have to live your bad kisses and your heartbreak and your mismatched priorities and your boxers-or-briefs and your morning breath to KNOW WHAT YOU WANT, hopefully before you walk down the aisle.  And you have to have lived all that stuff to remember that that's what's out there when you're tempted to stray or bored or just sad or mad or hormonal.  Remembering you chose your spouse because he was the best match for you out of all those many people you did date, you did audition, those other people who just did not make the cut, because your man was the best for you.  You hope.  You hope you chose best, because you had choices and you knew what was out there.

Or maybe not.

Thoughts?

I had a bit of a nervous breakdown last weekend.  My ability to hold down my corporate job, write for my magazines, teach my class, parent my daughter and exist as a functioning member of society petered out like a garden hose.  As I cried to my husband on the ride home from my parents' house, he (just as my mother had when I snotted all over her in the parking lot of an upscale strip mall in Omaha) asked me What. Can. You. Cut. Out.?

People are always asking me that.  And I usually want to throttle them, because they always suggest I cut out the "extracurricular" stuff, like getting a master's degree, writing fiction, writing magazine articles, writing my blog, teaching my class, seeing my friends, traveling. In other words, the things I like to do.  No one ever suggests quitting my day job, because We. Need. The. Money.

I know, everyone has to work.  My family is often shocked I would question my need to earn.  It's not that I don't want to work, though - I love to work!  On my writing! I just don't! Love! To! Work! In! An! Office! Doing! Stuff! That's! Not! Writing!

Still, I know he has a point. I need to be doing this now, while he builds his business.  So I've been looking for a job that will allow me to at least work sane hours and not make me want to drive a nail into my eyeball every time I attend a meeting with more than two people around the conference table.  That's a project in process.

He also brought up that of all of my "extracurricular" activities, teaching offers me the least emotional return on investment. I spend up to ten hours a week driving to and from class, teaching the class, grading papers and doing the administrative things. For this, I get only enough money to make us owe taxes every year.  I did it initially because I thought that some nice community college would hire me for a full-time teaching job eventually, allowing me summers off and hence more time for the writing.  It always went back to how can I get more time for the writing without having to go all Toni Morrison and get up at four a.m. to write.  I know she did that. I bet her kid didn't wake her up every morning at two, though. This morning I got up at two, fell asleep on her floor, got off her floor and went back to bed at four, then got up to get her some milk at 5:30 and finally gave up on that sleeping thang and got in the shower at 6:30. This schedule of naps that I like to call "my nighttime sleeping" is not so conducive to early-morning inspiration.

I'm bitching to you, aren't I?  (sigh) I'm trying really hard not to be so negative.

Anyway, I decided that my beloved did, in fact, have some good points.  Something had to go. Time with the little angel is the nonnegotiable constant in my life.  Everything else lines up in a little row, including, unfortunately, my beloved and myself.  So in order to not just be a ship passing in the night forever, I decided to get real about finding a more manageable day job and stop with the teaching.

Last night, my shining star student told me her twin sister was going to take composition from me in the fall. Then the guy who's my age and hates school told me I'm the only teacher he likes.  It was kind of like when you finally decide to chop off all your hair, then it looks AWESOME on the way to the salon.

Here's the thing, though: I know I'm good at teaching composition. I like doing it.  It is with not a small amount of wistfulness that I sent the e-mail yesterday to my dean telling her I'm not available except to sub in the fall.  I also like biking, but we've decided we're not going to go on RAGBRAI (a bike ride across Iowa that my beloved and I both love to do) this year, either, because we don't really have time to train for it, and we just can't handle any more pressure right now.  I like to sail my twelve-foot AMF Puffer, but we didn't do that at all last year, and I want to make time to do it this year. I like to see my friends. I like to go on dates.  I like to do a million things that I'm not doing much of right now.

In retrospect, letting go of teaching was good in that it made me sit down and list all of the things I like to do.  I'm a really interesting person.  Whee!  I hate having to cut things out, though.  My father-in-law once told me the hardest thing about having kids is having to give things up.  I thought he was just being negative and old-fashioned. I thought I would be able to bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, make cookies and write novels, all without skipping a workout.  I've been humbled by this parenting thing.  But rather than giving things up, I'm trying to look at it as forced prioritization. I'm actually writing more than I have in years, simply because I've had to give up so many other great things to do it.  So maybe this whole exercise hasn't been a total loss.

Next week is my final exam.  I wonder if I'll ever give another?

Karen from Troll Baby Graphics is designing me a fancy-schmancy new blog job.  It has wheat and witches and cool trees and it's all stuff I could've never, ever, EVER done on my own.  She said it will be up sometime today or tomorrow - it's like childbirth - they say "Oh, you'll deliver on April 13. No, 12th.  No, 6th...or maybe the 24th.  But trust me, we won't let you go into May."  Then you walk around your block seventeeny-million times looking like a deranged hippo, swearing and leaning on your husband as though he might soon spout chocolate martinis.  Then you go to the hospital and the send you home, then bring you back, then give you morphine,then say the epidural lady is just down the hall for two hours. Then your OB drops your little angel's placenta on the floor.

And then, you have something new.

The suspense...it kills me.

I really thought that after the discussions of heroin, body piercings, c-sections and Jamaican pre-operative transvestite prostitutes, there was nothing my students could say to surprise me.

Ha.

Last night after a lengthy lecture on grammar and a depressing discussion of MLA style, I turned the conversation to considering the source.  I told them my father always said to make sure I knew who sponsored the study before I spouted the statistics.  I know from working at Large Corporate Tax Prep that the glass is half-empty or half-full at fifty percent - it just depends on whose budget it's coming out of.  To drive home the fact that we're all good liars, we played "Two Truths and a Lie."

Usually this is a drinking game, but since I could tell some of my students were minutes away from a drink anyway, I decided we should abstain.  One of them is about to have a baby, after all.  It turned out that we actually knew a lot about each other from the random class conversations we'd already had.  One student, a girl that I knew was originally from Mexico, gave as her list she was a) twenty years old b) a native of Chihuahua, Mexico and c) the owner of a Chihuahua dog.

She is only eighteen. I knew that, so I won this round.  However, I went ahead to ask where Chihuahua is in Mexico.  Feeling ignorant as usual when confronted by an at-least-bilingual immigrant to this country (I used to work with a whole lot of them, me, paltry monolingual idiot that I am), I mentioned I didn't know there was a city named Chihuahua.  Probably not, because apparently it's a state. Oops.  Then L. went on to say that Chihuahuas are from there.  Makes sense, right?

Then she told me there are wild packs of Chihuahuas that live in the hills in caves.

I pondered this. In my mind's eye, I was visualizing wild packs of rat dogs terrorizing old Mexican ladies wearing black lace veils over their gray hair.  Old men waving specially-shaped guitars in anger at town hall meetings held near a church with an adobe steeple and belfry repenting the day some idiot decided the feral Chihuahuas should be a protected species.  Osama Bin Ladin sharing a meager crust of bread with his only cave-dwelling friend, a wild Chihuahua named Jose Ricardo Gonzalez III.

I think she might've been yanking my chain.  L. knows I don't know Jack about Mexico.  I actually just tried to play it cool, considering I would do frantic Internet research later.

I spent about ten minutes today Googling Chihuahuas in the hopes of finding pictures of cave-dwelling ankle-biters to post here for you, but I came up really dry. There is a school of thought that they descended from the fox, though, just so you know.

Woof.

I last tried self-tanner when the little angel was four months old.  I should've looked up my post to remind myself how very bad I am on the first attempt.  This time was no exception.

I was inspired to purchase the self-tanner yesterday, when (on an 86-degree day in April) I was exposed by my Costco squort to my blinding, Midwestern legs.

I've decided that I don't LOVE the way I look in shorts anymore.  The front? Fine.  The back?  God save the queen.  The squort is longer than the shorts, though, reaching almost to the backs of my knees, and it's a lot easier to run around the playground after a two-year-old when one has the safety of the underneath shorts to fall back on when one ends up ass in the air after a bad round with the twirly slide.

However, the downside to the squort is the exposure of skin, any skin, especially skin like my skin that is as white as white girls get.  Last night, after looking at my whiteness all day, I ventured to Walgreen's at nine p.m. to purchase new self-tanner.  If only I had read the history.

This time I got foam, thinking it would be easier to control.  Also, I was sucked in by the "just mix the pink and white together" line on the back of the bottle.  The experience was more like I should've reckoned - massaging mousse into your ass.  Needless to say, I now look partially awesome and partially like I have some skin-ravishing disease.  Thankfully, it will wear off in a few days, giving me the opportunity to invest in some surgical gloves (this being the key to my success last time - I didn't have to worry about how long the stuff was sitting on my hands and took the time to rub it in properly) and try, try again.

In the meantime, if you see me, don't worry.  It's not catching.

I had my sonogram yesterday, and it turns out everything is completely fine.  Once again proving that women's health is more of an art than a science, there is no explanation for why I had such an odd month. My OB, who dropped the little angel's placenta on the floor while I was giving birth (lending the "birthing suite" the look of a Soprano's set), sat there with his white athletic socks pulled all the way up and his Nike running shoes clearly displayed and told me "things just go haywire after thirty."

The sonographer concurred.  "I don't know how many times women come in here and say they've been just regular as clockwork, then all of the sudden there they are, bleeding like a stuck pig for no reason at all.  It happens a lot.  It happened to me," she said.

I searched for more answers.  Did they think I miscarried?  It's possible, they said.  But I did take that pregnancy test that came out negative.  Did they think I had tumors?  No, they said.  You saw the sonogram.  (Of course, to me, the sonogram always looks like a study in grays more than a clear picture of ANYTHING.)  Did they think my birth control was still working?  Ah, they said.  Maybe we should switch it. 

First he said he could give me a pill that I had to take every day at the EXACT same time.  Not taking it at the EXACT same time would result in "breakthrough."

I asked why the hell anyone would want a pill like that?

Then he said he could give me Nuvaring, but that it's too weird for some people.  There are very few things that are too weird for me.  I asked what happens if it falls out.  He pulled up his socks.

Dr. M.:  "If it falls out, you just wash it off and pop it back in.  Presto."

Weird. 

But then he said it's the lowest-dosage hormone available.

Awesome. 

So I brought this thing home.  My beloved examined it closely, completely baffled as to why I would accept such a thing.  Men.  I explained the alternative is for him to wear the little raincoat on his pee pee for the rest of our lives, because I was sick of remembering to take the little white pills every day.  The thought of the little raincoat snapped him back to reality and remembering, as he rightfully should, that he should have a Coke and a smile and shut the fuck up, because I not only have dealt with my feminine issues for the past twenty or so years, but I also carried his beautiful little red-headed daughter to term then pushed her out while he stood by helplessly.  Every once in a while I have to remind him that physically? I've had the harder job.  It more than equals the fact that I have never mowed the lawn.

Anyway, so now I have this crazy thing.  And you are all probably horrified that I just discussed all this icky body stuff with the Internet.  However, no one EVER told me that your hormones can make your body go all wack-funky for no reason at all just because you've ticked over the magic 3-0.  So Internet?  Consider yourself informed.  'Cause I love you.

I woke up this morning to the little angel bonking me in the head with her cup.  Two nights ago, she woke up at three and I ended up sleeping on her floor until five.  That sucked.  Last night, she woke up at three again. I decided to take her down to the couch, because lately my strategy for conquering her sleep problems has been to make it all about me and my sleep.  Ironically, this strategy has worked better than Ferber or Sears.  I call it "Mine."

She slept pretty well until about five, when she commenced with the head-bonking.  I thought about drop-kicking her across the living room, but I am a nice person and would never do such a thing.  But I did think about it for a millisecond.  I was having a good dream. 

As I walked to the fridge to get her some milk, I noticed that my throat hurt really, really bad and all of my muscles felt as though they were encased in Polly Pockets rubber clothing.  This does not bode well for the rest of the day. I decided not to think about it until I woke up late, asked my beloved why he hadn't woken me up, and he said he'd been yelling for me to wake up for thirty-five minutes.  Hmm.  Didn't hear him.

Today is the little angel's Jog-a-Thon for the Emerald City. I can't make it, because I have a meeting with my new boss at the same time.  I feel bad - it would be soo worth the head-bonking to watch her jog around the school parking lot.  Alas, I'm here at work with a sore throat and Polly Pockets legs and have several Important Meetings That Can't Be Missed.  And a sonogram, because that thing that wasn't supposed to happen at that time this month kept happening for THIRTEEN DAYS.  So, there may be Fun Health News today, as well. We'll see.

I think I'll go find someone I don't like and bonk them on the head with my water bottle now.  I am a big believer in paying it forward.

Gah.

Relationships.  They are so hard.  I have a few loved ones going through some rough times with relationships, and it’s reminded me of all the evil men I’ve loved before, and some that I didn’t love at ALL but I continued to date for whatever reason.

My worst blind date was set up by my friend Sheila in Chicago. I haven’t seen Sheila in more than ten years, so I doubt we need to protect her anonymity. She set me up with a guy that worked in her company’s graphic design department. He was part-time there, and the rest of the time he worked in a record store on Michigan Avenue. I walked down to meet him for our afternoon date wearing khaki shorts, an orange tank top and clogs. (Do not question my fashion sense – that detracts from the story – but the outfit is important to the plot.)

The plan was to go to an art museum downtown then go to dinner.  After that, we’d see. 

Dating Lesson One:  Do not allow the first date to be open-ended.  This guarantees you will be stuck with a loser for upwards of six hours.

The art museum was closed for renovation, so we decided to go to his house so he could change out of his record store uniform (you think??) and go to dinner.  It turned out that he lived with a one-eyed cat, a stripper and a guy who was smoking the world’s tallest water bong when I walked in the door.  The guy with the bong was eating a huge plate of ground beef.  My date was pissed that the roommate was doing either the smoking or the eating of the beef without him.  I sat down on the couch to wait for him while he changed, and that’s when the stripper walked out dressed for work.  The one-eyed cat sidled up next to me. He smelled like Mary Jane. My date asked me if I minded if he smoked. I thought he meant cigarettes. I was wrong. After he’d puffed a few, he put his head in my lap and told me his therapist said he was ready for a relationship again.

I don’t know why I didn’t run screaming at this point. Probably because I wasn’t even exactly sure where I was. This guy lived about five neighborhoods south from my Lakeview apartment.  We went to an Indian restaurant. He ordered the fish. I ordered vegetables, being a vegetarian at the time.  When his fish arrived, it looked a little like Don Knox.  My date was so completely freaked by his food making eye contact that he proceeded to a) eat all of my food and b) tell me he was out of cash.  I paid for our meal.

We went back to his apartment and picked up two of his friends.  The male friend was wearing a leather dog collar. The female friend had immigrated from somewhere in Asia and spent about ten minutes telling me she had a tattoo of the goldfinch, the state bird of Iowa, on her ass.  We went to a club downtown called Drink. It’s a club, with beautiful people and really expensive drinks and house music.  Let’s recall two facts about this story:  1) my date had no money and 2) I was wearing khaki shorts, an orange tank top and clogs.  I did actually run screaming at this point, but in order to get home (I was out of money after buying him and his friends two drinks each), I had to let him give me a ride. He’d grown up on the north side and gave me a guided tour of his old neighborhood and elementary school. I had him drop me off in front of an apartment building that wasn’t mine, walked home, and called Sheila, threatening to kill her if she ever set me up again.

Dating is rough. I feel for you girls out there.

We leave on Saturday morning for my mother's annual Easter celebration.  We would leave earlier, but that would mean witnessing the chaos that is my mother preparing for the Easter celebration.

She begins months in advance, cleaning sections of the house, baking complicated things "from scratch," cooking scary-sounding things like "hamballs."  All of this must be done in preparation for the twenty-plus family members, family members' girlfriends and boyfriends (the young people are all married - it's the grandparents that are dating) and other hangers-on and stragglers that she invariably invites and next to whom I have to sit.

I feel for her.  Really, I do.  The time I hosted Thanksgiving for about half of my beloved's huge family plus my parents, I thought I was going to die from the stress.  Of course, then I was newly married and the stove broke.

However, I also think she's a victim of her own perfectionism.  Hell, at the little angel's first birthday party, I hosted more people than at my own wedding.  But I didn't try as hard as my mother does.

My mother's Easters are something to behold.  There are special treats for the kids.  An Easter-egg hunt.  Homemade goodies galore.  Special plates.  Special decorations.  A sparkling house.  Tablecloths. 

In other words, stuff that I would never do.

I feel for her, I do.  She throws a hell of a party.  And for the last two years, she's thrown in a birthday party for the little angel on top of all this.  But it does make her cackling, stress-induced, don't-you-dare-show-up-on-Friday-night batshit.  Because that is what trying to be the perfect mother will do to you. Beware, Grasshopper.

Sorry, Ma.  I had to do it.