On Being the Oldest

I’m the oldest child. I’m the responsible one. Supposedly.

I’ve spent this week in new teacher orientation with about forty other new teachers in this district - most of them new graduates.  I’m the oldest new teacher. I look at all the bright shining faces and try to absorb some of their excitement, but I’ve heard it all before.  I know how to behave. I look dutifully interested.

I’m not that old, but I feel my seniority. Particularly when all those eager young teachers weren’t even born when I started my teaching career in 1982.

As I nod and smile I’m thinking about starting over. Not just in a new job, but in life.

While I sit and feign interest, I’m not thinking so much about the new job as I am thinking about being single - a term that hasn’t applied to me in forty years. I’m no longer married or otherwise attached.

It’s very strange. I thought I’d be starting over with the love of my life, but it didn’t work out that way.  These new teachers are starting from the beginning and I’m starting over.  I’m thinking about where they are and where I am but maybe we’re not so different.

They’re thinking about their new careers and I’m counting down the years I have left until I can retire. But we’re all thinking about the students we’ll meet next week and how we’ll love and nurture them and help them become the future of America.

They’re thinking about how to spend their first paychecks and I’m thinking mine’s already spent.

They’re thinking about the grown-up lives they’re about to lead.

So am I.

I’m thinking about the work I have to do being a loving parent and a loving teacher and I’m thinking a lot about the future, which isn’t as long as theirs, but holds the same opportunities.

Like maybe finding love again. That will take time. I still have time. Being in love is something to look forward to.

I’m thinking about the really good bottle of pinot noir I’m going to drink tonight.

 

If there’s one thing I know that they might not, it’s that nothing is as important as love.

And a really good glass of wine.               

                   Visit me on Twitter (@CeceliaHalbert)

The Eye of the Beholder

You couldn’t drink her pretty.

Or maybe you could.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

What if the beholder’s judgment is clouded by substances: legal, prescription, or otherwise?

Or… what if the beholder’s judgment is enhanced by them?

Yesterday the man I love and I agreed to split. Took a break. Broke up. Ended our relationship. At least for now. 

He told me that it’s possible that his judgment had been clouded, enhanced, or otherwise compromised by the pain medication he had been taking early in our relationship. He might as well have launched his fist into my gut because his words had the same effect. After nine months of non-medicated being together, he felt differently, and maybe it was the lack of meds?

That’s just what a girl wants to hear.

So last night I went out with a girlfriend. I’d had a few glasses of wine. The man on the barstool next to mine struck up a conversation - a very fun and friendly conversation. He’d had a few glasses of Zombie Dust.

He asked for my number.

I wonder if he remembers what I look like. I wonder if I remember what he looks like. I sort of do, but my judgment was clouded.

What will matter is, if and when we meet again, under less clouded conditions, we have the same fun interaction that we did last night. And if we do, then my guess is that the wine and the beer did more to facilitate the initial conversation and less to cloud our judgment and that the important thing is how the conversation progresses and how the relationship grows or doesn’t grow.

So, while the loss of love is still painful,  I’m letting that specific part of it go - the pain of thinking his love for me was a drug-induced delusion. It wasn’t the meds or lack of them. It was him. And me. And the combination thereof.

I’m pretty, whether you drink or not.


Addendum:
(because... yum.)

                   Visit me on Twitter (@CeceliaHalbert) 

Teacher Inservice or Why God Invented Wine

Disclaimer: I don’t hate administrators. I hate what they’re required and taught to do to teachers. 

As the calendar turns a page today and heads into August, teachers are faced with the blood-curdling realization that the beginning of the school year is nigh. It’s not the summer-tanned faces of yet unfamiliar students that we dread. No, nor even their accompanying parents. It’s not the smell of school glue nor glare of freshly waxed floors. No. We love our students and the sanctuary of our classrooms. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t have become teachers.

That which we fear - the horrible reality for which no education methods class in college prepared us - the single reason that teachers loathe August: 

Mandatory days of teacher inservice.

Not even the promise of coffee and donuts eases the trepidation we feel when we anticipate the hours sitting on a hard folding chair in a gymnasium looking at Power Point presentations about topics that A) anyone with common sense could read or figure out on their own in a matter of minutes or B) we already know so well we could teach a class on it or C) is the same thing we heard last year but now has a new buzz-wordy name.

Sitting on those butt-numbing chairs is awful enough, but even worse are the activities that administrators plan to get us out of the chairs. If we walk into the gym and see posterboard taped to the walls around the gym we know we’re going to be handed post-it notes on which we will have to write anonymous ideas and stick to the various posters boasting headings like “biggest worries” and “best practice.” No one will ever read those ideas. They will not be discussed again until next year’s inservice when they will be called ‘new ideas.'

Worse than the post-it note round robin is the get-your-blood-moving exercise that is more commonly known as dancing. Witness the “Tooty Ta” - the most humiliating, demeaning, ridiculous thing forced upon grown-up professionals who have countless graduate degrees and years of experience:

Just let me keep sitting on the rock-hard folding chair in this freezing, over-air-conditioned (or sweltering hot un-air-conditioned) gym, please.

This year, the agenda for our inservice is written in Understanding By Design format which I find to be the most insidious, contrary-to-critical-thinking prescription for writing curriculum ever embraced by the education profession. I wanted to throw up when I read my welcome packet. This is a tactic administrators use to get us to accept them as one of us. They want to remind us that they, too, are teachers. See? They even still know how to write lesson plans. Yay for them.

Administrators, desperate to look busy enough to warrant their salaries, sit in their offices and plan ways to 1) keep us out of our classrooms on those inservice days and 2) make themselves look important and organized. They create acronyms for every single thing they can think of until we have no idea what they’re talking about anymore because if we have to ask what they’re talking about they’ll feel superior. This must be the reason for this practice because saying the words instead of the acronym really doesn't take more time or energy. For example: PLC = Professional Learning Community. Nanoseconds between ignorance and enlightenment.

If an acronym doesn't work (i.e.- when it's a single long word instead of a group of words), an abbreviation is used instead.

My least favorite but most commonly used abbreviation is “the cum folder.” Do administrators live such sheltered lives that they don’t know what cum is? I wouldn’t want to look in anyone’s cum folder, much less put something in or take something out of it. The effort to actually pronounce the word 'cumulative' would be greatly appreciated by all.

I could go on and on but I’ll still have to go to the inservice, which this year, since I work in two different districts, will require seven days of my life that I will never get back.

But I have a job and I’m getting paid, so I’ll go and nod and smile and then I’ll go home and put some alcohol on it.

And the next week I’ll get to teach!

                   Visit me on Twitter (@CeceliaHalbert) 

The Traffic Desk and an Emergency Wine-Buying Trip

When I worked in radio a million years ago, there was a thing called ‘the traffic desk.’ The lady who worked at the traffic desk spent her days trying to fit everything into the schedule: the three minute and fourteen second long top-forty songs, commercials, news, weather, sports, public service announcements, and time for spontaneous banter between on-air personalities. I imagine that all this is done by computer now, but I don’t know for sure. Maybe there’s still a traffic desk.

I need a traffic desk at my house.

The single largest stressor in my life is trying to fit everything in. Google calendar is helpful, but only to the extent that it provides a handy visual display of my life on any electronic device I happen to be holding.

This morning I left the house at 7:30 to go to work teaching orchestra camp. When I got home at 1:00 I noticed - much to my horror as you might imagine - that I was out of wine. Mostly. There is a bottle of Charles Shaw Pinot Grigio (otherwise known as 2 Buck Chuck) sitting forlornly in the bottom corner of my wine cabinet. It doesn’t count. It’s not really wine in my humble opinion.

That I have a wine cabinet at all is ridiculous. I drink wine as fast as I buy it. (It might  be important to note that I buy wine by the bottle, not the case.)

It was noted (accurately) on Twitter that the lack of wine in my house was not only sad, but grossly irresponsible. (Thanks, Tom, for pointing that out.)

As soon as I realized my incredible incompetence in planning and organizational skills (i.e., lack of adequate wine purchasing), my brain immediately went into scheduling mode to try and figure out how to fit in a trip to any place that sells wine. I had a piano student at 1:30, so no time to go before that. I had to pick up my daughter from songwriting class at 3, then take my son to Tae Kwon Do at 4, cramming in the only 40 minutes I have all day to write, fix dinner, then go out and teach three more students, after which I was hoping to have a glass of wine on the patio before the sun goes down.

Options:

1) Stop at the store on the way to pick up my daughter from camp.

2) Run to the store next door to the Tae Kwon Do dojo while my son is in class.

3) Pick up aforementioned wine on the way home from the last lessons of the day at 8 p.m.

Option 1 was the only viable choice.

Option 2 meant that the 40 minutes I could use for writing would be eaten up by a wine buying side trip.

Option 3 meant a significant delay in drinking wine at the end of my day. Unacceptable.

And now, having made an emergency wine stop, I'm dealing with a conflict tomorrow because I have to work and my daughter needs a ride home from class and my ex-husband is out of town, so I’m having to beg for help, which I hate because I will, of course, want to return the favor and I’ll have to schedule that in somewhere next week between working, teaching, meetings, dog vaccinations and grooming, etc., etc., etc.

Which is why making sure there was wine in the house for this evening was a priority at my traffic desk today. 

                   Visit me on Twitter (@CeceliaHalbert) 

I Know What I Like and I Like Pinot Noir

I haven’t written much about wine for a while, so here goes.

A couple of days ago I stopped at Trader Joe’s to get a couple of bottles of their Viñas Chilenas Cabernet Sauvignon. It’s $3.99 and that fits my I’m-a-teacher-and-don’t-get-paid-in-the-summer budget and I can drink it. It’s not bad.  In fact, in a blind taste test, I’d guess it was more like $9.99.  So I picked up a few bottles.

Of course, while I was there I had to see what else was on the shelves and lo and behold I found some Castle Rock Willamette Valley Pinot Noir. My heart did a little leap. $11.99. Sure, I could have 3 bottles of the cab for that, but I splurged on a bottle of the pinot because it’d just been a long time since I enjoyed a nice bottle of pinot noir and I wanted to really enjoy a bottle of wine instead of just drinking one. So I put back 3 bottles of the cab and hugged the pinot noir tight to my breast and headed for the checkout counter.

By the way - I have consulted several authorities on the capitalization of varietals, but there is not a consensus. Most agree that if the varietal is attached to a proper name (Castle Rock Pinot Noir), then it’s capitalized, but if it’s by itself, it’s not, so I’m going with that. I didn’t want the inconsistencies in the capitalization to distract you from the meat of this post. Oh, but now you’re thinking about meat.

Whatever.

Pinot noir (beginning of sentence capitalization) is a fussy grape, but I don’t have to tell you that. You’ve seen the movie or read the book that single-handedly caused the rise of pinot noir and the fall of merlot. The problem is that those fussy grapes don’t grow well just anywhere and not every wine maker is capable of turning them into the unbelievably yummy nectar that I love so much.

So - there are a lot of really bad pinots out there and even a bottle of Castle Rock Mendocino isn’t worth my money for two dollars less than the Willamette Valley bottle, but that 11.99 WV bottle rivals many over $20. It’s got that heavenly nose (note the fancy wine-speak) and the subtle complexities (I’m nauseating even myself at this point) that make a good pinot noir good.

A bad pinot noir (and there are many) has no complexity, tastes like diluted Nyquil, and smells like Kool-aid that’s been sitting in the sun too long. Most pinot noirs under about $16 fall into that category aren’t drinkable in my humble-certainly-not-a-wine-expert opinion.

I can find plenty of cabernet sauvignon under $10 that I can drink, but it’s not the same experience. It’s drinking wine - not the sipping, savoring, enjoying every last drop wine that a decent pinot noir is.

As an endnote, because I can - because it’s my blog…  I’ll tell you also that I picked up a bottle of $4 wine at Whole Foods last week. It was AWFUL. El Sancho Escudero Spanish Red Wine. I know. I should’ve known by the label and the price, but the display was enticing and for four bucks, I figured I’d give it a shot. Bad decision. Steer clear.  It’s wine-flavored water.

So ends todays wine-related blog post. Happy Friday. Enjoy something yummy.

Cheers!

                   Visit me on Twitter (@CeceliaHalbert) 

When Worlds Collide

This is my view at this very moment - as I write what was supposed to be my Thursday blog post.

It’s Friday. It’s 2:30 in the afternoon, 78 un-humid degrees and on the western edge of the perfectly blue sky is the faintest wisp of a cloud that might eventually drift overhead on the ever so pleasant breeze. 

Days like this are few and far between in Chicago and I intend to enjoy every second. Today all is right in my world.

The weather might hold out for another day before the oppressive heat and humidity return, forcing me indoors where I reluctantly will flip the tiny little switch on the wall that drains money from my checking account into Commonwealth Edison’s coffers.  With no escape valve, the pressure will build inside the house as the teenagers and I collide against each other in disputes over the television, the computer, what he said, what she said…

But that’s not today. Today I’m happy.

I’m happy because my two worlds met face-to-face last night - without drama, without fighting, without bad manners.

Sidebar - teenage daughter just walked out to the patio to inform me that in the refrigerator full to the brim of fruits, vegetables, meats, and cheeses….  there is “nothing to eat.”

I will remain calm.

I will remain happy.

She does not have the power to ruin my day.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Last night, my two worlds - the world in which I am a mom and the world in which I am my boyfriend’s girlfriend - last night those two worlds met in neutral territory under a starlit sky, underscored by the Chicago Symphony and Ludwig van Beethoven and I lived to write about it.  We even held hands, my boyfriend and I, and there was not one snide remark, nor roll of a teenage eye.

This is progress.

I think.

Or it might just be as rare as a perfect summer day in Chicago in which case I’m going to write about it and remember it and wonder why it just can’t be like this all the time.

But…  if the weather was perfect every day and if the children acted with reason, there would be much less need for wine in my house.

That there is need for wine in my house is a joy in itself.

                   Visit me on Twitter (@CeceliaHalbert) 

Happy Birthday, America!

My friends know how much I hate holidays. I despise, loathe, detest, and abhor holidays. Anxiety and dread build far in advance and in direct proportion to the glut of advertising related to the specified day. If, however, you withheld my wine until I chose a favorite one, I would have to say it's Independence Day.

Rare is the person who is offended when you wish him (or her) a happy holiday on the 4^th of July. I would imagine that perhaps some Native Americans don’t love this holiday and that’s understandable. It’s interesting to imagine what might’ve happened in North America had Columbus not gotten lost, but that’s a whole ‘nother topic.

The British seem to have gotten over the big break - up. You'd think there would be some resentment there, but we’re all good now. My UK friends even wish me a happy Independence Day and one such friend has even visited here to experience the event in person. 

I love that there’s no big debate between the religious right and the agnostic left about the use of the word ‘holiday’ for the 4^th of July as there is on other occasions. There’s nobody telling me to put the Christ back in Independence. In fact, there’s independence in Independence.

It's okay to say "God Bless America" if you want to without fear of offending anyone except perhaps an atheist, but even atheists seem to brush that greeting off with good nature on the Fourth of July. Most people are happy to sing or listen to patriotic music on Independence Day, even if there’s a reference to God. The God of Independence Day seems to cross borders and speak different languages and subscribe equally to different theologies. 

Speaking of patriotic music - I still don’t quite understand why the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky  is so popular on America’s birthday. It wasn’t even written with the American War of 1812 in mind. It was written to commemorate a battle in 1812 between France and Russia. But we Americans like the cannons at the end, I guess, and it’s a pretty rousing piece of music that pairs well with explosions in the air and alcohol on the ground, which brings up reason number two why I like the 4th of July.

Reason number two: alcohol consumption is encouraged. Where I live, there is a hundred-year-old parade that I haven’t missed since I moved to town nine years ago. We claim our territories along the curbs with tarps and plastic chairs a day in advance and on the morning of the 4^th we set out tables on our lawns to hold brunchy food and bottles of champagne and orange juice. Then, dressed in our red, white, and blue, with tiny American flags in our hands, we sit in our chairs along the curb sipping mimosas and watching the fire engines, the Shriners, the marching bands, and the politicians walk buy while our kids dive into the street after Jolly Ranchers and Tootsie Rolls.

Because it’s summer.  That’s reason number three. Who doesn’t like a holiday that happens in the warmth and light of summer instead of the cold and dark of fall and winter? Okay… I know one person, but he’s an anomaly.

And lastly, I love the 4^th of July because I’m not expected to ditch my friends and travel somewhere far away to be sequestered with my family. I can hang out with people I like and I don’t have to get them gifts and they don’t have to get me a gift and there’s no pressure - no stress. The only stress-inducer is deciding what side dish I should bring to the pot-luck, and that’s pretty mild in comparison to finding the perfect gift or wondering if we’re exchanging gifts and if we’re exchanging gifts, how much should I spend and will they like what I get them or will they re-gift it and I just can’t afford that whole gift-giving thing anyway, so it’s stressful.

So I like the Fourth of July because it’s just a happy celebratory day.

So - Happy Birthday, America!

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