toddlerspit

One of my favorite things right now is Zack Kurland's book Morning Yoga Workouts.  You can choose from a bunch of workouts of varying intensities and lengths, which is perfect if you don't have time to squeeze in a full practice but want to stretch or center or whatever.  I do them every night (so much for morning workout).  If it's Eric's turn to put Addie down, I get to do an hour's worth.  If it's my turn, I'll just do twenty minutes.

Addie's been doing yoga with me for a long time.  Well, not "with."  Alongside.  And not really "yoga."  But more like non-stop chatter and fidgeting.  Sometimes I'll abandon my practice and just make up a kid routine that we do together.  But other times, I just let her ramble on beside me while I try to move.  It goes like this.

"Mommy, can I do yoga with you?"

"Mmm-hmmm."  Exhale, inhale, mountain, standing forward bend.

"I'm just going to roll this mat out here right alonside yours and do yoga with you."

"Mmm-hmmm."  Exhale, inhale, upward-facing dog, downward-facing dog.

"Cause I'm really good at yoga.  Except I do kid yoga and you do mommy yoga.  But first I'm just going to roll myself up in my mat like a burrito.  Mommy, can you roll me up like a burrito?  Then I can be all cozy?  And can you get me my babies?  Then we can be all cozy in here together?  And you'll be the grandma bunny, and I'll be the sister bunny, and there will be baby bunnies?  Bor, no!  I'll be the mommy fairy unicorn princess, and you'll be the baby fairy unicorn princess who does yoga, and we will have three sisters?"

"Mommy's doing yoga, Addie.  You'll have to go get your babies by yourself."  Exhale, inhale, lunge, standing forward bend. 

"I guess I don't need my babies.  Now I'm going to do yoga with you.  What's that pose you're doing, mommy?"

"This one's called Warrior, Addie.  See how straight and strong my arms are?"

"I see.  But it doesn't look very hard.  I'm going to do my favorite yoga.  It's hard yoga.  It's called 'Breathe and Calm Down Your Body.'  No, I call it the 'really body calmer.'  See?  All you do is put your foot up like this, and then you can even lick your toes if you want!"

"Addie!  Gross!  We shouldn't put our feet in our mouths!  How did you get your leg up that high?"  Exhale, inhale, crouching mommy, stretching toddler.

"But I can also do this one, mommy!  Look!  I put my head down like this, and stick my leg out and my arms out...oops!  I tooted, mommy!"

"Ew, Addie!  I'm trying to breathe deep!"  Exhale, inhale, giggling mommy, tooting toddler.

"Also, Mommy?  What is that bag on your tummy?"

"What bag?"

"This one--the one on your tummy!"  Grabs mommy's belly roll.

"Oh.  That's my yoga bag, honey.  It helps keep me balanced." 

Exhale, inhale, mommy-gives-up, toddler-wins.

Namaste, Addie.

I'm alive, I'm alive, I swear it!  I said I was going to write more often, didn't I?  And then I completely disappeared, didn't I?

I'm reminded of that old, old commercial for The Ricky Lake Show where a sassy audience member stands up, head bobbing, and points at the cocky guest, saying, "Someone done lied to you, sister!"

I done lied to you, sisters.

Or, rather, I was fooled.  Fooled into thinking summer had somehow begun.  Or rather, fooled into thinking this summer might be somewhat like summers past, with free time and lolling about.  You non-academics can roll your eyes all you want (we WORK all summer, you want to say.  What do you have to complain about?  Welcome to the real world, muffin!).  But it's been a transition for me, me who has been in school--literally in a school--since I was five.  Me who calculates time by the academic year and not the calendar year, me who still gets excited about buying new school clothes, me who classifies much of the world into "teachers," "students," "colleagues," "staff," and "administrators."  Me not used to working, working, working, no break.

But it hasn't really been all work.  It's just been so nuts it has felt like that.  Since school got out at the beginning of May (see?  There I go again!), I got that article out (tentatively accepted, thank you very much!), went to Tampa, presented another paper at a conference, had family come visit, went to Vegas for a wedding, went to Rhode Island for a week, became full-time single mom when Eric went to Seattle for a week, scraped all the popcorn off of my bedroom ceiling (hate, hate, HATE whoever thought that was a smart idea, to put that crap up there, full of asbestos and dust and mucky-muck) and painted the whole thing a color Addie sweetly refers to as the "color of Nolie's poo."  Also got an MRI on my knee (don't know results yet), my mom has had horrendous knee surgery herself, and Addie's going in for tubes and a sinus sweep on Wednesday.  Most importantly, the stress and weirdness of the last year have somehow dissipated, been washed away, mellowed in the time I've had away from campus.  Hallelulajah for that.

For July, I need to revise the article that has been tentatively accepted, revise another, revise the conference presentation into an article, get a book prospectus out, read another friend's (amazing) book of poetry, and design two courses and a lecture. 

Easy peasy.  Summertime, and the livin's nothing but smooth sailing, baby.  We teachers have it good.

Crap.

Anyway, there's a bit of bragging going on here, too, right?  I'm not really complaining.  Because I'm proud of myself to be working so hard at things I love, and proud to be accomplishing all this, much as I'm a bit overwhelmed and sick of it all.  And I know most of you reading this work your asses off all the time, so you ain't got any pity for me anyway.  And, too, I've been taking a whole lot of time for myself.  Been going to the gym, doing yoga, soaking in the gorgeous beaches of Rhode Island, glorying in the greenness outside my windows, getting massages, cooking, watching tv, reading, spending much time with the girls (completely guilt free, I might add) and generally ignoring my email, this blog, and anything else that doesn't seem completely necessary.   So, I'm good.  Living a full, engaged, slightly nuts life.  But good.

I'm going to start writing more now.  I promise.  :).

I had to be an adult last night.  Which I hate.

It's the last week of classes, and I've really been looking forward to ending film class, because my students created these really amazing film projects, and I was feeling proud of them and of my self for pulling it all together.  All the students (and some of their friends) met last night, in an auditorium, to share their projects with one another and to say goodbye.  I thought it was a pretty special moment, and was feeling touched and pleased by the students' commitments to their projects and to one another.

Of course, it was not a perfect night.  Oh, no.  Because one of my students, I discovered at the end of class, decided to come to class completely wasted.  He and his team had completed their film on--get this--binge drinking at our university, and I suppose he took the opportunity to do some extra research before class.  His team presented early on, and though I vaguely noticed they were all a little pink-cheeked, there were no great warning signs.  No beer breath, no slurring, no weaving.  They all seemed fine.

Well, three of them were fine.  By the time class was over and everyone else had filed out, one student in the binge drinking group had passed out and was vomiting on himself.  In the back of my classroom.

Remember when I posted a long time ago about how I kind of freak out in situations where I know I'm supposed to take some course of action, but can't decide on which one?  Like when one of the cats brings a half-dead mouse into the house and I'm supposed to decide if I should kill it and put it out of its misery, or pretend it doesn't exist and let the cats just torture it to death, or let it outdoors to just die painfully by itself?  Or like when I'm in a toy store and am supposed to buy a gift but there is so much color and plastic and light and I just end up in a panic attack?

Right.  Last night was like that.  I really would have liked to pretend I didn't see anything, that I didn't see these four boys in the back of the room, three of them holding the fourth's head up so that he didn't fall over and give himself a concussion.  But I did see it, and as the adult in the situation, had to choose some course of action.  There was no space for panic attacks.  They weren't an option.  I had to do something.

But not immediately.  I sort of hung out in the back of the room for a few minutes, even though these boys were saying they would take care of it and I could go.  "No," I said, "I have to make sure you guys leave the room.  Can you get him out of here?"  That was my initial lame defense, that I didn't want to leave a puking, unconscious kid in one of our nice, smart classrooms.  That I would get in trouble.

So, they hauled his limp body outside on to the grass, and a few things quickly became clear:

1)  The three mostly sober kids didn't really know the drunk kid outside of class.  He had been drinking all day, long before he met up with them, so they had no idea whether he usually drank that much, or if he had taken anything else.  So there was no way of knowing if this was something he did a lot (and therefore not so much cause for concern) or something he never did (which meant his body might be experience an unusual shock, which is worth a lot of concern).

2)  Though they were indicating otherwise, these kids really were waiting for me to make some sort of decision, whether it was to tell them to pull a car around and haul the kid off or to call campus security.  They needed an adult to intervene, and I was, as the person of authority, that adult.  Which means I'm no longer cool.  But whatever.  That's beside the point.  I haven't been cool for a long time (and maybe never was).

3)  I was having multiple and contradictory reactions to the event:  I was annoyed that this kid would do this in my class on such a special night; I was terrified for him in a strongly, weirdly maternal way; I was strangely disconnected at the weird irony of it all; I was resentful at being made the adult.  Once I had a moment to parse through all this and figure out what was going on, I called campus security, who called an ambulance, which took the kid away.

I have no idea if he is okay today.  I assume he is.  I assume I was overly cautious in having the ambulance come.  But in this instance, being adult meant making a decision that erred on the side of caution.  This was a useful experience to go through.  I think I'm probably better for it.  I think I might react differently next time I'm confronted with a mouse-in-the-house-type dilemma.  Maybe I won't have a panic attack.  But I still wish that kid hadn't puked and passed out in my class.