Grrr

Rar! I've been cranky lately.

What's a cure for crankiness?

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

I think I've mentioned before that I've started working at a middle school on Fridays. I'm rapidly growing to hate it. Not because of the students - I have all sixth graders and they're absolutely cute compared to my high schoolers - but because of the situation with my room.

Speech pathologists usually get the short end of the stick when it comes to accomodations. My colleagues have worked in closets (yes, literal closets), in old bathrooms, on stairwell landings, and all kinds of other weird places. SLPs aren't the only people who get that treatment...my dad, a school psychologist, used to have to administer tests in an airlock - that space between two sets of doors. Although he remarked that it was surprisingly peaceful, that kind of treatment upsets me, and that's why I'm so frustrated about my room.

The room at that school is used two or three days a week. The other SLP uses it on Mondays, I use it on Fridays, and sometimes one of us uses it on Wednesdays to do testing. I suppose it just sits empty the rest of the time because the teachers have grown very accustomed to using it as an all-purpose spare room. They store the TV carts in there, so a few times a day people come in to take or return TVs. At least once a day I come back from getting students to find that a bunch of kids or a teacher is camped out in there doing a project, and I have to kick them out. Even though the Speech schedule is posted on the door, they're always shocked that I'm actually using the room. There's also a phone in there and the faculty have gotten used to using it for kids who need to phone home. Three times today I walked in to find someone standing there talking on the phone. Once it was a teacher, and he had quite the conversation while I sat at my desk and fiddled with papers. I thought about leaving to give him some privacy but the idea of leaving my own room so someone could use my phone grated on me.

Of course, I should be grateful for the times I can get into my room. See, I don't really have a key. I saw the vice principal about getting one and he said I didn't need one since I'm only there regularly one day a week. I have a hunch that he just didn't want to pay to have a key made. But yeah, every Friday morning I have to hunt around for a teacher or the janitor to let me into my office.

There are other things that are wrong with the room - the ancient computer, the broken-down furniture, and the large metal air vent that's constantly blowing and rattling - but the things above irritate me the most because it seems like such a lack of basic respect. I can't imagine that teachers would let kids do a group project in the principal's office just because she wasn't there, or let kids into another classroom unsupervised so they could use a teacher's phone. I can't imagine they'd think it was fine to let other teachers pushing TV carts go in and out of an occupied classroom.

Man. I need a better office.

Retail is the Reason for the Season

Mike works for a bookstore company, and the other day he sent out an e-mail newsletter to customers announcing an upcoming sale and highlighting certain merchandise. Today he got an email back from an extremely irate customer saying that she'd never shop at the bookstore again because in the newsletter the sale was referred to as a "Holiday Sale" instead of a "Christmas Sale." She pointed out that Christmas was the holiday in question, that although Hanukkah and Ramadan were also at the end of December it was mostly Christians who were out getting armloads of gifts. She said that she was grossly offended that they were taking Christmas out of the holiday season.

If I were to ever have the, ah, pleasure of meeting this woman in person I would like to tell her two things.

1. The other winter holiday is Kwaanza, you idiot, not Ramadan

2. As a Christian, I'm offended by Christmas sales

I know, I must be the only Christian who's actually offended by Christmas sales. While the religious right is raising its collective blood pressure over the lack of Christmas trees at retail stores and clerks' insistence at saying, "Happy Holidays!" instead of, "Merry Christmas!" I'm actually happy every time retail steps back from Christmas.

I think that we all know that the tradition of gift-giving began to emulate the three wise men who brought the baby Jesus gifts in the manger. However, in case you haven't noticed, that's just a small line in the whole Christmas story. In some books of the Bible they don't even say how many wise men there were, so this is obviously not an essential part of the story. I've been raised Catholic and never did I see a part of the Bible that says, "Go out and spend vast quantities of cash. Do this in memory of me." So let's just let go of the idea that gift-giving is a necessary part of celebrating Christmas. Besides, if you wanted to celebrate the Church's most holy day with gift giving, you'd do it on the Church's most holy day...Easter. In case you've forgotten, that's still the holiest day on the calendar.

What really gets me is that all this retail-related hoopla is just exploiting what is a religious holiday, and we let them. We encourage them. We get pissed if they don't use our holiday as an excuse to whip everyone into a consumerist frenzy. We're pretty much putting our holy feast day up on the chopping block to be hacked into little secular bits. I don't understand why the most conservative of Christians encourage this. You'd think that they'd be out telling people to get to church or give to charity, not chastising those who give a generic greeting instead of one specific to their own religion.

So go ahead and say Happy Holidays to me, and let me celebrate Christmas in my home and in my church rather than in the middle of the mall.

Christmas Cards

Just to answer Jen's question from before, yep, I did go to the doctor for my throat lump. I got a referral to an ENT. I'll make an appointment with him soon.

In the meantime, I'm going to share my tried-and-true tips for completing one of those seemingly impossible holiday tasks...mailing out those holiday cards. Just follow the steps below, and you'll be putting those cards in the mailbox in no time.

1. Thoughtfully purchase the perfect holiday cards...religious enough for the parents, secular enough for your atheist friends, and still "you."

2. Get wrapped up in holiday preparations and completely forget to send out the cards. Vow to do so next year.

3. Find the box of cards. They're still perfect. Place them on your kitchen table so they'll be within easy reach as soon as you have time to send them out.

4. Forget about them completely. Vow to send them out for Groundhog's Day. Forget that too.

5. Year Three. Vow to send out Christmas cards this year.

6. Realize you lost your perfect cards when you moved. Fuck. Get new cards at the grocery store. They have snowmen, it's good enough.

7. Bring them home. Realize you'll never get cards sent out to all your friends, your cousins, your grandparents, your aunts and uncles, and your immediate family. Pare down the list to friends and immediate family only. Briefly bless the instinct that kept you from offering to mail cards to all your husband's family and friends too.

8. Begin to make out the cards. Break your pen. Dammit.

9. Tell the cat that she cannot help and needs to leave you alone.

10. Realize that if you write personalized notes in every card you'll never get done. Just sign, "Have a great holiday season! - Christine and Mike," on each card. Rationalize that it takes the same amount of effort as stuffing a generic holiday newsletter in every envelope.

11. Hope that your stamps are valuable enough to send the cards to their destinations. Make a mental note to get a roll of nickels so you can pay back anyone who recieves a card with postage due.

12. Decide to send out holiday e-mails next year.

See? Wasn't that easy? I know you'll be on your way to fucking up your holiday cards in no time.

The Craft Wager

Today Mike and I made a craft wager. We'll each make a craft item for the other person, and the first person to finish wins. The loser then buys the winner dinner. I think it's a pretty cool bet - I'll either get dinner or an awesome handcrafted thing that Mike made.

We've already agreed on the items...I'll be working on knitting a scarf, and Mike will be working on making me an LED tank top. I'm going to start my project tonight, so I have a sort of head start since Mike doesn't have all of his materials. He thinks this is fair though, because he knows I'm a phenomenally slow knitter and also because I said it was okay for him to buy a tank top to work with instead of making one. I was tempted to get gigantic knitting needles to make my project go faster, but I decided to play fair and just stick with my regular ones.

So in a few weeks I'll update everyone and you'll see who won. At least if I lose I'll look awesome while buying dinner.