Christmas 2008
Dear Family and Friends,
Happy holidays! I don’t know about you, but I feel like throwing some shoes! (If you haven’t seen the Iraqi reporter throwing shoes at George Bush, check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uIj0YvDBKE). My list of who I’d like to throw shoes at: executives who continued their multimillion dollar salaries and perks without skipping a beat while working class taxpayers “bailed out” their companies; those who rail against government spending and regulation until it’s time to hold out their hands for one of the largest federal giveaways in history, for themselves and their insufficiently regulated companies. Well, I guess I’d better stop. Especially since my shopping excesses this year were so embarrassingly huge.
I don’t feel like I have much to say this year. The more time goes by, the fewer funny things there are to write about. Oh, for the days of funny little kids!
I’m teaching 6th grade this year, and my half-time job finally feels a lot easier. It’s probably taking only 35 hours a week rather than 60 like last year. I’m only onsite two days a week, and can do all the planning and paperwork at home in the early hours, which is good. I’m really enjoying lesson planning: math is easy, I’m learning a lot from teaching earth science, loving ancient history and world religions as always, and have finally found a fantastic writing program (www.empoweringwriters.com), after many years of searching.
Best student compliments I’ve gotten (actually overheard):
Student 1: “This class goes by so much faster than any of my other classes. It always seems short.”
Student 2: “I know, but it’s actually the same length of time.”
Student 3: “I wish it was longer!”
Mike’s year included managing a hockey team last winter, which was a lot of thankless work, with a few people acting really badly. Our summer was dominated by Mike and his sister having to empty out and sell their mother’s mobile home, and Mike becoming her conservator. She is over 90 years old, and lives in a wonderful nursing home called Windsor Gardens in National City.
Nick decided to change his major from architecture to computer science. He dropped his classes at Mesa Community College last semester, and will start again with his new major in January. He spends his time working at the San Diego Ice Arena, and with his vocation as administrator of a “clan” of the online role-playing game, Team Fortress 2. He’s learning a lot about programming and web design from his work with the clan. Nick and a friend took a “college visit trip” during the summer, traveling as far as Berkeley, but for now Nick is still in San Diego.
Jake is taking all AP or honors classes in his junior year at Point Loma High School, which is a huge load. He’s still playing piano, and has also taken up electric guitar, which he plays in a band called Aurora’s Lamp, with Geoff Willis and Sam Taylor. He describes their band as “Indie …” He also likes to listen to jazz, and attend concerts at Soma with his friends. Jake and Geoff worked as maintenance assistants at the Park Manor Hotel over the summer, and we took a fun summer trip with the Willises to check out southern California colleges. Jake also took a memorable summer trip with the Aaron Price fellows group, visiting Sacramento, and rafting down the American River.
We transferred Nina to Correia Middle School this year, and it has been a rough road. She is doing well academically, but the entrance of a new pretty girl into Correia apparently sent massive shock waves through the culture of the reigning “queen bees,” resulting in a hate campaign against her. This has included everything from throwing food at her, to ridiculous but vicious insults to her face and anonymously over the internet, to threatening to poison her (the police were called in). Nina has hung in there, been decent while others were cruel, made some friends, and I trust that things will improve. On the happier side, Nina likes to shop, shop, shop, go to movies with friends (such as Twilight multiple times), and has attended some glitzy bar and bat mitzvahs with her old friends from High Tech.
Our big “family bonding” activity is watching The Gossip Girl together on Monday nights. What a terrific show (though you’d probably have to watch it from the beginning to fully appreciate it)! Nick also watches a lot of cooking shows plus Metalocalypse, Jake specializes in South Park and Family Guy, and Nina in The Hills. Mike and Earl either watch or go to a lot of ball games together. I still watch a lot of documentaries and listen to countless books on CD on my hour-long commutes to and from work.
Probably my favorite books this year have been Angela’s Ashes (then listened to many of Frank McCourt’s other books), The House of the Seven Gables (long-time reading goal since visiting the house it was based on, many years ago, in Massachusetts), fabulous books about Abraham Lincoln (Grant and Sherman: the Friendship that Won the War and Lincoln’s Melancholy) and Speak (with Nina; strangely prescient of her present travails).
My favorite humor piece is the online Germany Survival Bible. I started with “Hunky, Handsome, Wimpy and Weak” (story about dating German men) http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,419029,00.html and was hooked!! The Germany Survival Bible is unique. It’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen, and the strangest part is that I identify so much with all of it. The obsession with statistics and watching documentaries … the penchant for being a perpetual student … the compulsion to sort garbage … the obsession with herbal remedies and avoidance of drugs … the love of garden gnomes … I could go on and on!
Another good ethnic piece is “Hebronics” at http://www.penceland.com/hebronics.html
Next, a few “moments with the Doering family”:
The other day Mike and I got into a fight over something. Awhile later he came to my office and asked me if I was still mad. “Well … “ I said, trying to mentally compose an answer to this difficult question.
“No more mad than usual?” he offered.
“That’s exactly it!” I said. “No more mad than usual.”
We both laughed at this perfect description of our relationship. Mike has such a way with words.
Some couples vow to never go to bed angry. We have a slightly different approach: we never wake up angry. We might go to bed mad, but we always wake up full of love, because we’re too exhausted to remember fights, and even if we did, too burned out to care. We need each other.
A bright spot is that Mike and I have finally discovered something that we have in common! Mike watched the fantastic PBS series “Jewish Americans,” and learned that the Ku Klux Klan actually started with the lynching of a Jew in the South who was accused of murdering and raping a white woman. The original aim of the Klan was to terrorize Jews and Catholics as well as blacks. So both Mike’s and my ethnic groups were targets of the Ku Klux Klan! Not that this is anything to joke about …
The kids:
I think the only thing in life that Nina takes absolutely and utterly seriously is her skin care and make-up regimen. She approaches this multi-step daily routine with the precision of a surgeon and the self-discipline of a marine. Her skin is flawless and she makes sure it stays that way. I sometimes get a laugh over hearing her wail to her friends that she has “zits the size of Mt. Olympus” when there is nothing there.
Sometimes I think: I have one child who’s always playing video games, one child who’s always gone, and one child who’s always sick. Great.
Another way to look at it: when my kids are on the computer (90% of their free time), one is playing video games or administrating his “clan,” another is on myspace, and the third is browsing Craig’s List for musical equipment. Great.
Which leads to my new approach to life: try not to think. There are just too many upsetting things. I think this is the time in a parent’s life when you start to think: what did I do that was so terribly wrong? There are endless “chore fights,” endless worries about the kids. At the same time, your kids have one foot out the door, and it’s so sad to lose them.
Some additional new ways to cope with life:
Lists. I started a new list called “accomplishments.” That way, when I’m feeling unappreciated (well, especially unappreciated), I can add entries to my “accomplishments” list, and believe it or not, I feel better. Even though no one else could give a rat’s ass about everything I’m doing, it’s recorded somewhere. I only add to this list occasionally. I mean, if I felt obliged to list all my accomplishments, then it would just be another stress and pressure. I tend to add small, some might say “microscopic” accomplishments, which to me, however, are important.
Example: I learned to insert that “degrees” sign (temperature – the tiny circle) in documents. After decades of word-processing recipes on my computer, but having to leave the oven temperature at “350” rather than “350°,” this was truly exciting! Maybe you’d have to be an English teacher and/or writerly type like me to be so happy over this, or simply a perfectionist.
Another similar example: I finally learned how to capitalize someone’s first name on my cell phone’s contact list (the phone capitalizes the last name for you)! Again, after quite awhile of not knowing how to do this, not having time to read the owner’s manual, being too stubborn to ask my kids, and having a long list of non-capitalized first names, this was so satisfying! I guess the only thing worse than “no list” is an incorrect list!
Other categories of my accomplishments list are technology (learning endless new things and/or solving problems), notes or deeds of support, parenting struggles, teaching experiments and improvements, health & beauty efforts, etc. They don’t say “Man works from dawn to setting sun, but woman’s work is never done” for nothing.
I just started a new list called, “Best money I ever spent!” So far it has one entry: years ago I paid $30 (a lot at the time) for a high-capacity three-hole punch that actually works! Don’t you get disgusted with those cheap punches that will only punch a few sheets of paper, and if you get ambitious and try to punch more, they trap your paper in the punch, and when you finally give up trying to pry your paper loose with a letter opener, or slamming the frigging thing against the wall, and try to just yank your paper out, it rips it to shreds?!
And now my final topic: joys. Here are a few entries from my “joys journal” (which I started years ago to counterbalance my regular journal, in which I write about my endless problems):
I finally understand what a “function” is in math! I’ve been wondering this since junior high! I’ve known that a function is two sets of data such that there is one “y” for every “x,” but I didn’t quite get it, or more accurately, I didn’t see what was NOT a function, so that caused me confusion. Now, after internet research related to lesson planning, I can name some examples of what are not functions: any equation in which there are two or more y’s for any x’s, such as graphs of sideways parabolas, hyperbolas, and circles.
Home Depot’s motto: “You can do it. We can help.” Love that! Good motto for teaching too, and parenting, and most of life! It seems to be a trend in advertising that companies are using mottos more, and many are so good, it’s unbelievable. A few of my favorites: “Kaiser: Thrive” (not to mention their fantastic ads; see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGEnAFBWPVM), “Vons: Ingredients for Life”; “Calico Corners: Dream It. Design It. Done.” (I just started a new list!) Then there are a few that are really irritating and don’t make sense. Example: “AT&T: Your World, Delivered.” What does that mean? It annoys me every time I hear it. Or “McDonalds: I’m Lovin’ It.” Don’t love it, and that motto could apply to anything. Or the Staples’ “Easy” button. Don’t quite get it.
On another note, there is a flock of wild green parrots that apparently likes us. They frequently show up at 5:45 am, squawking and making an incredible amount of noise, and wake us up. However we feel very blessed that they favor us with their presence.
We feel much more blessed by the presence of such valued people as you in our lives.
Much love,
Daria, Mike, Nick, Jake and Nina
Daria Doering 
Leave a Reply