it ain't easy being saucytart

The Gentle Art of Distraction

Spring is the time of year when Saucytart practices the fine arts of distraction. She's feeling bereft of her usual mooring.  Rudderless.

It's not that she isn't getting enough done or that what she's doing isn't gratifying.  But Saucytart feels like she simply needs more, more, more. That what she's accomplished is just not good enough.

She's reminded of something she tells Snudge when he's being hard on himself.  You wouldn't treat a friend this way, so why are you so mean to yourself, she asks.

Saucytart is taking her own advice, being kinder and gentler with herself.

That means taking the occasional deviation from the warp and woof of her daily comings and goings.  Lately she detours from her usual path home, stopping to smell  (or more likely photograph) the proverbial roses along the   Occasionally, she puts off until tomorrow what she can do today.  And lots more often she doesn't work on weekends. 

It's a very good and necessary thing.

In the Right Place at the Right Time

Last night Saucytart and Snudge were waylaid on the way home.

First, Grandaddy got lost at Atlantic Terminal.  But, as luck would have it, he was found in one piece.  He's in his 70s and fit, but still, one doesn't want to lose him in BK. 

Second, after a nice meal in the city with Grandaddy and the Assistant Dean, where Saucytart's hives made a reappearance (she should not have been gloating that they were gone), the happy pair headed back to BK.  Saucytart was annoyed that they were delayed by a detour to find a bathroom as it was late already and Snudge should have planned ahead.  And then the trains were all out of whack -- a shooting at Utica Avenue, their stop.

As luck would have it, they were offered a ride from the bus stop by a nice older woman whose husband drove over to pick her up.  They were home just before nine.

Everything made sense then. The strings that pull the universe kept Saucytart and Snudge out of harms way.  If there hadn't been a lost Grandaddy and a sidetrip to the bathroom, Snudge and Sauytart might have walked right into the fray.

Obama Is A Long Leg Mack Daddy

Saucytart loves Obama.  So she and her Double Ds are the very evil that Pastor James Manning rails against in his YouTube video, "Obama's Bra 54 Double D."

She is a trashy white woman.  She is an Obama girl.

The good pastor calls Obama's father an "African in heat father" who "went a-whoring after a trashy white woman."   In the next breath he says, Obama was "born trash."  Very quickly he segues to Bill Clinton, who while a man who has done great good for many people, is ethically-challenged and short on personal integrity. Pastor Manning's primary concern here is that black people do not forget who helped them build up their community with millions of dollars.

Pastor Manning is the worst sort of divisive hypocrite. He attacks his own people for their short comings, he attacks whites for their racism, and yet he has no problem  gleefully taking the millions of dollars that the white devil offers his community for its development. 

He is an African American racist who is as despicable as any white racist.   Manning maligns Obama for being the product of an interracial marriage.  Unfortunately for Manning, and his white supremacist alter-egos, interracial relationships,  miscegenation, is here to stay.  This is the future of the world, has always been a component of world history, and it is never going to be any different.

Instead of fighting it, instead of forcing children of mixed lineage to choose between two racial identities, we need to embrace the whole person. Asking a person to choose between their parents is asking them to hate themselves.  Saucytart's son is Nepalese and Caucasian.  She would never dream of telling him that he is white not East Asian or vice verse.  He is both and he has access  to both worlds, which makes him a richer person.

Take Your Naps on Your Own Time

Saucytart knows the world is not always fair.

But she is truly annoyed when it happens to her.

She is not perfect, but she is a good person and she tries hard (okay, not always, but most of the time).

Her knickers are in a knot because she had a really unfair evaluation of her teaching abilities. Her observer fell asleep, which, yes, she knows, sounds bad.  But if you are asleep, how can you judge anyone's performance?

Teaching writing is not always exciting -- lots of fireworks, bells and whistles.  It is work, just like a math course or a geography course is work. And results, often -- although not always -- are directly proportionate to input.  The theory "garbage in, garbage out" would apply here.  Saucytart is not a babysitter and a hand holder.  If students do not come to class prepared, then it's damn hard to engage them.

So Tenured Professor Needs-A-Nap was lukewarm in her assessment -- neither glowing nor particularly unfavorable.  But really, what can you say if you're nodding in and out.  Her main comment, unsubstantiated by specific evidence, was that she saw no writing instruction.

Can't see when you're snoozing.  Physically impossible. While she was sleeping Saucytart was explicating a text for students to use as a mentoring device. Oh, that's not teaching writing. That's talking.

Right. 

Unfortunately for Saucytart, she must consider the consequences of telling the truth.  If she rebuts and says the prof was asleep on the job, she has made an enemy within the department (and as a bottom-feeding adjunct, she needs friends, not enemies).  She can still rebut without mention of the nap, which she intends to do.

She has also a suspicion that her performance as a Caucasian instructor in a predominantly ethnic school is perhaps more closely scrutinized.  There ain't no such thing as color blind (no matter which race pretends they don't see distinctions in complexion, they are all lying).  If everyone were color blind, there would be no discussion of race in the current presidential election, for example. No one would care if Barack is black enough or that his mother is white, etc.  They'd merely ask: can he do the job?

So when Saucytart's peer looks at her, it's not really as a peer. It's through several lenses distorted by professional class as well as race.  She sees Saucytart as a junior colleague by virtue of her lack of Ph.d. and her lack of tenure, and she sees Saucytart as a woman distinct from herself by virtue of her race.

Sigh.  Saucytart needs to get over it and move on.

asleep at the wheel

Saucytart usually feels a chipper 12 years old.  But this week, she finally realized that she is, indeed, nearing an actual mid-life crisis.

The first sign is a big one: menopause.  She knows she is of a certain age and this is natural, but Saucytart is just not feeling it.  She can't even wrap her head around it.  She's emotionally a tween.

The second is that when she's sick, she actually does what normal sick people do: stays home and sleeps. Of course, she is rarely sick, which means she doesn't get this luxury often.  Still, her inner child has to ask:  what are you doing sleeping in the middle of the day?

Go figure. 

Chocolate Cures Everything -- Almost

Snudge still believes in the Easter Bunny. And so does Saucytart.

She's looking forward to the Godiva (or Gotta-vas, as Snudge adorably says) and the Neuhaus goodies the little pink bunny is bringing this weekend.

Chocolate cures almost everything that ails you.

Broken hearts are healed miraculously with a box of very expensive and scrump-diddly-umptious chocolates.

Scraped knees are instantly pain-free with the application of noir chocolat intense, here meaning 70% or better.

Better sex through Nutella.

Friendships repaired over cups of hot chocolate.

Lonely, bored, apathetic, moody, mad, sad?  Chocolat, cioccolato, chocolate! 

Good and good for you!

you can't always get what you want

Saucytart has always heard that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

This age-old adage does not, however, apply to dating.

In the ambivalent world of single-dom, it's just the opposite. The bird in hand is, well, too easy. 

Recently saucytart decided to cut loose the things which dragged her down.  Among the extra baggage were the men who couldn't commit to a cup of coffee.  Now saucytart is not interested in permanency, thank you. But she believes if a person can't make something as harmless as a coffee date, she's better off moving along little dogie to the next.

There is a lid for every pot, as the saying goes, and somewhere out there is a woman who doesn't mind being blown off at the last minute or waiting until that spontaneous moment that somehow never happens.  Saucytart is not that woman.

She has found, much to her amazement, that having slammed the door shut, there is now a brushfire unbderfoot. The very same wishy-washy men are suddenly all over Saucytart like white on rice.

Tis a pity too,  as she's no longer interested in the least. Still, it makes for interesting observations on human nature.

You can't always get what you want, but if you try, try, try... you still won't get it.

Professor, how can I get an A in your class?

Saucytart had a nasty little migraine last week and then she found herself buried under a mound of very poorly constructed student papers. 

Her first reaction was to try to commit seppukku with her medium point red Flair pen.  Better judgment gripped her when she thought of the mess evisceration with a marking pen would leave. 

She still has 10 papers to grade, but cannot stomach another one today.  The whole day was done in by grading papers.  The break down so far: one B, a handful of Cs, a bucketload of Ds (and D- papers that should really be Fs).   

In all her years of teaching expository writing, she's never yet seen students come into the class taking it seriously, expecting it to be hard work.  For some strange reason, students think 1) writers are gifted creatures who dash off a 10-page paper in their jammies the day before it's due or 2) they somehow miraculously can pass off marshmallow fluff as research.

Oh, well.  Saucytart expects she will see lots of stunned faces Tuesday.  It's not like she gave them no fair warning or assistance. 

Reality check time.