My weekend
Feb. 23rd, 2004 08:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xiphiasSo, I'm thirty now. And it was a relatively eventful weekend.
I was suspecting that something was up for a couple of days. I mean, there was the fact that nobody had said anything about my thirtieth birthday for a month or two. There was how antsy Lis was about getting me to fix the busted light in the downstairs front room and move furniture around to where it is supposed to go -- sorta like she was expecting company. And then there was the Costco trip where she had us pick up a flat of cola and a huge thing of maraschino cherries.
One of Mom's friends had apparently let something slip when I was talking to her several weeks before which suggested surprise-party-ness, on my birthday, which was this past Friday. Since that was an apparent accident, I did my best to forget it.
Lis had asked me to request time off on my birthday, to go to my parents' house for Shabbat dinner. When I went to write in the availability schedule planner at work to request time off, I was already in the book as having requested time off for that Friday. In somebody else's handwriting. Not too suspicious -- Lis could have called in and had someone mark me as unavailable for that spot. But-- this was the bit which made me suspicious -- I was ALSO marked in as having requested time off for that Saturday.
Of course, there was also the fact that I'd thrown a surprise party for Lis on her thirtieth. And Lis likes to return favors.
So, I'd been doing my best to not put the pieces together, so that I could be surprised. Unfortunately, the main effect that had had was to have me put off doing class prep for Sunday morning for as long as I always put it off.
Oh, right. That was something else I'd been intending to blog for a couple weeks.
Just about two weeks ago, the Tuesday before Boskone, I met with Rafi, the education director of my Hebrew school. We met at the Japanese grocery store and food court in Porter Square for lunch -- I needed to buy tofu, which is sold there for 80 cents a brick, and he needed to buy vegetarian Worcestershire sauce -- most Worcestershire sauce includes anchovies, which, as a vegetarian, he doesn't eat.
We did some lesson planning. He had really, really great ideas.
And, naturally enough, since I'm a depressed person who has problems with self-esteem, I kept hearing them as "neat things I wasn't doing." Which, I was completely aware, was entirely NOT was Rafi's point. He also knows I'm a good teacher, even if I'm basically self-taught, which means that I've got some fundamental gaps in my pedagogical skills. He just thinks, correctly, that I could be an even BETTER teacher.
In my mind, I know this is what he is saying, and that he's right. In my gut, I don't. My gut says, "See? You're a fraud. You've duped these people into paying you to be a teacher even though you don't know the first thing about it."
Well, it's true. I don't know the first thing about it. I happen to know the twelveth, thirty-eighth, and fify-first through ninety-seventh things about it, but I am missing some basics.
But, I froze. And was unable to do lesson planning for over a week. (Fortunately, that weekend was school vacation weekend in Massachusetts, and so there was no Hebrew School. Which is why I was able to make it to as much of Boskone as I was.)
And, the point is, I kept avoiding it -- and KNOWING I was avoiding it; I could feel myself physically avoiding the bag in which the notebook in which I'd taken all the notes in our meeting -- for this entire past week. Even though I suspected Lis had something planned for the weekend. Since I knew that I had that time off of work at the Harvard Club, I was going to put off class prep until that night. Sure, I had two weeks to do it in, but I was going to avoid it until the last minute. Even though I suspected that Lis had already scheduled stuff during that minute.
Anyway, Friday rolled around. I asked Mom who was going to be there for Shabbat dinner, and she said that my grandparents were coming, and most of the Koller-Foxes (that's my rabbi, her husband the Bible scholar, and their kids).
We got there, the Koller-Foxes showed up, and then my sister showed up.
See, Leila lives in Florida. So it was clear that she wasn't going to be able to be here for my birthday. She'd given me my birthday present on her last trip up, apologizing for not being able to be here on my birthday.
I was pretty impressed.
Then Lis's parents walked in.
Actually, I think Lis was more surprised than I was. Yeah, she'd been hoping to get her parents up here from Florida, too, but Lis's mother was, at the last minute, offered a chance to do some promotion of their company in England, and that's where she was. The sales convention didn't even end until Friday, so there was clearly no way that she'd be able to make it here.
See, I'm not sure why it works this way, but Lis still expects her parents to follow the laws of physics and thermodynamics. And she's known them all her life. I've only know them for maybe eight years or so, but I have no expectation that they've ever noticed that such rules apply to them.
Even so, yeah, I was surprised.
So, I got three pretty big surprises that night. The![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dadlion surprise I talked about in my last post was the biggest, and least pleasant.
I had a great time at that party, but I was vaguely disappointed that there were a lot of people that Lis hadn't invited, that I would have expected to be there. I felt a bit let down thatbrowngirl, teddywolf, tigerbright, vonbeck, and undauntra weren't there, for instance.
Anyway, that was Friday. I spent most of Saturday hanging out with my in-laws, and Sibling. Mom offered to help me with class prep, and I went through her stuff and sort of came up with an idea for a class for Sunday. It was going to take a lot of prep, though, because I had an entire sheet of Hebrew words I needed to look up the spellings to. In the late afternoon, we decided to head back to my house, because Leila hadn't ever seen it. Lis had stayed home pretty much all day to get the house presentable, in order to impress Sibling.
Oh, yeah, on the same street as my parents live, there was a field which had some very shaggy ungulates in it. My mother thought they were yaks, but Lis's father pointed out that they were actually Scottish cattle.
Okay, I know that yaks and Scottish cattle don't look much alike, but we knew that yaks existed, and we didn't know that Scottish cattle did. I mean, we knew that Scotland had cattle -- we just hadn't realized how shaggy they were.
So, we got back to our house. And walked in.
And there were people all over the place. All my grandparents, a fair selection of aunts and uncles (although remarkably short of cousins), all the lj usernames I listed above except Undauntra who was out of state,lagaz, temima, bluepapercup, probably some other people who I'm not remembering.
I looked at them, and thought, "Fuck. I doubt they'll be gone by eight. When am I going to do class prep?"
Lis, after greeting me, and asking if I was surprised, said that she'd told everyone that the party was N/A until I showed up, and now I could mix drinks. And I felt my work-persona slam down.
I looked at the table, and thought, "Need ice, tonic water, Sprite, wines, beers, well liquors need bar tools where the HELL is my setup have to start working with what I've got FUCK this is messed up I've got NOTHING I need to work with here okay I'll have to improvise what the hell do I have in inventory anyway fruits where are fruits I need a knife for garnishes what knife do I have that will work where the hell is glassware can I short-shake a plastic cup without breaking it I'll have to try anyway. . . "
So, I actually don't remember who was at the party, not entirely, not for that first part, anyway. I don't really have very many clear memories.
I pulled Lis aside at one point and said, "In the future, surprise party OR party where I'm hosting -- not both at the same time." She said, "You can relax if you want to; you don't have to keep being bartender. You can take a break." I looked over, and said, "No, I can't."
Because I couldn't.
I felt ambushed and sold-out for having to tend bar at a bar that I hadn't set up, and, in fact, had not been set up by ANYBODY who knew anything about bars.
I love tending bar. I really liked the idea of tending bar for my friends at my own birthday party -- that had been my idea originally. But, in my mind, TENDING bar includes SETTING UP a bar to tend at. And tending bar at a bar that isn't a bar and is missing such basic things as an ice scoop, bar spoon, and fruit tray -- that's just not pleasant.
And nobody in my family even knows what a bar spoon or fruit tray IS. So they certainly weren't there. And we don't own an ice scoop. . .
I did, eventually, break out of the mindset, and be able to be at my own party. But it took a while, and I was really upset that I hadn't done the planning for the bar. I felt like I was being denied the chance to show off that I'd wanted.
Most of my family only stayed for a couple hours, and, just before they started to leave, Lis brought out the cake she'd bought for the occasion.
It was a sheet cake, chocolate and vanila layers, vanilla frosting, and chocolate-dipped strawberries all around the edges. It was WONDERFUL.
In a little while,hfcougar showed up, and, after Shabbat was over, arib, ailsaek and Adam and David (husband and REALLYADORABLE son) did, too.
All of a sudden, I had an idea. I asked Ari, "Hey, how's your spelling in Hebrew?"
He said, "Fair to middlin', why?"
I said, "Can I ask you a favor?" and I made HIM spell all the Hebrew words I needed spelled.
The party broke up around midnight, I think, and I finished my class prep by 3 in the morning.
I think I'll do Sunday in another post.
I was suspecting that something was up for a couple of days. I mean, there was the fact that nobody had said anything about my thirtieth birthday for a month or two. There was how antsy Lis was about getting me to fix the busted light in the downstairs front room and move furniture around to where it is supposed to go -- sorta like she was expecting company. And then there was the Costco trip where she had us pick up a flat of cola and a huge thing of maraschino cherries.
One of Mom's friends had apparently let something slip when I was talking to her several weeks before which suggested surprise-party-ness, on my birthday, which was this past Friday. Since that was an apparent accident, I did my best to forget it.
Lis had asked me to request time off on my birthday, to go to my parents' house for Shabbat dinner. When I went to write in the availability schedule planner at work to request time off, I was already in the book as having requested time off for that Friday. In somebody else's handwriting. Not too suspicious -- Lis could have called in and had someone mark me as unavailable for that spot. But-- this was the bit which made me suspicious -- I was ALSO marked in as having requested time off for that Saturday.
Of course, there was also the fact that I'd thrown a surprise party for Lis on her thirtieth. And Lis likes to return favors.
So, I'd been doing my best to not put the pieces together, so that I could be surprised. Unfortunately, the main effect that had had was to have me put off doing class prep for Sunday morning for as long as I always put it off.
Oh, right. That was something else I'd been intending to blog for a couple weeks.
Just about two weeks ago, the Tuesday before Boskone, I met with Rafi, the education director of my Hebrew school. We met at the Japanese grocery store and food court in Porter Square for lunch -- I needed to buy tofu, which is sold there for 80 cents a brick, and he needed to buy vegetarian Worcestershire sauce -- most Worcestershire sauce includes anchovies, which, as a vegetarian, he doesn't eat.
We did some lesson planning. He had really, really great ideas.
And, naturally enough, since I'm a depressed person who has problems with self-esteem, I kept hearing them as "neat things I wasn't doing." Which, I was completely aware, was entirely NOT was Rafi's point. He also knows I'm a good teacher, even if I'm basically self-taught, which means that I've got some fundamental gaps in my pedagogical skills. He just thinks, correctly, that I could be an even BETTER teacher.
In my mind, I know this is what he is saying, and that he's right. In my gut, I don't. My gut says, "See? You're a fraud. You've duped these people into paying you to be a teacher even though you don't know the first thing about it."
Well, it's true. I don't know the first thing about it. I happen to know the twelveth, thirty-eighth, and fify-first through ninety-seventh things about it, but I am missing some basics.
But, I froze. And was unable to do lesson planning for over a week. (Fortunately, that weekend was school vacation weekend in Massachusetts, and so there was no Hebrew School. Which is why I was able to make it to as much of Boskone as I was.)
And, the point is, I kept avoiding it -- and KNOWING I was avoiding it; I could feel myself physically avoiding the bag in which the notebook in which I'd taken all the notes in our meeting -- for this entire past week. Even though I suspected Lis had something planned for the weekend. Since I knew that I had that time off of work at the Harvard Club, I was going to put off class prep until that night. Sure, I had two weeks to do it in, but I was going to avoid it until the last minute. Even though I suspected that Lis had already scheduled stuff during that minute.
Anyway, Friday rolled around. I asked Mom who was going to be there for Shabbat dinner, and she said that my grandparents were coming, and most of the Koller-Foxes (that's my rabbi, her husband the Bible scholar, and their kids).
We got there, the Koller-Foxes showed up, and then my sister showed up.
See, Leila lives in Florida. So it was clear that she wasn't going to be able to be here for my birthday. She'd given me my birthday present on her last trip up, apologizing for not being able to be here on my birthday.
I was pretty impressed.
Then Lis's parents walked in.
Actually, I think Lis was more surprised than I was. Yeah, she'd been hoping to get her parents up here from Florida, too, but Lis's mother was, at the last minute, offered a chance to do some promotion of their company in England, and that's where she was. The sales convention didn't even end until Friday, so there was clearly no way that she'd be able to make it here.
See, I'm not sure why it works this way, but Lis still expects her parents to follow the laws of physics and thermodynamics. And she's known them all her life. I've only know them for maybe eight years or so, but I have no expectation that they've ever noticed that such rules apply to them.
Even so, yeah, I was surprised.
So, I got three pretty big surprises that night. The
dadlion surprise I talked about in my last post was the biggest, and least pleasant.I had a great time at that party, but I was vaguely disappointed that there were a lot of people that Lis hadn't invited, that I would have expected to be there. I felt a bit let down that
browngirl, teddywolf, tigerbright, vonbeck, and undauntra weren't there, for instance.Anyway, that was Friday. I spent most of Saturday hanging out with my in-laws, and Sibling. Mom offered to help me with class prep, and I went through her stuff and sort of came up with an idea for a class for Sunday. It was going to take a lot of prep, though, because I had an entire sheet of Hebrew words I needed to look up the spellings to. In the late afternoon, we decided to head back to my house, because Leila hadn't ever seen it. Lis had stayed home pretty much all day to get the house presentable, in order to impress Sibling.
Oh, yeah, on the same street as my parents live, there was a field which had some very shaggy ungulates in it. My mother thought they were yaks, but Lis's father pointed out that they were actually Scottish cattle.
Okay, I know that yaks and Scottish cattle don't look much alike, but we knew that yaks existed, and we didn't know that Scottish cattle did. I mean, we knew that Scotland had cattle -- we just hadn't realized how shaggy they were.
So, we got back to our house. And walked in.
And there were people all over the place. All my grandparents, a fair selection of aunts and uncles (although remarkably short of cousins), all the lj usernames I listed above except Undauntra who was out of state,
lagaz, temima, bluepapercup, probably some other people who I'm not remembering.I looked at them, and thought, "Fuck. I doubt they'll be gone by eight. When am I going to do class prep?"
Lis, after greeting me, and asking if I was surprised, said that she'd told everyone that the party was N/A until I showed up, and now I could mix drinks. And I felt my work-persona slam down.
I looked at the table, and thought, "Need ice, tonic water, Sprite, wines, beers, well liquors need bar tools where the HELL is my setup have to start working with what I've got FUCK this is messed up I've got NOTHING I need to work with here okay I'll have to improvise what the hell do I have in inventory anyway fruits where are fruits I need a knife for garnishes what knife do I have that will work where the hell is glassware can I short-shake a plastic cup without breaking it I'll have to try anyway. . . "
So, I actually don't remember who was at the party, not entirely, not for that first part, anyway. I don't really have very many clear memories.
I pulled Lis aside at one point and said, "In the future, surprise party OR party where I'm hosting -- not both at the same time." She said, "You can relax if you want to; you don't have to keep being bartender. You can take a break." I looked over, and said, "No, I can't."
Because I couldn't.
I felt ambushed and sold-out for having to tend bar at a bar that I hadn't set up, and, in fact, had not been set up by ANYBODY who knew anything about bars.
I love tending bar. I really liked the idea of tending bar for my friends at my own birthday party -- that had been my idea originally. But, in my mind, TENDING bar includes SETTING UP a bar to tend at. And tending bar at a bar that isn't a bar and is missing such basic things as an ice scoop, bar spoon, and fruit tray -- that's just not pleasant.
And nobody in my family even knows what a bar spoon or fruit tray IS. So they certainly weren't there. And we don't own an ice scoop. . .
I did, eventually, break out of the mindset, and be able to be at my own party. But it took a while, and I was really upset that I hadn't done the planning for the bar. I felt like I was being denied the chance to show off that I'd wanted.
Most of my family only stayed for a couple hours, and, just before they started to leave, Lis brought out the cake she'd bought for the occasion.
It was a sheet cake, chocolate and vanila layers, vanilla frosting, and chocolate-dipped strawberries all around the edges. It was WONDERFUL.
In a little while,
hfcougar showed up, and, after Shabbat was over, arib, ailsaek and Adam and David (husband and REALLYADORABLE son) did, too.All of a sudden, I had an idea. I asked Ari, "Hey, how's your spelling in Hebrew?"
He said, "Fair to middlin', why?"
I said, "Can I ask you a favor?" and I made HIM spell all the Hebrew words I needed spelled.
The party broke up around midnight, I think, and I finished my class prep by 3 in the morning.
I think I'll do Sunday in another post.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Scottish Highlanders
Date: 2004-02-23 08:14 pm (UTC)More precisely Scottish Highlander cattle
Do these look familiar?
http://www.blueoxfarms.com/Scottish%20Highland%20Cattle/scottish_highland_cattle.htm
which do not look anything at all like:
http://www.domestic-yaks-wild-yaks.com/
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-23 09:30 pm (UTC)Lis is welcome to attend also. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-24 04:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-24 08:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-23 09:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-23 10:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-24 05:21 am (UTC)But, yeah, that was why I asked you if you were OK. Watching you bartend was really nifty, but I noticed how much setup you kept doing between things and hoped it wasn't stressing you out to be surprised with that.
*big warm hug* Happy birthday, my dear.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-24 08:53 am (UTC)Happy birthday,
Highland cattle are wonderful, and they're good tempered too, for things with horns and enthusiasm.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-25 04:57 am (UTC)I'd have got you something and told you Happy Birthday but I am notoriously disorganised.
Sorry to hear the bar wasn't good, but I'm glad you managed to have some fun.
Everything Scottish is shaggy. Witness Shetland Ponies.
As for finishing lesson prep at 3am ::virtually shakes hand:: congratulations on becoming a bona fide teacher ;p