Today, Heather Armstrong writes about coming to NYC to appear on a CNN panel. Yes, I was filled vast waves of jealousy, but I got over it and finished reading her post. Utah-girl writes about how exhausting city life must be, especially for parents.
And I was completely overwhelmed with the idea that people have children in that city, that they have to push strollers on those sidewalks and down the stairs to the subway, that they have to carry those children up and down four flights every time they leave the apartment. The intricacies of day-to-day life with children in that city must feel like an hourly marathon, a race that does not ever end. I have never been more aware of the luxury it is to be able to get into my car and drive to the grocery store, or of the fact that I am a total pussy.
I did that. And she didn’t even mention the lack of major appliances or a driveway. Or the drug dealers in the lobby. For a moment, as I read her post, I thought fondly of the four flights of stairs and the drug dealers and the alternate side of the street parking. It was tough, but it was THE CITY, baby. I pushed my stroller past BIG STARS and watched them filming BIG SHOWS and there were all sorts of GLAMOROUS clubs and restaurants that I couldn’t afford to step foot in. Plus, there was all that street cred being a city mom. It’s hard being a drama queen out here in Jersey.
I guess, there’s still plenty of drama. Every Tuesday and Wednesday, my mom and Steve call me at noon to find out how Ian handled the transition to daycare and then they call again at five to find out how things went. (Today not so good. He kept taking his shoes off and running out of the classroom. His teacher wasn’t making a lot of ha-ha sounds as she told me about this.) Every day, my work obligations grow and the time to accomplish them shrinks. There’s always the daily meltdown about what to make for dinner and what bus Steve takes home and what those neighbor kids broke now.
Today’s drama is so much less fun than yesterday’s drama.
Question of the Day What’s the drama in your life right now?
Apt. 11d 
Ironically enough, the drama in my life right now is deciding whether to ditch my upwardly mobile 2-2 job in the rust-belt and apply for a crap 4-3 job so that I can again * be a NYC parent, doing the subway, stairs, the crowds, and the rest.
I miss the city (nearly? definitely?) enough to crash my career. True or false? That is the question.
* again in the sense that kiddo was born in Bklyn. We moved away when she was a month and a half old…
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The daily drama of taking my daughter and myself to school/work on the subway. Waiting in loooooooong lines at the post office. Etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum. I still live in the city, and am always utterly exhausted.
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I live in a suburban part of a hot (in coolness, not temperature) american city (in the city though), in a comfortably sized house, where I can walk to my car, and drive to the grocery store; my kids are out of diapers and they have no special needs. And yet, I am also utterly exhausted.
Of course, if I lived in the City (capitals, like New York City) . . . well, actually, I just couldn’t do it; I would end up non-functional, proving an interaction between environmental variables and mental illness.
bj
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That’s funny that you wrote about this, because when I read Dooce’s entry yesterday, I thought, “Gee, that sounds a lot like the way Laura described living in the city with kids!”
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Thankfully, I’m pretty drama free. However, we’re having work done on our house and while there isn’t *drama* exactly, it is neverwracking. And because the workers are always listening to Spanish radio I’m constantly hungry for Mexican food. I think I’ve had a burrito at least 3 times a week for the last 5 weeks. That’s a lot of burritos.
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Drama: kindergartener has decided her 3YO sister is simply too uncool to play with. Fast forward to tears and doors slamming.
Am I the only one who doesn’t know what’s meant by either “upwardly mobile 2-2 job” or “crap 4-3 job”? Can someone enlighten me?
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Sorry, Jen. 2-2 and 4-3 refers to the number of courses taught in a semester by a university professor. The more prestigious jobs, and the ones that afford a decent about of time for research etc, are “2-2,” meaning 2 courses in the fall and 2 in the spring. “4-3” means 4 in one semester, 3 in the other.
So, at an ivy league school or a big state U, one usually does 2-2. At a smaller school oriented primarily to teaching rather than research, it’s often 3-3 or 3-4.
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Waiting in loooooooong lines at the post office.
What I wouldn’t give to be waiting in the loooooong lines at the Cadman Plaza post office. Seriously, it’s that bad. Everything is easy where I am, because everyone sensible has fled and there’s nothing to do.
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I teach 4-4-4 (trimester system). Wouldn’t switch it for a 2-2 job, either. I’d have to write a book or something. 😛 That would take away either from blog-reading time or Veronica Mars time. 🙂
For most of the day (not my 7 am class, bless them–wonderful group of people) I’ve been afflicted with lying, cheating, plagiarizing students. Someone’s uncle in Maine died so she couldn’t take the exam today–can she take it another day? I do not do make-up exams in lit, so there’s one person out of luck. Another student plagiarized his bibliography. Not the paper, as far as I can tell, but he cut and pasted a bunch of sources from an online paper and attached them to his paper. They’re web sources, and the date of access is listed as 9-15-00. Does he think I’m STUPID? And another student got a D on her paper because she talked about one text instead of two as per the assignment. And she is *still* arguing with me that the assignment called for only one text even when I pointed out the exact places where I indicated I wanted them to discuss two texts.
Much teaching drama here. So, you sure you want to start teaching again in the spring? 😉
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Since I’m on a temporary line, I’ll be doing 4 courses instead of usual 3-3 for the tenure track people. I’m sure there’s going to be much drama there, too. Classrooom drama makes for excellent story telling, though probably nothing I can post on this blog. Gotta get me one of those nameless blogs.
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We had an IEP meeting for my 10 y.o. ds today. That’s enough drama (bah, forget ‘drama’: outright stress is more like it) for weeks. And my 5 y.o. dd reached a major developmental milestone – she decided that she would try a ponytail in her hair. She would have nothing to do with any hair accessories until today…as an infant, she was virtually bald, and as soon as she could say “NO”, that’s what she said to all barrettes, ponytails, pigtails, etc. So that was a major breakthrough.
And we have to find a therapist for my son that doesn’t believe OCD and Tourette syndrome are a result of family dysfunction but an actual neurobiological disorder. You would think this would be easy in a major university town, but we have learned the hard way to carefully vet mental health ‘professionals’.
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Sandy, have you hooked up with the OC Foundation? I was a member some years ago (a relative had OCD) and they seemed to be very helpful with getting info to people. Surely they’d have a database of mental health professionals knowledgeable about OCD.
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What’s the drama in my life right now? Well, as of 5 minutes ago, it was rescuing one of my wife’s contact lenses from the trap underneath the bathroom sink. This has become a regular part of our marriage; the first sink pipe I disassembled in order to recover a lost lens was a couple of months after we married, and it has usually happened around once a year ever since. Marriage has taught me so much about plumbing.
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