Validation - and not the parking kind

So I recently found out I had been nominated for an "excellence in teaching" award and, if I so chose, I could put together the requisite paperwork and documents and statements to further my case that I am, indeed, a "teacher of excellence." This due diligence entails gathering sufficient data, in the form of a current vitae, a statement of my teaching "philosophy" (which is at it's root an oxymoronic term for me, as I see a "philosophy" is something you think and "teaching" as something you engage in - so a "teaching philosophy" is at odds with itself in nature since they can exist one without the other), sample syllabi, student evaluations, peer evaluations and optional "letters of support."
Sigh.
I now know why a nominee can either choose to accept the nomination or decline - it's a "metric buttload" (to quote my friend Dave) of work just to seemingly prove that which has been established by, well, acclamation in the form of nomination. And then when you don't get it (as I did not last year with said nomination in place), it is an introduction to self-query in the form of wondering who the hell out there is really doing more??
However... this go-around on the road to self-induced purgatory of "I am just happy to be nominated!" has been entirely different for me. I decided this time around to solicit letters of support - something I did not do last year for some odd reason (probably something to do with time constraints and ...?). At any rate, I sent out a sort of mass email plea to various students and colleagues alike, asking for their support. What I got back was an unsuspected, overwhelming wave of "HELL YES!" What started out as a quiet, back-door, simple "ask" became the most meaningful event in my life this year. What has come back to me, come pouring in, has been eye-opening, tear-inducing, thought-provoking and overall mind-bending. Things I have said and done and engaged in and striven for - which up until this moment I had thought had gone unnoticed in the wash of my own daily struggles had been noticed, had made a difference and had actually touched the lives of my students and my colleagues in ways I was too self-centered to even acknowledge. In the outpour of letters I learned that specific days and moments and slips of the tongue had been taken in, regarded and assimilated into the lives of the very young people and peers I had thought my voice was lost upon. I thought I had been shouting into a well, and all along I have been singing into a megaphone - and the message has been broadcast to places and people I had not even considered. My heart is warmed and my life's purpose re-affirmed: I do make a difference. I am a part of a bigger project. I want to do this for the rest of my life.
I encourage every person to ask for letters of support in their lives - no matter if there is an "award" pending or not. It's the same concept of having a living wake: why do we wait until it's too late, until we are too tired or decimated by living, until we are benumbed by the ego wars around us and simply give in to the inertia of not asking for what we need to truly understand that we make a difference to those around us and beyond? Why do we wait for some excuse - like promotion or age or death - to allow those around us to give back to us that which we have given to them? Conversely, why do we withhold our praise and love and compliments until it is an "occassion" or asked of us?
Go now. Go and send that email or that letter or that (dreaded) facebook wall posting to someone who has made a difference to you. I have a stack of unexpected letters sitting here, letters from students and colleagues who came out of "the woodwork" to support me in a basically unachievable award (too many nominees, not enough...) and I don't give a damn whether I "win" or not. I have already won. I have the support and admiration of people I haved loved, mentored, cared about, taken time for, pushed, frustrated, angered, provoked and made laugh to remind me that what I have devoted my life to is truly worth it.
Even if you have to make up an award or an event - do it. We should all be this open and giving to each other at all times.

True Love/Eating the Furniture

Crash ate the couch yesterday. Well, I suppose technically he did not "eat" in the normal sense of "consumed" as much as attempted to ingest in the style of Cookie Monster (I was always perturbed by that - the futile attempts to eat the cookie and never actually getting any of it - I remember wondering as a child if Cookie Monster knew he was not actually getting a cookie, and if he ever did get to eat the cookie if he would maybe be less ravenous and obsessed...). At any rate, Crash decorated the living room with the remains of a couch cushion, which had been set aside the day before to dry out from the Nature's Miracle dousing it received because of the giant pool of urine on it - also a gift from Crash the Wonder Dorkie.
The point here is that after I had cussed and moaned and cleaned up yet another part of my furniture rent to pieces, I began to think about why it was possible to be so desperately in love with such destruction - when my ex-husband never went so far as to poop on my school bag or eat my make-up. I realized it had nothing to do with the level of destruction and everything to do with the intent behind it. It has nothing to do with how thoroughly my life has been turned inside out by this 12 pound creature and everything to do with the fact that no matter what, I am adored unconditionally. My furniture is torn apart, my favorite books shredded, my floor mercilessly peed upon, my best shoes pooped in simply because I am not there. My attention and mere presence is desired so much that, out of boredom and desperation, all 12 pounds of fur and teeth and walnut-brain are focused on letting me know I have been missed. And I can come home, have my natural reactions and frustrations - stomping and cussing and heaving heavy sighs and sending portentious glares - and this creature of mass destruction will simply look at me with complete and utter love and just... wait it out. Then, when he has deemed it sufficiently safe to invade my "dance space," my ridiculous puppy will wag his tail, climb into my arms and kiss my face. Unconditionally.
It is that simplicity of total, mutual love that has made it possible for Crash to live as long as he has being the complete shit that he is. No defensive excuses coming from him, no blaming of me for his bad choice to dig up my entire herb garden, no false promises that it will never happen again and no judgment of me for being pissed off at him for what he has done - just pure and unconditional true love, which I am learning is the only way to survive any relationship, be it of the four-legged or two-legged variety.

As my adventures in higher education move ever-forward, some days stand out more than others...

I just gave the Roman theatre and culture lecture yesterday - and true to form, like every stinkin' year, it became this weird, random series of questions I could not possibly know the answer to. I love that the students get engaged in the topic and discussion, but - seriously - how the hell could I know some of what they are asking? My favorite from yesterday was in regards to "raising" a child (the Pater Familias has to recognize the child by "raising" them up a la "Roots" above their head and declaring them a part of the family - hence the term "raising kids"). So, I had just finished explaining also that at any time the Pater Familias could own/disown a family member - regardless of blood ties (oversimplified, but basically the truth). So for example if a slave bears a child from the P.F., at any point in that offspring's life the P.F. can declare them "his," give them the family name, and "ta da" - they are no longer a slave but a bearer of the family name (P.F. can do this with anyone - progeny or not). So a person who shall go unnamed raises her hand and says: "So, if that happens, does the Pater Familias actually lift them over his head? I mean, how could he hold up a teenager or a grown man? Does he get people to help him?"I am not kidding. And this was just one example of so many. I think maybe it is because they know that to earn full participation I expect them to raise their hands and actually add to the discussion? Like, maybe this person was so desperate for anything to say that she said that just to raise her hand? I kinda hope so - because if that's not the case with some of them - I truly worry for the fate of this world.

In addition to teaching duties, I have the added *joy* of sitting, like a duck, during office hours - awaiting the random student "fly by" visit with the emergency du jour. Just one example of my day yesterday, in office hours: I have a transfer student come in to my office - this, mind you - is THE transfer student who studied at a very prestigious acting academy in NY (this is where you go, "oooooh!") and feels she needn't be bothered with taking the actual acting series to meet her degree in... acting. (Of course, my mind goes to: "well, if you were so freakin' great with the Academy, WTF are you doing here?) But that is not the purpose of her visit. Oh, no. It is to chat with me about her therapy animal. Mind you, I understand completely about therapy animals - one student brings her dog every day for medical reasons that entail performing simple tasks but mainly as emotional support. I actually have a note from my own doctor about my dog, giving me permission to bring him anywhere I need to to help with my panic attacks (who doesn't have the occasional blinding panic attack, right?). So, I am sympathetic as The Greatest Actress In The World proceeds to tell me about her therapy animal. Her therapy duck. Yes, read that again."He wears diapers," she says, "and so he doesn't make a mess it's just for some reason some people get upset about him in class and in stores and stuff..." So it appears we are to be labeled even stranger as a department as we welcome Piddle-Widdles, the Therapy Duck. No shit.
Makes the random questions in class seem positively lucid.

Crashing Out

Had I known how prophetic my sweet, adorable new puppy's name would be, I would have called him "True Love" or "Winning Lotto," or at minimum, "Great Sex with Disease-Free Stranger on A Gondola in Venice." But no, I had to name him Crash - short for Crashanova, because of his lover's nature and the unexplainable propensity to literally "crash" into everything - the ground, table legs, people legs, car tires... you name it, he has tried to lay down on/in/around/under it.

Crash's favorite crash-out activity is to come to a full-stop, from top racing speed, flat out on his tummy, legs splayed to the four winds - creating a mishmash of grass stains, dirt and poor unsuspecting bugs who have met their demise under the perfectly round belly of my Dorkie -- my daschund/yorkie 4 month-old darling.

Crash is also, as his name might imply, fearless. Now, by "fearless" I do not mean to say he is courageous - no. I mean he is fear -less: born without the natural instinct to avoid large objects such as running lawnmowers, moving vans, racoons and... me. The singular talent my darling furball possesses is the uncanny ability to place himself between the bottom of my just lifted foot and the floor beneath. This may not seem so astounding, as he is very close to the floor already, weighing in at just under 7 lbs, but this particular pooch can be in another room, far from the action, and within a moment only capturable by special high-speed shuttered cameras, can present himself between my swiftly descending shoe and the kitchen tile beneath. This, of course, is noted by the imminent shriek of sheer terror and pain that only a puppy can administer to an unsuspecting new mommy-person, thus sending her down a shame and horror spiral.

I am a horrible mother, I think to myself as....

And that's it. That's the extent of this puppy-mommy's memory of what turned out to be a "crash" of epic proportions. Having no memory of the actual events between 8:pm and 3:00 am last Saturday night, I can only sleuth out the details through random clues I have discovered since the incident now known as, "Deb's Closed Head Injury (CHI)" - otherwise known as a concussion. I have no memory of what I was actually doing prior to my death-spiral, but through careful examination of the wide-open cupboards and 1/2 full dish drainer, I must conclude that I was performing the rare function of actually putting the dishes away before using them out of the drainer again (cupboard space could be rented out to someone [a neighbor with kids, maybe?], as they are nearly always empty due to an appalling lack of preplanned food shopping and a tendency to buy last minute things that can be eaten out of the carton, thereby leaving the dishes in the drainer until, sadly, they must be rinsed off again to remove the film of dust).

So here I was putting dishes away (purportedly) when my darling dasher must have decided to once again demonstrate his devotion by putting himself in harm's way... maybe as a litmus test to see the level of my motherly instinct to protect him - even from my clumsy, sleepy, irritable, dish-wielding self. The next thing I remember is waking up fully clothed, on my bed, with a terrible headache. "Hmmm... I think to myself, I must get up and take some pain reliever or I will have a headache in the morning!" Sitting up, I immediately become violently ill (this is the part where the calming male voice comes on and says, "viewer discretion advised"). I hurl myself toward the bathroom and... well, hurl. "Damn," I think, "I can't be getting the flu - I don't have time for the flu!" Unable to stay awake, I stumble back to bed and pass out for another 3 hours.

When I awake at 6:30 am, I am accutely aware of a terrific pain in my right collar bone - not an ache, mind you - a searing, jabbing, white-hot throbbing that sends me once again to the bathroom. This time I check myself in the mirror. My nausea is still there, ready to take over, but I stand in front of the sink mirror and gently pull aside my shirt (thinking to myself a number of thoughts: "Why am still dressed? What the hell is going on with my head? What bus ran me over?"). I notice the golf-ball sized bruise on my collar bone first, then as my head begins to throb anew, I notice the nice little goose-egg above my right temple.

"WTF?" I say outloud. Then, I must lay down.

It seems that, according to the husband of Cami, the friend I called to take me to the ER, I am a candidate for assisted living. At 40. Yeah... where I come from we call that "marriage" until you're at least 75.

So what does a single, surviving (if not exactly thriving), woman do in these situations? Here I am in the Emergency Room - 6 hours, multiple X-rays and a cat-scan later- being told I need to stay with "a responsible adult" for the next 48 hours.... I look at my friend, Patrick, who has been called in to "spell" my friend Cami who brought me to the hospital hours before, and think, "well, who the hell here could fit that bill?"

What is a "responsible adult" anyway? I guess I know what it means in this situation, plain and simple: someone over 21 who is not on Oxycontin... But, really, how can we say that any one of my friends is a "responsible adult" more than me - the One Woman Wonder of Queen Street? How could anyone be more responsible than mommy dearest to 2 small dogs, 2 kitties, a house with a yard full of growing things (the 100-year old Gravenstein apple tree will have to wait for another entry -- suffice it to say that 5 lb apples dropping from record heights to litter the yard on an every-2-minute schedule is enough to drive a solo homeowner NUTS). Back to the point: how could I be any less responsible than anyone else? Yes, okay, I had a bad head injury and a cracked collar bone requiring heavy meds - but still - I am a SOLO ARTISTE. I can handle the %$^% the universe flings at me like a monkey at the zoo, so why do I need a babysitter for a simple concussion (with total amnesia)? Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the 12 year old ER doctor refused to believe I did not indulge in street drugs and demanded a urine sample. I must assume it came out clean, because a). I don't do drugs and b). it was never mentioned again and I was released from the ER holding cell after a mere 7 hour visit.

So I take my wounded pride, my wounded head, my crac ked collar and my prescriptions and pile myself into Saint Patrick's car. We head over to Fred Meyer to fill said RX and get some supplies needed for the next few days of bed rest: soup, juice, olives (?) and some fabulous kind of cookie Patrick talked me into. Needless to say, decisions like food supplies should not have been left to me... or Patrick. Patrick proceeds to convince me that the hummus and cottage cheese I had gathered were much more economically sound when purchased in 5-gallon tubs from Costco. So we collect my prescription and head home.
We arrive back at my house where Cami has returned with the felon in question, Crash the puppy, who cries, whimpers, squeals, and wiggles to the extent that the Cuteness Meter is past red and broken completely. I immediately decide to have amnesia about his role in my current condition. Patrick drops me off, effectively transfering babysitting duties, and heads of to Costco. Still at a total loss at to what exactly happened the night before, and why I have concussed myself and cracked strange, out-of-the-way bones, I investigate the evidence: open cupboard doors... a puppy "wee-wee" pad slid across the kitchen floor and out of place... and worst of all: a phone record on my cell which is cold, hard evidence that I was unconcious while making return phone calls...
Yep. It appears that I concussed myself some time before 9:01 pm, when my cell phone has a record of an incoming call that was not answered. Then, mysteriously, there is an outgoing call placed 8 minutes later... to the number showing as the incoming caller. Hmmm... I do not recognize this number, but obviously called them back - AND - proceeded to have a 7 minute comversation with whoever picked up on the other end. Oh. Crap. Who was this mystery phonemate? What did I do? I frantically look through my phone book, my papers on my desk (3 inches thick and ordered in what I like to call, "as may arise"). Finally, I come across a match. "Ken's Tree Service." That's right! I think. I had expected them that day and they had not arrived to give an estimate on the trimming ordered by the city to avoid the untimely... head injury of a passing school child on the sidewalk in front of my house (the irony does not escape me). Aparently, Ken himself had called at 9:01 to apologize for being trapped in Mt Baker all day and could they reschedule for the next day? Well, my unconscious but somehow fully functioning self proceeded to call him back (the 8 minute lag inbetween calls I can only attribute to my dazed and confused, Oscar-worthy, waking scene in my kitchen - slowly coming to and dragging myself, military-under-barbed-wire-style, to my cell phone to see who called. Now THAT is work ethic: even unconscious, I will responsibly return a call). When Tree-Trimming Ken was interviewed the next day, from my sick bed, he described to me in detail the coherent, lucid conversation I had with him the previous night, where I had said I would "be busy and most likely gone" during the day but he was more than welcomed to come by and give an estimate. Hmmm... again, I think to myself: "Did I know that I would be 'busy' in the emergency room of St. Joseph's hospital? Was my uber-functioning brain pre-planning for my soon-to-be-incapacitated self?" I can only answer: um, yeah - I guess so.

Meanwhile, Patrick and his girlfriend, Linda, return with Costco-sized tubs of hummus and cottage cheese and my 72-hour life as a confined invalid begins. Crash curls up on top of me under the afghan as I lie drugged on the couch, pretending to watch movies and nibbling on the 3 pound bowl of cottage cheese placed before me by my angelic babysitter and former student, Mays.

And there I lay. And here I am two weeks later - one giant head bruise and black eye wiser, one cracked collar bone healing as if touched by angels - and still wondering: "what the hell actually happened?" Unfortunately, Crash the puppy is as inarticulate and clueless as I am... and still underfoot. Now, however, I just don't put the dishes away anymore.
Problem solved.

Crash's new middle name is "Fat-Free Tater Tot." I live, as always, in hope.