Just on the cusp with Feces

A quick trip down memory lane: my grandmother Totsy was famous for two things (besides avoiding shoplifting convictions, that is): first, her inability to admit she might be wrong, and second, her conviction that they way she pronounced any word was correct, be it French, which she didn't speak, or English, which was her second language, or even Czech, which was her home language as a child. This lead to some interesting comments, such as "They looked at me as if I was a LEAPER," and my favorite, "Well, astrology is very mod now, isn't it, and I think I have a house in Feces." That's what I think of when things go to pot, that the moon is in Feces, and will come back to some state of normalcy before long.

I am awful sometimes

I am awful sometimes, and looking back through my blog I can see where I have been harsh, unjust, and unfair, not to mention a crappy typist. (I actually spell quite well.) One of my posts turned my mother off reading my blog forever, which is not a bad thing in of itself but her feelings were terribly hurt, which is rotten. I've also posted about someone else, also in harsh terms, but every word was true. At what point do we stop "poking fun"  and just turn into bitches?

On the other hand, I had a massive amount of crap dumped on me this year--much of which I cannot go into--and I DIDN'T complain about that, although perhaps I will. I'm at the crossroads with a job (note that I didn't say career) and the best I can think of to do is to render myself silly with OTC sleeping aids so I can get one night's rest as my acupuncturist is out of town and it's only after a session with the needles that I can get in more than three hours' sleep. I hate worrying about jobs, and money, and all that: gone are the days when I could focus on doing a great job in the classroom or the boardroom and to hell with the personal drama and the cutthroat corporate world. You know what I miss? The days when all I had to worry about was getting to rehearsal on time and looking cute. Youth is a drug, and we are all addicts, fondly reminiscing about past highs.

Oh, Fudge! My Only Threesome

Here are three quick and easy fudge recipes. Even if you're cooking on a hot plate, you can manage at least one of them. Notice that none contain peanuts, as Baby Girl is allergic to them, and none are at all healthy. Sometimes you just have to make fudge, and Christmas is just one of those times.

Number One:

Take a can of sweetened condensed milk. Any brand. Even that Panda type will do. Pour into a small sauce pan and bring to a boil over low heat, stirring constantly to prevent scorching. As soon as it has boiled for one minute (a full boil, not just bubbles at the side of the pan) take it off the heat, dump in either a bag of chocolate chips (the ones you got two-for-one at April Gourmet because they were so old they were grey) or six cut-up Dove bars (not the tiny ones not the big ones) and beat until the chocolate is melted. Add a teaspoon of vanilla, or brandy, if you have it, then pour quickly into a pan. Tupperware is fine, especially if it's not new and has the greasy sheen to it. A regular metal pan is also good, especially if you're greased it with butter first. You can also pour onto a slab of aluminum foil. Like all fudge, this will dry out quickly in the low humidity of a China winter, so keep it well covered at all times.

Even better with nuts in it.

Second one:

2 cups sugar (I use a mix of brown and white), stirred with a half-cup of cocoa until all lumps are gone. Add 2/3 cup milk, dash of salt, 2 tablespoons of corn syrup (not strictly necessary but makes a huge different in final product.) Allow this to sit somewhere for an hour or two until the sugar has dissolved. Heat gently in a saucepan. You can use a candy thermometer to check the temperature, which should come to soft ball, or you can simply check to see if it's at that stage by dropping a small amount into cold water: if you can pick up the lump with your fingers and roll it into a small ball which more or less keeps its shape, it's ready to go off the burner. Some cooks advocate stirring gently while it's bubbling to prevent scorching, some do not. Some cover the pan with a lid to help the steam wash down any sugar crystals that have formed. I caution you to remember this is frickin' hot AND you are dealing with sugar crystallization so don't slosh the pan around. Let the fudge cool until you can put your hand on the bottom of the pan and hold it briefly without crying. Then add a lump of butter--oh, say three tablespoons--and a slosh of vanilla or bourbon, then beat the crap out of it until it suddenly begins to get thick and lose its gloss. Pour immediately into a pan. If you want nuts, add with the butter so they have a chance to leak some of their delicious oil into the fudge, thus enhancing the flavor. If you've done everything right, you will have a smooth and creamy fudge with an intense flavor. If you messed up, a grainy mess is the result. I went through a lot of grainy batches of fudge before I finally learned not to stir it until it had cooled off. Other teenagers experimented with boys, I was locked in an affair with Hershey's cocoa and sugar. Sigh.

Third recipe: Look at the label of any brand of Marshmallow Fluff. It's basically the second fudge recipe, without the cocoa added in the first step, and with a bag of chocolate chips and a jar of Fluff added after it's taken off the burner. This recipe yields a massive amount of fudge which turns out perfectly most of the time. For no-fail fudge, try the first one. The second one is for perfectionists who won't touch anything with egg in it (which most Marshmallow Fluff contains) and if you want, you can actually make vegan fudge with the second recipe, substituting water for the milk, and vegan butter for the butter. Most of the vegans I know need a good feeding (as well as a wash--sorry, but it's true) so I will make a vegan batch for anyone who cares as much about animals as they do.

I am also getting a pet for my guinea pig, as they shouldn't be alone and I don't have enough time to play with her as much as she would like, but that's another story. She's also going to the groomer--damn the person who decided long-haired guinea pigs were good pets!--and it was very hard to find a groomer who would take on a guinea pig. I might post pictures, but only if it won't hurt Squeaky's pride. I know I would not want someone taking pictures of me while I was straddled over a bowl of warm water, freaking out in the hands of a stranger.

New Teacher in a New School

Here's what you can do if you are the friends or family of someone who has the great misfortune to be a new teacher in a new school: Stay Away.

Don't come visit. Don't phone on Sunday night to chat. Don't send friends to "see how things are over there."

If you do come, bring your own cookies and clean sheets. Make a meal. Do not expect someone to work a 14 hour day and then come home to entertain out-of-towners who have been lolling around all day watching TV and are "just rarin' to get out there and see the REAL China."

I think the worst week of my life occured this August: I moved to a new apartment on Friday, started a new job Monday, and my daughter AND HER GUESTS arrived Monday night.

This is when you know you are officially middle aged: you find a beautiful naked 20 year old man  (who is NOT your student OR related to you) sleeping on your sofa as you stumble into the kitchen for a cup of coffe, and your first thought is, Hmm, I should cover him with a little afghan and turn the air con down, it's blowing right on his neck and he might get a cold...

If you wonder why I haven't posted, it's simple: I am a new teacher, teaching a new curriculum, in a new school. It's Sunday and I'm going in. To work. For free. Because I have to if I want to catch up to the point where I"m only a month behind. Will post another day. Promise. Like, at Christmas. Maybe.

The Crazies

China attracts its fair share of nuts, with no place being as rich in characters as Beijing. Most foreigners here fall into three camps: students, crunchy with enthusiasm and body filth, corporate expatriates who are put up in such cushy surroundings that they can well believe they are still "back home" and long-term expats with no real skills, no real jobs, and who stay because they married a local or are avoiding possible persecution in their home state. There are a few sub-categories, of course, but the trend holds pretty solid. Needless to say, the last category is especially loaded with nut jobs.

My downstairs neighbor is one of them. On my second visit to the real estate firm that was handling my lease, my realtor confessed that the downstairs neighbor of one of the flats I was considering had already paid him a visit--twice--pumping him for details about me. This is not a good sign. As we walked over to the apartment so I could take a final look, a tall, grey-haired woman with an obviously half-Chinese toddler literally jumped out of some bushes to take a good look at me. Then she launched into her verbal assault, the bulk of which was: I am a home-schooling mom, even though my daughter is only 18 months, so she's on a strict schedule, I'll tell you when you can do anything noisy and that includes sweeping the floor, and btw, how much money do you make and what is the name of the school where you teach. In other words, it was a grilling: what was my financial status, as well as FEAR ME! I AM A HOME-SCHOOLING GOD-DESS AND THEREFORE WORTHY OF ALL LOVE AND ADMIRATION. I KNOW MORE ABOUT EDUCATION THAN THEE!

Some homeschooled kids turn out ok, but in general, their mothers are nut jobs too: how many homeschool moms have actually bothered with studying education? Precious few. You think you can learn that from the internet? Do you know how to teach reading, how to use math manipulatives such as Unix cubes, how to spot dyslexia? I do: I have enough respect for the profession to not only get trained in it but to update my skills far beyond what is required in my home state. If you fling the name of some home-schooling website from the Internet at me and think I'm going to fall down at your feet and praise you for having actually read a whole web page, you're wrong. You want to discuss education with me, fine: I'm pretty well versed in ECE, ELM, and various ECE theories and practices including Montessori, Waldorf, and Reggia Emilia. I study brain-based research into education. So put up your dukes, and let's spar. What I will not tolerate is someone acting as if they are socially superior to me because they can home school. And that is precisely what this woman was trying to convey. Even the realtor, with his limited English, understood that The Bitch Downstairs was trying to one-up me, and for the life of us both, we couldn't figure out why. (Ok, well, maybe insecurity.) I'm old, I'm tired, I'm poor: why would anyone feel the need to try to top that when it's so obviously out there? I will not apologize for being any of those things---I took a pretty sound beating from life, it lasted a LONG TIME, and  yet I'm still moving forward. So there.

A lot of parents in Beijing homeschool because they can't afford the outrageous school fees. Even sending your kid to a local school can cost about 10,000 USD per year, with first a "registration fee" of three to four thousand dollars, then fees per term for study. Some people ask me, "Why didn't you send your kid to the American school?" For starters, there isn't one. The US government does not provide a free education for its citizens abroad unless you are working for the government--in which case, they pay tuition for your children to attend an international school, but that school might actually be British, Canadian, or set up and run by a private investor group which is multi-national. Why should the government sent up free schools for US citizens?  They shouldn't, they aren't obliged to, and they didn't ask me to come here and live. As long as I earn less than a certain amount  per year, I don't even pay taxes in the US. I do pay whopping big taxes to the Chinese government, but then again, I live here. As far as I'm concerned, my own government is off the hook regarding the education of expatriates abroad. Sadly, not everyone gets that.

So, back to The Neighbor. I mentioned to a friend who lives nearby that I had been graced by a visit from The Crazy Neighbor and she launched into a story that chilled my very bones. Apparently while Crazy Neighbor's husband was gone (doing what, we can only imagine) she took to haunting the common courtyard area, small child in tow. She could be found day and sometimes night lurking in the bushes, ready to pounce on anyone walking by and tell them in three different languages all about her home schooling (which she has yet to begin.) One day to my friend's surprise, she launched a different attack. As my friend--a sweet woman with a shy manner which belies her rapier wit--was struggling with her bike lock, Crazy Neighbor approached. "Do you like chicken?" Crazy Lady began. My friend struggled to come up with a reply that could be innocent and not lead to further conversation. No need. "Because I don't have any," Crazy Lady continued. "But I could give you some spiced crab apples."

Do you see what loneliness does to people? If only Crazy Lady found a nice play group for her daughter, got out, saw some people, she might take to having safe, sane conversations with people who were genuinely glad to see her and her toddler daughter, who is indeed adorable. Instead, we run, and even text each other when she's outside, that mad lonely gleam in her eye, desperate to assault us with a conversation that proves that no, no, she's not trapped in a crap marriage in a country she doesn't like with a kid she can't afford to take to a local school so she can have a flippin' cup of coffee in peace and quiet...how very well I understand, and how deeply grateful I am for the poverty that forced and forces me to get up and go to work every day. Even today. Happy Sunday.

Fall, That Very Special Time of Year

It's Fall, and as usual, I have a new job. I dislike moving and I really dislike being the new person. I keep getting hired to "fill in the gaps" of schools which always means writing new curriculum, fighting to get classroom space and supplies, etc: just as I finally breathe a sigh of relief with everything under control, I either get a) promoted, b) given a new subject to teach at a different level or c) so outraged I quit and go to another school.

Just in case you are NOT a teaching professional, it takes a full year of teaching a particular curriculum to a particular age group before you are really competent at it, have lessons lined up, and can actually NOT spend the evenings making up flash cards, interactive whiteboard slides, or other things (sometimes even the curriculum itself) your department is too cheap to buy. I have been in one school for three years, but each year was given a different subject and grade level to teach: thus, being new every year. I switched schools last year and found that I had TWO different subjects to teach which were entirely different, and neither had so much as a textbook. So I had two curriculum to pull together. This year, I topped myself by being by hired by one school, but in teaching in both campuses, different subjects, to eight different grade levels.  To top it off, Lulu's tuition and room and board rose dramatically this year, and all this "new", including an apartment which is four times the price of my old one, has cut down on the amount I have for free lance work. I had a houseful of drunken teenage guests the first two weeks of the new job, and I have another guest arriving next week who will, God willing, be able to fend for himself. I also picked up a very cool editing job, which I finished last night, and now have 97 English poems to compose for a new national curriculum, to be done next week. I haven't started yet, but I figure it's not that hard to rhyme "moon" with "June." I could well be singing another tune by next weekend.

And you wonder at my silence...

Time Flies. So Do Flies.

Just in case you've been wondering where I spent the last month...I moved. I had drunken teenage houseguests, and I started a new job. All three began within a 72-hour period. The job is a newly created position split over two different departments, which meant I missed out on key training on both sides as I was at Meeting A when Meeting B was occuring simultaneously. I had the joy of moving into a new flat--at least it's larger than the last one--while also trying to host daughter Lulu Belle and her beau, and the odd friend who crashed as well. I did not do Mysterious Job Number Two which is a shame as Lulu's tuition increased a LOT this year and I am now paying four times as much for rent as I did this time last year. The new job is incredibly demanding and I got maneuvered into doing things I consider an absolute waste of time (more on that later) such as wandering around the building looking for a computer in which to check daily emails because nobody thought to provide me with a desk or computer. I have to fight 18-year old teaching assistants for use of a shared computer. Let me recap: I have advanced degrees, but no where to put my coat or purse.  To say I am under stress is an understatement. For THIS I turned down a job in Sudan? No wonder I haven't posted: I haven't had time to eat a square meal, let alone write about one. Tell me that this too shall pass. Please.