math

Free. Time.

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

In the outside pocket of my backpack, under my Subway-kids-meal-bag packed lunch, I cram my sneakers. The snow will be too deep this morning to wear them, but the thought of wearing my discount-store leather boots that pinch my toes all day burdens me more than switching out shoes once I get to work.

I could drive now, having two cars for the first time in three years. But then I would miss the beauty of freshly frosted branches, of silent flakes floating out of the Colorado sky, of the words tapping into me from my latest audiobook.

I am eating my amped-up breakfast, a bagel with cream cheese, spinach, and two eggs scrambled with red peppers, to sustain me for the late start day and the late lunch day, when my colleague texts me to announce the snow day.

I don’t believe her. Denver doesn’t cancel school, not unless there’s more than a foot and blizzard-like conditions. I check three web sites who haven’t caught up with the news as quickly as her, and then the email from the superintendent pops up and my entire family receives a rare and beautiful gift that cannot be wrapped and yet we open with such joy that it warms our entire house: Free. Time.

This could be so different. We could be part of different districts, just like before, Bruce could be at work, just like a few months ago, and we wouldn’t be all together. It would be my day, mine alone, and I would be crawling up the walls by the end of it, probably using the time to work and clean the house and dig out the driveway and be the person I am for 95% of my life.

But today? I fix French toast with sliced strawberries, powdered sugar, butter, honey, the works! We read Shel Silverstein under a blanket on the couch. Bruce visits a former colleague, helps him figure out a trouble ticket (unpaid, of course), and borrows his crockpot for our Sunday pot roast dinner. I listen, for once, to the girls practice their piano songs. Riona teaches me to play chess and Mythili beats me in a game in five minutes. The girls play Wii, Bruce shovels the walks and driveway, and I ski to, around, and back from the park, capturing the utter emptiness and silence in a way that couldn’t come to me on my frenzied walk to school, where I’d be thinking about my lesson plan, my seating chart, the upcoming testing nightmare… I come home sweating from head to toe, peel off my clothes for a shower, and he waits for me in the bedroom, ready to make me sweat from head to toe all over again… Isabella and I play Sorry, the younger set drives with Bruce and I to the local coffee shop where we have gluten-free pastries and mochas and hot chocolates and play Go Fish and compost our waste and pretend, if only for an hour, we are just like the yuppies who can actually afford this neighborhood. We have freestyle dinner–each person gets to choose what they want, Bruce fries up some ham and eggs to supplement the girls’ inadequate choices, I eat his delicious teriyaki chicken leftovers, and he whips up some instant pudding when the baby requests it because, well, she’s the baby, and, why not? I finalize the girls’ sleepover plans for Saturday and in the midst of texting with the mothers I don’t really know (nothing like the good old days when the girls were young and we actually took time to get to know their friends’ parents), we’re dropped with a mini bombshell.

How dare she ruin my snow day, my gift from God (or at least my gift from the god-of-the-school-district superintendent)? How dare she flaunt something in our faces and snatch it away? But worse, how dare she draw that rift up between he and I?

It is what we don’t talk about and what we always talk about. What he hates for me to bug him about and what I hate to be the one bugging about. How dare she flaunt an easy path for some extra money and take it all away before giving us one dime, all for us to be right back where we started, which is: Can we afford to live this way?

“I’ll look for a job…” He reassures me. “I mean, I’ll look harder. But you know, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t have me work and expect all the things you have now. You know–” He sucks in his breath, flips the ham on his plate. “I’m not going to say anything else or I’ll get too upset.”

I know. If he works I wouldn’t be able to ski, or walk, or listen to audiobooks on the way to school. I won’t have neat piles of folded laundry stacked on the bed, ready for me to put away. I won’t have a chef fixing me his latest recipe, or a grocery list with everything checked off. The wood floor will be gritty when I move back the mat to do a yoga video, or I’ll be cleaning that floor instead of doing yoga. I’ll work two jobs and spend my free time transporting three kids to their schools and activities, and we’ll be able to eat out whenever we want and surely pay that hefty price for the piano lessons they so love and drive all the way to the east coast and back because we’ll have the money to pay for it… but at what cost?

The cost of silencing everyone who’s always asking me, “Why doesn’t he work? Where has he been looking? Why doesn’t he do this or try that? How do you do it? Why would you…” I won’t finish because I’ll get too upset.

The cost that would snatch the peace of a family snow day right out from under us. Of knowing that he’ll have a good job with decent hours and enough vacation time to actually enjoy our lives together, just like all those years before.

My day ends with a ping on my phone: a message from a former colleague who didn’t get a snow day, who is tired of everyone bitching about not getting a snow day, and announced it to them all today on the social media that consumes our lives and makes us not have a life. Why is he calling them out on their complaints? Because he remembers the 25 miles I used to ride my damn bicycle to and from work every day, all so we wouldn’t have to try to replace our broken-down van, so Bruce wouldn’t have to work, so we wouldn’t have the damn frenzy of a rat-race life that everyone around us has, all those parents out there who are stressing about delayed starts and snow days and having to fight the battle to bring home that extra buck.

How ironic, he points out in the end, that I was lucky enough to get a snow day today. That I wouldn’t have to ride my bike or walk or ski to work.

In the outside pocket of my backpack, leaving a space for my Subway-kids-meal-bagged lunch, my sneakers wait for tomorrow. I could drive, but why wouldn’t I walk? Why wouldn’t I enjoy the freshly fallen flakes, the peace that comes with early morning movement, where I can rethink my lesson plans, still have time to change them, and know that my husband will drive all the girls to school and fix their lunches and be there for them when the last bell rings and not have the money to take me out to dinner but will have a ten-million-times-better meal already planned?

Tomorrow, the snow will not be too deep. There will be no snow day. No Free. Time. And I will walk. And he will be home. And he will be the happiness that I am lucky enough to come home to.





It Never Gets Easier

/ lovizmytrio / 1 Comment

to think i once heard
babies are hard to manage
eat, shit, drink, sleep, cry?

let’s try on costumes–
fall party, field trip, grades due
count how our days go:

back-talk homework fight
second piano practice
three girls showering

second failing math??
not a word from failed teacher
guilt, failing parents

baby barely writes
always a Daddy story
spells like a Spaniard

oldest keeps me up
stressed– her chronic detention
Daddy leaves in huff

garbage disposal
fix in the house that plagues us
that we cannot sell

let me stack my plate
with conferences tomorrow
Spanish class Thursday

Halloween Friday
filled with makeup and drinking
(i need a disguise)

to hide from this life
this balancing act of love
we call parenthood

My Numbers Are Running Short

/ lovizmytrio / 3 Comments

Words are first on my list for things I needed to learn upon arriving in Spain. Yes, needing to know the words for everything I need to say, but more importantly, all the information I need to hear. This is what I thought I’d be learning in Spain, and I have. Who knew how big a role numbers would play?

Let me begin with a small criticism of my back-asswards (as Bruce would say) country, who still believes the imperial system for numbering everything is the way to go. What are you thinking, America? You should just spend the one billion dollars or whatever it is you think it will cost, repaint the signs, republish the textbooks, and convert! Can we please begin to admit that the metric system is superior, that Centigrade makes more sense than Fahrenheit, and that a 24-hour clock is actually a much more logical way to arrange meeting times?

So I haven’t only had to learn that calamares muy fresco, when spoken proudly by a waitress as their premiere menu item, actually means squid with the head still on and the ink sac still intact, so when you cut into it everything is coated in black goo that adds to the slimy appeal (this isn’t my beautifully ringed calamari!), I’ve had to learn that 1.6 kilometers equals a mile, that one kilogram is equivalent to two pounds, that 14,000 feet (when trying to explain Colorado’s famous Fourteeners) equals 4267 meters, that 16:30 is 4:30 p.m., that 1.50€ for a liter of gas is equivalent 6€ for a gallon, that every time I spend 1€ it’s like spending $1.30, and that 38 degrees is TOO DAMN HOT.

Oh, and the buildings? The ones I put into my maps program which was working perfectly on Google Maps Application on my iPhone and now works like shit since I stupidly upgraded to iOS version FUCK OFF, I’M NOT IN ALICANTE? Their numbers are mysteriously etched in glass above doorways along streets whose names I have mostly memorized, because without my amazing Google Maps (how I miss you!), I would never know the names of the streets–there are random signs posted on buildings of proud owners who once spent the money, buildings not updated for years to the extent that I have had three, yes three, hometown Spaniards step out of cars or ask as they’re walking, “Can you tell me which street this is?” (I would like to add that the Spanish vocabulary for this question is well within my realm, and thanks to an accurate map program and a somewhat photographic memory, I have been able to respond appropriately all three times).

Now that I know how to navigate the complex systems of communication that exists between continents, I think, perhaps, it is time for me to learn what Spanish TV is all about… but wait… it’s 22:43, and the kilometers between here and where I need to be are heavier than a kilo of plums, the only fruit whose 0.99€/kilo price will fit into our limited basket of needs. My numbers, like my words, are running short.

Teach

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

if eighty-five percent
of EVERYONE
actually did what they
were supposed to do
then we wouldn’t need
pay for performance.

we could just…
teach.
what a concept.

How to Live on ONE Salary in Today’s World, Day Two

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

So, $1200 per month to pay the remainder of the bills for a family of four with two stubborn girls still in diapers? Well, it’s not so hard really if you’re willing to sacrifice a few things. For one, neither of us had a cell phone, gasp! I mean, what is the purpose of a cell phone, really? It’s to communicate during emergencies, and in that case, Bruce could just call me at work. Since then, we have purchased cell phones, but even now, we only use pay-as-you-go phones, paying probably less than $10 a month, TOTAL.

Also, we were not paying for cable TV and at that time had dial-up Internet, which I know isn’t the greatest, but it still worked. These are all simple ways to cut costs: think about what you REALLY need. MUST you watch HGTV or have the highest connectivity, or can you make some sacrifices?

Without those expenses, we still easily spent $500-$600 per month on groceries, but cut our food expenses tremendously by almost never going out to eat, a habit that was admittedly difficult to drop, as we had been accustomed to that lifestyle for six years of marriage. But you have to do what you have to do. Part of that also includes switching stores, though it’s tough to give in to this, and primarily shopping at Wal-mart. Their prices are easily half, and at the very least thirty percent, less than a typical grocery store. Once I discovered this, I knew we had to make that choice, grievances aside.

Back to the diapers… we used cloth diapers, so we weren’t spending $60 a month on diapers. Our water bill may have been a bit higher, but it has always hovered around $60 a month.

So where does that leave us: $540-640… Because of our good driving records and having old cars (yet another benefit of not buying a new car), our car insurance is less than $40 a month. Yes, that’s right people: LESS THAN $40 a month!! Some things, however, are out of our control, such as the energy bill, which can easily rise to $240 in winter months. We have always tried to balance this out by paying $150 every month, therefore crediting our account, even when the bill in the spring or summer is as low as $80. This is just another simple way to cut costs: look at the whole picture and make it work by balancing things out.

Assuming that we had an expensive grocery month, that leaves us with $350 for everything else: phone, clothing, trash, gas, insurance… and tomorrow, the great insurance debate… in my words and ever-so-bold opinions…

Numbers

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

Who says that math has no emotion
that it is a logical, rational subject?
No one who really thinks
about what numbers mean,
like the ones I have tumbling
around in my mind today
on imaginary dice,
can say that math is void of feeling.

8 miles on my bike
with 2 little girls behind me
seems to make me so proud that
I want to write
but then I hear
38 million cut from our school district
as opposed to last week’s 35
1 furlough day coming our way

but nothing can compare to the number
500,000, which may seem small
next to 38 mil, but so large
when we hear it is lives lost
in 2 days, swallowed by the earth
in a country that is already
at the peak of poverty

When I add up my numbers it makes
38,500,011
and it is heavier
than any words in any other subject.