I Am This Woman

First of all, I’m biased. I love Craig Ferguson. I don’t know who is behind his commentary, and I’m thinking it’s him, with approval from the producers (David Letterman’s company) and the network (who might think that no one is watching). But I would like to thank all of them for letting Craig do pieces like this.

The one he did about going down to be sworn in as a citizen was so good, I DVRd it for my son to watch the next day.

This piece is about voting, and he sums up a lot of what I believe. (However, I think he’s a little hard on Animal Planet.

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No, I did not get pretty pasties (the boobie kind, not the tasty meat pie kind). I got no pasties (of either kind, actually). But the mammo was uneventful in a posh, country club kind of way. Whatever big money the Perot Family have dumped into that hospital, I must say that some of it was directed by the matriarch because the mammogram/breast center was gorgeous. Designer carpeting, chair and walls, aqua t-shirt type robes that were almost cute in a kimono style and the latest digital technology. Very non-hospitally. The magazines? from May and June 2008!

My tech was South African so we chatted about how to be safe in Johannesburg (we are going there next month), and …. HER HANDS WERE NOT COLD. The gaspy ouchy part lasted about six seconds.

It was all quite lovely and forgettable. Go get your mammogram, ladies.

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Four days before my 50th birthday, I am getting a mammogram. It is my second. Yes, I know that I should have started at 45 and gotten yearly ones. But I am a slow adopter, and I confess to having a modicum of anxiety about the whole “breast sandwich” thing.

But then I had my first one. And IT WAS NO BIG DEAL. I think that we need to stop catastrophizing these routine procedures, which in many cases, SAVE LIVES. (More later on the colonoscopy.)

I am going to a new clinic today, but last time this was the drill: wait in waiting room (aptly named) for a bit, ignore all the people who are getting more dire diagnostic exams/tests, read Reader’s Digest from 1999 (an article about Y2K). When name is murmured barely above the din by laconic technician in candy pink scrubs, sound like an old fart and say, “WHAT? Did you call me?”

Get instructions for the fifteenth time about undressing from the waist up. “TAKE OFF EVERYTHING. Did you wear deodorant?” Um, no because 75 people in your office told me not to. One woman made a special phone call to impart this wisdom. Regardless of the fact that I don’t *wear* any products with aluminum in them, and have a very simple system of bra-and-shirt, I suppose they get really tired of having to specify to people that they need to remove their nipple piercings.

The clinic I went to has a special little waiting area for the topless-but-gowned ones. The magazines are only a month old. I read People and probably discovered that some former TV star had died and I hadn’t heard about it.

When you get called into The Room, the Express-Lane Effect starts. By this principle – that whenever I get into an Express Lane, it backs up because the machine is down, or there is a price check required – I will get the technician with the coldest hands.

And the most fun is the little tape pasties they put on you (cool! they come in floral now!). “No, I need to place them.” The tech scrutinizes your boobs, selecting just the exact center of your nipple for reference.

Then the breast sandwich is done, with two plates (which are cold, no surprise there) that come down to “gently” mash your breast tissue as flat as possible so the x-ray gives as accurate a picture as possible. Yes, it hurts but it lasts for about 20 seconds. The tech says, “Hold your breath!” to which I gasp, “No problem!”

Repeat that three more times. There are two views taken – one vertical, one horizontal, two boobs. So, 80 seconds of unpleasantness, some cool, high-tech pasties and the off-chance to detect breast cancer early while it’s treatable.

Not bad.

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My son has been alternatively-schooled and unschooled 11 years, and in public school for not quite one year. He was in a non-traditional daycare and kindergarten (Waldorf-inspired and Waldorf-proper) for the first six years, then in a charter school for five years that emphasized community responsibility, consensus building, theme-driven multi-year curriculum and individual responsibility.

The one lead teacher he had for the last three years of the charter school was, as it turned out, NOT a good fit for him in that last year, though I didn’t see it at the time (so much other stuff going on). I know better now. My son is what he is, and needs the kind of learning environment that he needs, and a teacher who does not make reasonable accommodations IN A SMALL CHARTER SCHOOL is a bad thing.

We unschooled for six months, exploring together what he wanted to learn, but mostly decompressing from that bad teacher. Last October, I enrolled him in a public school in a move that startled me but seemed to be the right thing at the time. The decision was twofold: as his main educator, I was failing him. I couldn’t find the right combination of approach, topic, method or structure that suited him (including NONE), motivated him. Some dedicated home educators said that I didn’t give him enough time. But the need for change was immediate. And thus as his parent also, I was failing him.

However, when I thought about more and more and more structure, I realized that I did NOT want to replicate school at home. I had a job to attend to, and as flexible as working from home is, it does require one to actually work. The much-ballyhooed “working alongside each other” was not working for us, and having me as the teacher and parent was confusing and stressful for the lad.

Unschooling was not working (at least not fast enough for my son’s well-being); I did not want to do “school-at-home” (even brief attempts at workbooks and lesson plans were met with tears and anxiety). So, why not share the responsibility with others to be the teachers? Oh, hey, there is a system for that. It’s called “school.”

I wanted to see how he would respond in addition to seeing how he would do when pitted against the mainstream school of thought, standardized testing and all that rot. Sixth grade was an ideal place for that to happen because, in reality, sixth grade is pivotal developmentally but not academically. It was a great learning lab for all sorts of reasons. If it didn’t work out, then we could also go back to Plan A, or move on to Plan C, D, E, F…

Sixth grade worked out just fine. Not great, not awful. Just fine. As it should be. He got the full experience of social mores (public school really is a funny sort of island tribe!), teacher nonsense and teacher wonderfulness (esp. librarian wonderfulness!). He learned cool stuff in math and science, and has emerged as bright and skilled in most subjects (completely “meh” in mainstream art-teacher art). He has learned the game of homework completion and the consequences of not doing it and not caring about it. And because of the ungraded foundation he had in the non-traditional schools, he is not a little trick monkey working for The Grades. The numbers on his papers were like weather reports to him, and me, and we dressed and reacted accordingly.

And now we are moving on to seventh grade, and I’m going to take the same attitude: it will be a learning lab. We’ll see what works, and what doesn’t, and if it doesn’t work on a catastrophic level, then we have Plan C, D, E …

So anyone who says, “oh, I can’t imagine homeschooling,” “homeschooling is too hard,” “I bet you got sick of it” or “kids need to socialize with other kids” will get a polite smile from me. Ditto the folks (much more rarely) who say, “public school is evil,” “I would never do that to my child,” or “You’re caught up in the establishment, man!” They really have no clue what we were and are doing, and I don’t have time to fill them in. Join us in the journey and conversation, see all the shades and colors of learning, be a supporter and a partner. But heckling, however well-meaning, will be ignored.

In the interest of fairness, I will report the outcome of my dispute with eHarmony, as mentioned in this entry.

1. They refunded 2 of the 3 fraudulent charges on my credit card. They claimed, in their wrap-up email, that “the auto renewal charge you are disputing occurred within our terms and conditions.” Which means, I suppose, that they are doing me the favor of saving my time and energy in further disputes. I do have documentation that substantiates my claim for refund of three months’ charges, made to my card AFTER my initial subscription expired AND I followed their procedure to DISABLE AUTO RENEW on my account. However, at this point, two months’ refund is what I get for the trouble of two phone calls (one very angry, one not so) and filling out a form and faxing it.

2. I’m done.

If anyone surfs in here having searched “eHarmony scam” or eHarmony customer complaint or (what other keywords can I load in here), my best advice is DO NOT SIGN UP WITH EHARMONY. Period.

Normally, I try to be all willowy and wonderful and positive on this blog. But sometimes, the tiger has to show her claws.

I just received a cheerful notification that my subscription in an online dating service “automatically renewed”!! Isn’t that GREAT?!

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