Since I haven’t updated my columns page…

I’m going to post my column for the week here because I’ve been getting all kinds of, “thanks for writing this,” emails about it.

Enjoy:

Who’s Looking Out for the Kids? (http://www.news-tribune.net/columns/local_story_210014721.html)

The Teacher’s Association at New Albany-Floyd County Consolidated School Corporation should consider hiring a publicist. Or, maybe just a consultant, someone who can field media questions before their President starts making hostile, unfortunate comments about an event that happened over a year ago.

They need someone who can help assuage concerns from parents like me. Moms and dads whose children are about to enter the New Albany-Floyd County School system and who are now wondering if they will ever have to defend their child against an organization that is supposed to support both teachers and students.

The Tribune ran a follow-up article last week about a family that has been trying to seek legal action against a teacher who had called their son, “ … pathetic,” and, “ignorant, selfish, self-absorbed.” She rallied the class to comment on his behavior and reduced the student to tears. (According to a digital recorder that the child had in his pocket, the teacher asks the class “ … is that somebody you want to be with?” “No,” answers the class in unison.)

When the President of the Teacher’s Association was called last week to give comments on the year-old story, he forgot to say, “It was an unfortunate incident all around and as an organization that supports teachers and students, we only want what is best for all individuals affected. We hope this matter will be resolved without causing any more pain to the teacher or the student,” end of comment. Period.

But he didn’t. Instead, the president of the Teacher’s Association, an association whose Web site lists, “To provide the best educational opportunities possible for each student,” as it’s first mission statement, said, “If she [the offending teacher] made any mistake, her mistake was not getting rid of him [the five-year old child she called pathetic],” and that, “It’s sad to see what has happened to her [again, the teacher], all over money.”

But do you serve lasagna???

Once I saw a bumper sticker that read, “I have no idea where I’m going.”

That pretty much sums me up in ten words or less. If ever I should have a saying permanently inked upon me, “I have no idea where I’m going,” is it. Maybe have it in non-legible cursive on the back of my shoulder or on the top of my arm like Angelina Jolie’s kiddo’s birthplaces.

Even with Google maps, I’m as lost as college freshman at registration.

And, unfortunately for my husband, he usually has to be lost with me. A couple days ago, we were planning a yummy Italian dinner at a restaurant I had read about on a San Francisco local foodie’s blog. “this is where you eat if you want good food and you’re from here” was pretty much how she described it so I was in. I googled the restaurant’s name, read a few more reviews on Yelp, and committed the street address to memory…or, at least, I thought I did.

After walking nearly to the very opposite side of the town from our hotel room, we thought for sure we were getting close. The block was just a ways up and as we approached, I was looking for the sign that I had seen from the one photo posted. The sign that finally appeared had a different restaurant name on it, one that I recognized but wasn’t the restaurant I wanted. Turns out that I had committed the wrong restaurant address to memory. It was the restaurant listed just after the one we wanted on the Google search.

Oops.

My husband laughed about it and then agreed to take a cab when I pulled up the right address on my phone. The cabbie seemed confused when we gave him the street address and restaurant name, “it’s an Italian place,” I told him.

Turns out that it wasn’t an Italian place. The Italian place had been closed for some time. The new place that used the same name was now a drag strip joint. My husband and I entered the place and immediately knew that it wasn’t what we were looking for. There was a hostess stand that had a handsome man dressed in a boyscout uniform and wacky, large-rimmed sunglasses. As we walked in, a tall, slender, good-looking drag queen in full make-up and a platinum wig asked us if we’d like a table.

“I think we got the wrong place,” I said and smiled.

Chris and I left looking like the two biggest midwestern tourist to ever hit the streets of San Francisco. The only things we were missing were fanny packs and visors with the Golden Gate Bridge embroidered on them.

It’s too bad I was starving at the time and exhausted from walking around the city looking for a restaurant that didn’t even exist any more. I think we passed on an opportunity for some great entertainment. If I already had eaten and wasn’t preparing myself to walk 13.2 miles the following day, I would have taken a table and enjoyed the show. Of course, we still would have stuck out like sore thumbs in our Gap jeans and Eddie Bauer fleeces.

Be Sure to Wear a Flower in Your Hair

That song would be more accurate if they sang, “…be sure to wear your clothes in layers,” because the climate in San Francisco can change according to what block you’re on or what Bart station you walk out of.

We came to San Francisco for part of the week and now that it’s our last night here it feels only right that I should be writing something. There are a lot of good writers who hang out in these parts…it’s kind of like going to Hawaii and not surfing, which is actually a funny metaphor since I would never surf, even in Hawaii (maybe more ironic than funny…an ironic metaphor, the city’s creative force must already be working).

There’s a nice balance to the city: an outrageous number of good places to dine with extraordinary inclines to walk up to get to each restaurant. I haven’t felt nearly as guilty about eating a full breakfast and full dinner with ice cream snack in between since the steps I take to arrive at each place equal an approximate 10K. And, since I’m on the subject of walking, I finished a mini-marathon here on Sunday. It was my reason d’etre for coming to the city. My birthday gift to myself…run my ass into the ground walking 13.2 miles across a city I’ve never visited before. It was worth it; I’m going to do more minis closer to home. If I can finish one here, I should be good on level land.

It’s been a feast of a trip, but I’m ready to come home. I miss my kiddos. And writing. I’m ready to start full force again. Watch out…I may be overloading your inbox (if you’re a regular subscriber). Next story up to bat: convincing my husband to walk blocks upon blocks to go to an Italian restaurant that I had read about online only to discover that it was a drag strip club.

Where Did All My Words Go???

Remember that year I wrote every single day without fail? I was pregnant too. Even after I had the baby, I kept writing. I wrote the day I gave birth, the day after, the month after. I wrote, wrote, wrote.

Now that baby is nine months old. (I know!? Can you believe it’s been nine months already? If I had gotten pregnant the day I gave birth, I’d already be ready to pop again. Good, God, the horror…two babies nine months apart. That may be the very worst idea I can imagine. Not that new babies are awful, they’re the very opposite of awful. But two of them, spread out over nine months, could possibly induce schizophrenic episodes of severe paranoia and complete madness.)

And while my precious son continues to double in size and my gorgeous five-year old daughter acts more and more like a teenager, my writing practice keeps dwindling.

Maybe I need another feat or year-long goal. Something to get me back to the page over and over and over. What I really want is a completed first draft of my manuscript. As I type this, my husband is watching the original broadcast of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon on the History Channel.

Surely to Buddha if two men could get to the moon for a quick walk forty years ago, I can punch out another 50,000 words by Christmas.

And Just Like that She’s Back

My last post talked about how I was supposed to be living on the edge for the next 28 days. Now, here I am 28 days later and just now realizing that my version of living on the edge was to stay as far away from writing as possible for me.

It’s a scary thing not to write regularly when you’re supposed to be a writer because the ritual that is routine becomes foreign and the page gets more and more difficult to face as the days go by. I’ve been putting off writing so long that the idea of coming up with something worth writing seems impossible. Funny thing is that I had no idea that I’ve been away for exactly 28 days and when I returned tonight and read where I had left off, I learned that I was simply living on my edge.

Fortunately, for all of us, I’m not on the edge anymore. And I don’t mean that ‘fortunately for all of us’ in a aren’t-you-lucky-to-get-to-read-what-I-write-again kind of way. I mean it in a I-wasn’t-the-usual-happy-go-lucky-Amy when I was on the edge. I was bitter and angry a lot. I got frustrated easy and had zero tolerance in way of patience. I was awful to my husband during many moments of these past 28 days. I was short with loved ones. I put up walls between myself and dear friends. Once, I even told my boss that, AND I QUOTE, “…cannot talk about this anymore. I don’t care.” (‘this’ being a perfectly legitimate topic for him to be asking me about and something I really should have cared about. i’ve since gained a new perspective.)

Since I’ve last written, we finally sold and left my childhood home. The home that we spent the last four years renovating. The home that we thought we sold in April, but ended up having to put back on the market when the first deal fell through. The home that harbored an entire slew of experiences for me throughout my life: good, bad, sad, tragic, scary, funny, loving…if there’s an emotion, I felt it in that house. I was there through my adolescence, through puberty, and through my teens. I came back and had my kids there. I fought and made up with my husband there. Writing all this down makes it clear that leaving that house wasn’t supposed to be easy. There was a lot of letting go to do.

Now I’m sitting in my new house. A house that I love so much that it’s sometimes hard for me to concentrate at work because all I can think about is coming home and hanging out in my kitchen. This is our seventh night here. I’ve felt at home from the very first night when we all slept in the living room because our beds were not yet set-up.

It feels good to be writing here again. I promise to get back to it more often, in between unpacking boxes.