catchin up

I’ve been out of here for a long time! When I finally came back it turned out there’s been some monkey business by a hacker so I had to get my password straightened out.

What’s been going on? I’ve been teaching 3 courses this fall, growing my tutoring business, and hostessing 4 twenty-somethings. Only not hostessing really because I’m lazy and not a doormat anyway.

The one twenty-something who isn’t here is Lady K., who moved to Seattle with her boyfriend. That got a little complicated, what with her boyfriend not finding them a place, other than a tent in someone’s back yard that fell through when the Mom said no. To the rescue came my old High School boyfriend, David, who lives out there and who welcomed Lady K. and her feckless boyfriend into his guest room. Lady K. proceeded to get 3 jobs, have a major mental meltdown that her dad and David and I and my credit card helped calm down (she bought a ticket to fly home then changed her mind), and find a place to stay. Things are calmer now. She visits David every weekend, borrows his car to go to Costco, then watches Red Dwarf with his wife and him and eats ice cream.

Lady K’s boyfriend is currently unemployed and blames capitalism. He looks for jobs only on Monster.com and refuses to learn about proper ways of jobhunting. She says she loves him but is getting frustrated. I am keeping my mouth shut except to remind her that at 22 she is not responsible for whether or not he decides to do something with his life or not. (She fears leaving him because then for sure he won’t go back to school or do other useful things. Like I said, she’s 22).

Meanwhile back at the ranch Chico and his girlfriend have been living in Lady K’s old room while they prepared to move to Manhattan. They found an apartment and made the move today. They were here for about 4 months. Chico took back his old job, which is computerish and highly lucrative, and his girlfriend, a family counselor, has been making contacts with places to start working, with the intention of ultimately starting a practice of her own. She also has decided to start selling the jewelry she makes. Everyone was jolly at Thanksgiving yesterday and I have the picture of Chico mooning the table to prove it.

Downstairs, Ben and his girlfriend have been living in incredible clutter and a single bed for about a year. I can just hear what my mother would have to say about that. However, there’s been a lot of growing up going on over the year, and it’s interesting to watch your kid learn to deal with the responsibilities and realities of a serious relationship. He works two jobs, one at Barnes and NObles and one for the country Planning Board, and he has applied to graduate school in planning. She has applied to Rutgers, after much pain and anguish and worrying, in order to finish college–a mega family crisis caused her to drop out a few years ago with a year to go. She works too, very hard but I have learned a lot about the world of minimum wage from my local twenty somethings and it’s not pretty.

Ben’s girlfriend is vegan. Chico’s is allergic to wheat. I kinda stopped cooking.

Everyone knits except A. and Chico. Yes, I did not include Ben’s name in that except list. His girlfriend taught him to knit. I photographed the two of them on the couch knitting and watching Family Man, Ben with a beer at his elbow and a suspicious look for the camera.

I am loving teaching and tutoring. Fall is my busiest time. It is easier to get teaching jobs in the fall; tutoring lasts all year round. I’ve paid off a lot of debt and put some savings aside. The best part is the personalities of the kids I teach and tutor. How is it that kids can be so nice, in all their various ways, no matter how callow or rebellious, then turn into jerks in adulthood??

Best deal of my new career so far: I’ve been hired to go into Manhattan every other Friday night to tutor an absolutely charming boy on Central Park West. They pay 300.00 for my transportation and the time I am not available for other students, plus what I charge for 2 hours of tutoring. As it happened, my Friday class ends at 12:15 and my one late afternoon tutee took the SAT and graduated, so I can go in early and go to the Met, where I have a membership. Last week I spent one hour in the Egyptian section, looking for 18th dynasty people because I’d just read a 3 novel series on the period (Pauline Gedge, Lords of the two lands series), then spent another hour in just two rooms of the Assyrian section. The Assyrians were amazing, muscular and squat and warlike. Even their flowers are muscular and squat and warlike.

Still singing, too. We did a beautiful concert with the New Brunswick Chamber Orchestra commemorating Kristallnacht, then two weeks later participated in an Ecumenical Thanksgiving service hosted by a local group of Turkish Muslims. It was so moving to see and hear the final benedictions given by “the people of the Book,” a Christian minister, a rabbi, and a Muslim.