Origin story
I came up for the name of this blog after a particularly challenging week. I typed the expression "lice, ice, bitches and barf" into a Facebook status update and really liked the alliteration. Here's the full scoop.
Lice:
The school nurse called me on a Thurs to say my oldest had head lice and needed to be picked up immediately for treatment. I'd never experienced it before and had no idea what to look for let alone how to treat it. A series of conversations with our daycare teachers, a trip to Walgreens, and a quick stop at daycare for a crash course in identifying and removing them started the ordeal. The product I picked up had a detangler in the box and it was in the exact same bottle as the treatment. I inadvertently started with it instead of treatment. I rinsed it out (but didn't shampoo it), then reapplied the treatment as directed. Then combed and picked. Then sent her back to school. Then stripped the beds, the couch cover, gathered all the towels, cloth toys including stuffed animals and dolls, took off her carseat cover, gathered all the winter coats, scarves, snow pants, hats, etc to be washed and dried on high heat. There were mounds of laundry everywhere. Thursdays are normally my most productive day and it vanished into the frenzy of lice treatment. I was edgy and worried about treating everything. In short, I was not a kind or patient parent.
On Friday night I found more nits and live ones. I picked them off.
On Saturday I found more nits and live ones. I picked them off.
The box said you could retreat in 10 days but it didn't say what to do if the treatment didn't get them all. So I called the nurse line who said to get Cetaphil, saturate her dry hair with it, then blow dry it, leave it for 8 hours, then shampoo out. If they came back I could saturate her hair with olive oil, seal it in plastic, then have her sleep on it and repeat as necessary until 9 days lapsed.
The Cetaphil treatment didn't kill them all either. I called the nurse on Wed. She had to be picked up again. I wasn't able to make it to campus anyway because of another ice storm (more on that later). I talked with another nurse who said the accidental conditioning at the start of the whole thing probably prevented the treatment from working. She suggested retreating with the real product and treating that day as the 1st day. It took several hours and I didn't even bring her back to school or daycare. The day was a total loss.
About a week later I found live ones AGAIN. So I had to retreat her. Mind you, all of the laundry had to be rewashed AGAIN (the stuffed animals and things that can't go in the washing machine are still suffocating in garbage bags in the garage. By this point I may just throw them away.)
J tried to be as patient as you can be with the washing, the treatment, the rinsing, the combing, the combining, the inspecting, and the combing. But it was exhausting and frustrating for her too.
Amidst all of this we had friends' kids over and they were playing all over J's bed and with her stuffed animals. I had to warn them to check their kids (they didn't get it). We had to cancel a date because we didn't want the babysitter to get it. IT WAS EXHAUSTING.
Ice:
It was an icy, snowy spring. The Wed I had to pick her up AGAIN was a particularly bad day to miss work because of the bitches part (below). I had had to adjust the syllabi for my courses several times already and I had given them alternative work already because of a conference I attended with students. The ice added another layer (see what I did there?) to the stress of this time period.
Bitches:
I teach French. Mostly literature. There is a lot of great French theater out there. First at SAU and now at RU I've been trying to collaborate with my colleagues in theater since I started. It's been 9 years of trying to make inroads.
When I heard that the performing arts dept was going to do Bernstein's version of Candide I decided to embed the Voltaire version in my spring courses. I worked on the course syllabi in Dec of 2017. I required students to see a performance and read excerpts. This was projected for April, when the performances would take place. About 3 weeks before the performances I reached out to the director via email to suggest we combine our courses and have students work with each other, each group explaining how they approach a text to the other. I didn't get a response. I consulted with a trusted colleague who suggested I email again but instead of meeting before the play started, meet after it was over. I did and immediately got a favorable answer.
Meanwhile, I re-read the Voltaire version, which I hadn't read since college. I was horrified at the rampant sexual violence. I was deeply disturbed by the sexual violence in ways I wasn't back then. A big part of that I think are recent movements like #metoo. I wrote to a group of colleagues, including in the performing arts, to get some suggestions on how to approach it with my students. I wondered how they have handled or are handling these themes in their courses, thinking maybe some of them were also studying Candide in their classes for the same reason.
I teach challenging topics like this each semester and I put a general trigger warning on my course syllabi that indicates we may explore difficult topics like sexual assault. I've never beens so conflicted about a text. What does it say when this work is repeatedly held up as a classic? I consulted several books that outline different teaching approaches and none of them acknowledge the rampant sexual violence Cunegonde and the Old Woman experience. Sure, it's satire, but I'm not convinced that totally or even partially excuses it. There were significant differences between Bernstein's version and Voltaire's, but after rereading it, I'm almost ashamed it was performed on our campus and in April, sexual assault awareness month.
I considered simply choosing different excerpts to study with my students. But given RU had chosen to perform the play I thought it was important to critically engage with it. In the end I issued trigger warnings in both classes. I asked FREN 203 students to anonymously vote for reading the challenging sections or not. I made it a point to discuss 'the ways society normalizes egregious behavior, and of evolving expectations for gender roles.
I suggested this was an opportunity for faculty (and students?) to have a thoughtful discussion about the texts that comprise the Western canon of writing and thought. I hoped a group of us could attend an event sponsored by the campus counseling staff to educate the campus about sexual violence.
The response from most of my colleagues was supportive and thoughtful. I didn't get a response from performing arts until the following day when one of them approached me after an unrelated meeting to tell me how blindsided and angry everyone in her dept was (she'd shared it with everyone in her dept, apparently). She conveyed how lacking in collegiality and respect I am. She questioned my commitment to the arts and accused me of giving the impression that I don't care about their work. When I tried to explain my intent she returned to her hurt feelings, and that of the director. She ordered me to apologize to him.
I tried to be neutral and non-committal while listening to her. I did a lot of soul-searching about my values and commitment to the arts after that (more on that in a different post). My big take away is that in 5 years of working together no one from their dept has reached out to me to seek my expertise. They didn't ask if I was including Candide in my courses. They didn't give me credit for trying to tie it to their work. She practically imposed a guest lecture by an area expert on Bernstein to come to one of my classes, without showing the slightest interest in what I and my students might bring to such a discussion.
In the end the director did come to my upper level class with some of the cast members. They didn't ask any questions of me or my students. We did interject a few but I estimate about 40 of the 50 minutes were devoted to theater issues. In retrospect I should have been firmer about establishing parameters. I emailed the director to thank him for coming and noted it would have been better to have the French students interact in small groups with the theater ones. I added we'll have to save that idea for our next collaboration. Hoping to subtly point out that the collaboration only happened because I took the initiative. And this was the thanks I got.
Barf:
Amidst all of this other shit, both J and Zohra got sick. Z has always had bouts of diarrhea and vomiting, but since the end of Dec they've gotten more frequent. We had to take her to the vet who detected a bacteria out of whack in her gut and had to give her antibiotics to fight it. There were so many messes to clean up. On top of that, J threw up one day and had to stay home from school. More messes to clean up. In my original Facebook post I noted the barf was from two different species.
Besides the alliteration of the title, I thought it perfectly captured the stage of my life I'm at. I'd thought about starting a personal blog with parenting, food, and my thoughts as a journal of sorts and a more efficient way to share more detailed photos and stories with loved ones. The week+ that inspired this ran the gamut of personal and parenting issues so the name was perfect.
Lice:
The school nurse called me on a Thurs to say my oldest had head lice and needed to be picked up immediately for treatment. I'd never experienced it before and had no idea what to look for let alone how to treat it. A series of conversations with our daycare teachers, a trip to Walgreens, and a quick stop at daycare for a crash course in identifying and removing them started the ordeal. The product I picked up had a detangler in the box and it was in the exact same bottle as the treatment. I inadvertently started with it instead of treatment. I rinsed it out (but didn't shampoo it), then reapplied the treatment as directed. Then combed and picked. Then sent her back to school. Then stripped the beds, the couch cover, gathered all the towels, cloth toys including stuffed animals and dolls, took off her carseat cover, gathered all the winter coats, scarves, snow pants, hats, etc to be washed and dried on high heat. There were mounds of laundry everywhere. Thursdays are normally my most productive day and it vanished into the frenzy of lice treatment. I was edgy and worried about treating everything. In short, I was not a kind or patient parent.
On Friday night I found more nits and live ones. I picked them off.
On Saturday I found more nits and live ones. I picked them off.
The box said you could retreat in 10 days but it didn't say what to do if the treatment didn't get them all. So I called the nurse line who said to get Cetaphil, saturate her dry hair with it, then blow dry it, leave it for 8 hours, then shampoo out. If they came back I could saturate her hair with olive oil, seal it in plastic, then have her sleep on it and repeat as necessary until 9 days lapsed.
The Cetaphil treatment didn't kill them all either. I called the nurse on Wed. She had to be picked up again. I wasn't able to make it to campus anyway because of another ice storm (more on that later). I talked with another nurse who said the accidental conditioning at the start of the whole thing probably prevented the treatment from working. She suggested retreating with the real product and treating that day as the 1st day. It took several hours and I didn't even bring her back to school or daycare. The day was a total loss.
About a week later I found live ones AGAIN. So I had to retreat her. Mind you, all of the laundry had to be rewashed AGAIN (the stuffed animals and things that can't go in the washing machine are still suffocating in garbage bags in the garage. By this point I may just throw them away.)
J tried to be as patient as you can be with the washing, the treatment, the rinsing, the combing, the combining, the inspecting, and the combing. But it was exhausting and frustrating for her too.
Amidst all of this we had friends' kids over and they were playing all over J's bed and with her stuffed animals. I had to warn them to check their kids (they didn't get it). We had to cancel a date because we didn't want the babysitter to get it. IT WAS EXHAUSTING.
Ice:
It was an icy, snowy spring. The Wed I had to pick her up AGAIN was a particularly bad day to miss work because of the bitches part (below). I had had to adjust the syllabi for my courses several times already and I had given them alternative work already because of a conference I attended with students. The ice added another layer (see what I did there?) to the stress of this time period.
Bitches:
I teach French. Mostly literature. There is a lot of great French theater out there. First at SAU and now at RU I've been trying to collaborate with my colleagues in theater since I started. It's been 9 years of trying to make inroads.
When I heard that the performing arts dept was going to do Bernstein's version of Candide I decided to embed the Voltaire version in my spring courses. I worked on the course syllabi in Dec of 2017. I required students to see a performance and read excerpts. This was projected for April, when the performances would take place. About 3 weeks before the performances I reached out to the director via email to suggest we combine our courses and have students work with each other, each group explaining how they approach a text to the other. I didn't get a response. I consulted with a trusted colleague who suggested I email again but instead of meeting before the play started, meet after it was over. I did and immediately got a favorable answer.
Meanwhile, I re-read the Voltaire version, which I hadn't read since college. I was horrified at the rampant sexual violence. I was deeply disturbed by the sexual violence in ways I wasn't back then. A big part of that I think are recent movements like #metoo. I wrote to a group of colleagues, including in the performing arts, to get some suggestions on how to approach it with my students. I wondered how they have handled or are handling these themes in their courses, thinking maybe some of them were also studying Candide in their classes for the same reason.
I teach challenging topics like this each semester and I put a general trigger warning on my course syllabi that indicates we may explore difficult topics like sexual assault. I've never beens so conflicted about a text. What does it say when this work is repeatedly held up as a classic? I consulted several books that outline different teaching approaches and none of them acknowledge the rampant sexual violence Cunegonde and the Old Woman experience. Sure, it's satire, but I'm not convinced that totally or even partially excuses it. There were significant differences between Bernstein's version and Voltaire's, but after rereading it, I'm almost ashamed it was performed on our campus and in April, sexual assault awareness month.
I considered simply choosing different excerpts to study with my students. But given RU had chosen to perform the play I thought it was important to critically engage with it. In the end I issued trigger warnings in both classes. I asked FREN 203 students to anonymously vote for reading the challenging sections or not. I made it a point to discuss 'the ways society normalizes egregious behavior, and of evolving expectations for gender roles.
I suggested this was an opportunity for faculty (and students?) to have a thoughtful discussion about the texts that comprise the Western canon of writing and thought. I hoped a group of us could attend an event sponsored by the campus counseling staff to educate the campus about sexual violence.
The response from most of my colleagues was supportive and thoughtful. I didn't get a response from performing arts until the following day when one of them approached me after an unrelated meeting to tell me how blindsided and angry everyone in her dept was (she'd shared it with everyone in her dept, apparently). She conveyed how lacking in collegiality and respect I am. She questioned my commitment to the arts and accused me of giving the impression that I don't care about their work. When I tried to explain my intent she returned to her hurt feelings, and that of the director. She ordered me to apologize to him.
I tried to be neutral and non-committal while listening to her. I did a lot of soul-searching about my values and commitment to the arts after that (more on that in a different post). My big take away is that in 5 years of working together no one from their dept has reached out to me to seek my expertise. They didn't ask if I was including Candide in my courses. They didn't give me credit for trying to tie it to their work. She practically imposed a guest lecture by an area expert on Bernstein to come to one of my classes, without showing the slightest interest in what I and my students might bring to such a discussion.
In the end the director did come to my upper level class with some of the cast members. They didn't ask any questions of me or my students. We did interject a few but I estimate about 40 of the 50 minutes were devoted to theater issues. In retrospect I should have been firmer about establishing parameters. I emailed the director to thank him for coming and noted it would have been better to have the French students interact in small groups with the theater ones. I added we'll have to save that idea for our next collaboration. Hoping to subtly point out that the collaboration only happened because I took the initiative. And this was the thanks I got.
Amidst all of this other shit, both J and Zohra got sick. Z has always had bouts of diarrhea and vomiting, but since the end of Dec they've gotten more frequent. We had to take her to the vet who detected a bacteria out of whack in her gut and had to give her antibiotics to fight it. There were so many messes to clean up. On top of that, J threw up one day and had to stay home from school. More messes to clean up. In my original Facebook post I noted the barf was from two different species.
Besides the alliteration of the title, I thought it perfectly captured the stage of my life I'm at. I'd thought about starting a personal blog with parenting, food, and my thoughts as a journal of sorts and a more efficient way to share more detailed photos and stories with loved ones. The week+ that inspired this ran the gamut of personal and parenting issues so the name was perfect.
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