Comma Dot Comma

I teach at two different community colleges. The first is a school that specializes in preparing people for careers– nurses, HVAC techs, machinists, etc. Most of the students are older than a typical college student, and many are already working and have families. The second is a school that specializes in general education so that people can transfer to a university. Those students tend to be predominantly just-out-of-high-school. Many still live with their parents and go to school full time.

I like both institutions (and their students), but I only fear for my fenders at the second one. It has a much larger student body and as a whole, the younguns are terrible drivers. In addition to the constant near misses I witness in the parking lot and the intersections closest to the school, a surprising number of my students end up missing class due to car accidents or court appearances related to traffic violations. Some of them are probably lying, but still. I’d estimate the traffic accident/violation rate in my classes at around 10%. I feel like doing a unit in the critical thinking portion of the class on Consequences of Gunning the Engine at Every Opportunity.

Well, I’m sitting here listening to the new U2 (competent as expected but on the boring side so far. I like “I’ll go Crazy” pretty well.) and wondering what happened to my blog header. To fix or change it I have to find a new one, download it to my PC, FTP it to my server, and then import it. I don’t feel like doing that. So, we will be header-free for awhile.

Also thinking about pregnancy, as I am about to hit the halfway mark. I was never one of those women who desired pregnancy per se; I was happily not pregnant for most of my adult life (despite wanting kids), and even now I view it more as a means to an end than as a must-have experience. Intellectually, I understand the point of view of women who cherish the almost miraculous ability to help a child to grow inside their bodies. It is pretty cool that we can do that. Emotionally, though, I don’t feel it. If I could tag-team with Dr. G on the project I probably would. The highlights of pregnancy so far have all been ultrasounds, when I can see little Toots (our nickname for her) move around. What with her high-risk start to life, followed by my emergency appendectomy surgery, and then the usual gender and anatomy checks, I’ve gotten more than the usual share of glimpses into the womb and those make me feel more connected to her than any number of pains and discomforts. Every significant change in my body requires a week or two of getting used to, including experiencing the first flutters of Toots moving around. I’m now at the point where I like them because I get a sense of what she is up to, but originally they were disconcerting. They were so clearly unconnected to any intentions or movements of my own body. Invaders! was my initial, illogical feeling on the matter, despite the fact that I had done everything in my power to get and keep little Toots in there. Having to continually adjust is probably good practice, given that she will continue to constantly change things after she is in the free air.

The advent of the flutters, combined with my pants finally just not zipping, combined with continued barfing, got me speculating on other less invasive ways of reproducing. What if we could just lay eggs? But then we’d have to sit on them for who knows how long, which would be far more incapacitating (though at least that way both parents can share the burden). Dr. G pointed out that we could just buy an incubator. I imagined all the factions that would form around pro- and anti- incubator stances. The antis would form groups and publish screeds against artificial incubation and list reams of facts for why it is better to sit on them yourself. The rich women who were feeling guilty about not wanting to sit on their own eggs would hire 3rd world women to sit on them so the eggs would still get the personal touch. And just think of the battles over hatching! What if your hired egg sitter was the one present when they first hatched, rather than the mother? Or if they started to hatch while you were at work? The incubators would have to come with little hatch alarm systems.