More blah (with recipe!)

Lisa and dish both sort of asked about lectures in my online teaching gig.

There aren't any lectures per se. The class is what they call "asynchronous" in the online teaching world, which is to say "not at the same time" which is to further say that the students are spread across the globe and so we can't really get together across time zones and have any real-time chat, video or otherwise. But as for video, we don't do it, because the courses have to have as low a common tech denominator as possible, to make them accessible to as many students as possible, so we try to avoid anything too fancy that might require expensive or brand-new equipment from students. I like dish's idea of photos, though. I do have one photo on my instructor's "bio" page and it links to my online resume which also features a photo, but perhaps more photos, sprinkled in with my responses to their conference conversations might make things seem friendlier. I could toss in a couple of Nat eating their exams (which get fed ex'd to me). I'm sure they'd love it.

Lisa specifically asked how the heck I get anything done around here and all I can say is, I don't know, and I don't get nearly as much done as I'd like. But at her request, here's a break down of my time usage on an average weekday:

9 am: I wake up. Some days, Cole brings me tea and a toddler in bed. On those days (the nice ones) we chill together as a family (Cole and I sip tea while Nat reads books and plays with other toys in our bed) for about a half hour. Some days, when Cole has to be at work early and David isn't around, I have to get up considerably earlier, but I'd say 75% of the time, I get to stay in bed until 9. Nat will have been up since anywhere from 6:30-7am, and either Cole or David or both will have had her since then.

9:30ish: I give Nat milk and often, a second breakfast. If I'm lucky, I'm getting a little breakfast in this time slot too. I try to do it every day, but I don't always make it.

10ish: I dress Nat and comb and style her hair. Lately, I've been using t.v. as a hair distraction (Sesame Street or Blue's Clues dvd's mostly). The whole thing takes about 20 minutes.

10:30ish: Nat toddles about while I clean the kitchen. Anything left over from the night before (like clean dishes in the dishwasher) and anything messed up from the morning (Nat's breakfast(s), milk, highchair tray, other people's breakfasts and tea cups etc.). Again, if I didn't already, I try to eat something in here. I also start a load of laundry at this point almost every day.

11ish: I'm either still cleaning stuff or playing with Nat. She may get hungry again this early, but I usually hold lunch until 11:15 or 11:30 or so.

11:30ish: I feed Nat lunch. Again, if I didn't do it yet, I try to eat breakfast. You'd think I'd get something in there, with all these opportunities, but there are always a million distractions (Nat flinging food/beverages/screaming for more/rubbing food into her newly-styled hair, etc., you know...), so it isn't as easy as it sounds.

12ish: I put Nat down for nap. We read a book or two, I sing "You've Got a Friend" while rocking, I put her down, sign "I love you" and I'm free.

Naptime: While Nat is napping, I fit in the following: shower, eat something (at this point it's lunch), do anything in the office that needs to be done (our office is not Nat-friendly and I can't do anything in there with her awake), relax outside on the top of the stairs with some tea and a book. That last bit is something I aim to do every day, but only do about 25% of the time. Nat sleeps between 1.5 and 2 hours. What naptime usually amounts to is about an hour of computer time.

2ish: Nat gets up and gets a snack and some milk. This is the part of the day when I do household chores. I have a cleaning schedule (a really toned-down version of flylady) so that every week, I'm in a different room (the rooms in question being my bedroom, the kitchen, the bathroom, the living and dining rooms) with a different list of detailed tasks. I try to do one task on the list per day of the work week. Most of the time I accomplish this at least four days per week. Today, for example, I changed the sheets on my bed. Nat's room is not on the list, because I am in there every day and I usually just keep it up while we play. This is also our window for going out. We go shopping or to the park etc. during this slot of time. Sometimes I prep-cook dinner at this point, too. Nat plays along with me at these tasks, "helping" or undoing what I've done so I have to do it again (like unfolding laundry or pulling out plastic containers I've just put away), and asks me to pause frequently and read various books she spends all day scattering about the house or insisting it's time to "hug, hug hug!" If it's a light chore day, or I just decide to blow chores off, we spend some time in more structured play.

4ish: I almost always start dinner by four. Nat usually gets hungry by 4:45 and sometimes as early as 4:30, so we rarely get to wait until Cole is home to sit down and eat together. Sometimes Nat is willing to sit for a second shift later.

5ish: Nat and I hang out and play until Cole gets home. We read, play with blocks, feed the dollbaby, read some more, play with the train, play with puzzles, read, roll the ball back and forth, read, etc. If she needs one, she gets a bath in here.

6 pm: I turn on the Newshour and Nat plays and reads and gets up and down, on and off my lap and/or Cole's while we take in the news sort of. Cole and I might sit down and eat (sans t.v.) at this point too, while Nat either eats some, or hangs out with us in the dining room. She and Cole play and I clean up the kitchen post-dinner. (Sometimes David is around for dinner too. Sometimes he doesn't get home until later and he eats on his own.)

7:30 I put Nat down for bed. That entails books, lots of singing, prayers, lots of rocking, signing "I Love You" and a cd that plays rainstorm noises.

By this point, I'm wiped out. Cole and I have some time together, often, watching t.v., but sometimes reading and talking in bed. If we watch t.v., that's when I make jewelry or do other crafty/mend-y stuff.

Cole usually goes to bed between 9 and 10 pm, and that's when I get back on the computer or do other office work. So most often, my blog posting gets done then. But during the semesters, whatever I didn't get done during nap gets done then, too. Lately I've had that nasty kind of insomnia where you can't sleep, but your brain is fried and you can't do anything else either. So I've tried getting in bed by 11 and reading myself to sleep. This has mixed results. My problem with parenthood is that my body, left to its own devices, would stay up until about 2:30 am and sleep until about 10:30 am, but it doesn't like to sleep during decent, normal, red-blooded American hours. So even if I get in bed at that decent hour, I lay awake for an hour or two (or some torturous times, more) before I actually sleep. This is why Cole is so sweet as to leave me alone until 9 in the mornings. I tend to sleep better in the morning than I do at night. And Cole is very much a morning person, so taking baby care in shifts works well for us. Or as well as possible.

David is technically on duty three mornings a week until I wake up, but much more often than that, he's just around. That's nice, because it's another set of eyes, and occasionally, for this reason, I get a shower before nap, or Cole and I run down the street and have dinner out for an hour in the evening. But I hesitate to ask David to do much unless it's official, because he does so much anyway. Regardless, he often keeps me company on and off throughout the day which is nice. Sometimes he's with us on our errands or Nat and/or I go with him on his.

And that is the long, boring saga of my daily labors.

Now, for tonight's dinner:

Mock Pasta

You will need:

all that summer squash and zucchini sitting in the bottom of your vegetable crisper

five medium tomatoes

about 1/4 bulb of garlic

a medium onion

half a can of beans (I used black soy beans)

a cup of chopped spinach (I used frozen, since it isn't in season here now)

a tablespoon of wheat germ

a tablespoon of olive oil

a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar

some Italianesque spices (I used tarragon, basil and oregano)

a handful of pine nuts, toasted (I actually put them on a tray in my toaster oven and put it on light "toast.")

Clean and shred the squashes. Steam the shreds for about 15 minutes. I imagine you could put a tablespoon of water in them and nuke them, too, but I like to steam things on the stove.

Pour the olive oil in the bottom of a small saucepan and turn on the heat while you chop the onion and garlic. Once it's chopped, add it to the hot oil.

Chop the tomatoes. Once the onion is translucent, add the vinegar and the tomatoes and stir it all up nice. You can add spices now, too. Let that simmer, covered, for about fifteen minutes.

Add the half can of beans, drained (that is, don't include the liquid!), the spinach and the wheat germ. Let that all simmer for another ten minutes.

Remove from the stove and puree in a food processer. Return to the stove and let it simmer, covered for however long it takes for everyone to be home and ready to eat dinner.

When you're ready to eat, place the squash in the bottom of a bowl, top with sauce and sprinkle pine nuts over the top of that. I bet some grated parmesean would be lovely with this, but we don't have any at the moment.

Yum!

Comments

[Lisa]

Thanks! I am so jealous of your morning time! I am a 2:30 to 10:30 sleeper myself, if left to my own devices, and since after the kids go to bed is the only time I have to myself, I like to stretch it too far into the wee hours of the morning sometimes. One of the advantages of twins, though, is that I can leave them a few reachable toys in the mornings, and they will usually play happily by themselves for about an hour until I get them. So they go to bed about 8:30 or nine, and get up about 8, but play together until about 9.

I have almost everything for your squash dinner! I may try that tonight. : )