Asterisks

*No bullet points from me. Bullets are violent, and make me think of Crash, which I just saw the beginning of again because a colleague is using it in his Race and Ethnicity in American Cinema seminar (my school is almost as cool as that makes it sound).

(Also, I don't know the code. But really, I like asterisks better.)

*I spoke to my dad yesterday, and he said he is going to be in Germany from December 8-18. I have been feeling pretty soft on my dad recently since he gave me this for my birthday. But, um, what?? (He does travel a lot for business, but this is pleasure.) He has not been terrifically involved with my nephew, but I worry that this is because Flipper is a 2nd grandchild....and/or because he is not biologically related to my dad.

He sees Nephew S. fairly frequently, but only because one of my stepmother's sons happens to live nearby my sister; when they're in that neck of the woods to see her grandchildren, they stop by to see S. There is no reason for my stepmother to want to come to our neck of the woods. (She's not mean...she's just emotionally blunted. If I were ever to point out to her that she makes sure her own family is taken care of and neglects my dad's, she would point out -- accurately -- that his family is his job. She doesn't have the emotional insight to see that he is the type of man who lets women take care of family [my mom is still closer to many of his family members than he is] and that since she had an affair with him while he was married to my mom and my sister and I were old enough to know about it, it is in everyone's interests for her to play a role in keeping the family together.)

*More entertainingly: yesterday, the kids (my students) were asking about Flipper, and one of them asked if he will be white. I replied that my partner was white. This, of course, begged an obvious question; Little Miss Sophisticate, the fashion plate of my homeroom, asked, "Do you know the sperm donor?" Wow. I said, "Uh, no, it was a mail order thing." She nodded knowingly. Holy crap, I don't think I could have said the word "sperm" in front of an adult when I was 12.

Today, in the other homeroom, one of the kids asked, "Does the baby have a father?" I was more prepared this time, and I answered that, of course, you know it takes a man and a woman to make a baby, but we don't know the man, and the baby won't know the man (well, when he's 18 he can, but I digress, and I didn't with the kids). The student looked a little confused, and I said something about how you can just order it. I guess this made sense to him. Ironically, it is perhaps a bit easier to discuss than, you know, that other way babies are made.

*And on that note: at my shower the other day, a colleague with two adopted children said that two years ago, her then-sixth grader came home and said, "Mom, you and Dad are lucky you didn't have to do you-know to get us." Um. Yeah.

*Finally: I started the Stone Age today. (Quick, say Australopithecus afarensis five times fast!) I have turned everything over to my replacement. Any day now, boy...