Baby’s First Office Hour

The voice I’ve heard the most lately is that of my GPS. I got tired of the  Australian guy who kept blurting out random things as though he had Tourette Syndrome or something. And sometimes he lied: “Traffic ahead” when there wasn’t, or “Turn left here” when I would have ended up in a ditch.  He kept calling freeway exits “slip roads” instead of “off-ramps.” I fired him in favor of a blunt, fickle American woman who seems to disagree with him about everything, from terminology to proper routes. “Stay in the left lane and take the right exit in one mile,” she told me this morning. “Stay in the left lane and take the right exit in point-six miles,” she said twenty seconds later. Shortly after, she sharply commanded me to stay in the right lane and take the left exit in 600 feet. This is problematic when you’re going 70 in heavy traffic.

I’m in a motel in Mountain View. I see no mountains. Nonetheless, I’ll be in a hotel in Mountain View for three days a week till the end of June. As I left my house this morning, I heard myself say, “I hate my life.” I particularly hate leaving my baby, all the harder when we’re counting down till when they move back to their house later this month. Waaaah.

I’m finishing the microwaved leftovers of the delicious mac and cheese casserole that Jason made last night. Now I’m going to eat peanut M&Ms because I’m feeling sorry for myself that the man at the reception desk didn’t challenge that I qualify for the senior citizen rate.

I asked the assistant to the dean of the Language Arts Department at Foothill College if he knew of any good, cheap motels in the area. This handsome young man just stared at me, appalled. As I tried to recover from the resulting helpless laughter he chastised, “I hardly know you.”

Yesterday was my first day of my new Advanced Grammar class at Foothill. To introduce myself, I like to play a guessing game on the first day. I clumped my thirty-five students into smaller groups and asked them which of the following was a lie: I won a national Irish dance championship, I worked in South Africa, I used to produce radio documentaries, I’ve gone skydiving, and I got my undergraduate degree in photography. Only one group picked the right answer. Several doubted I’d ever could have worked in radio. When I asked why not, one said, “Because you have such a strong accent.”

Do you know how many people 35 people is? A shiteload when they’re all listening to you and anticipating wisdom and knowledge and probably a little entertainment. I have my first office hour tomorrow morning. Tomorrow I’m likely to write a tragic tale called, The Loneliest Office Hour Ever.

It is a very strange thing to be called “Professor Allison” so I told my students they can call me by my first name. (Josephina.) My students are from Ethiopia, Brazil, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Guinea, Mexico, Moldova, China, Sweden, Iran, Turkey, Japan and Azerbaijan. I think  that’s all.

I gave Emmy her first tattoo to surprise her parents.