Update!

After a totally planned (read: totally unplanned) hiatus, we're back to bring you the latest and greatest updates from the Professor and His Wife! Hold your applause, please.

We've been working hard for the past couple of months, planning our November vow renewal, trying to beat the heat, and watching the Colorado wildfires closely. It seems like even our days off have been packed full. Today, though, I have a real, true day off, with no obligations, no meetings, and no schedule! So here I sit, at my mother-in-law's where we're house/dog/birdsitting, coffee in hand, enjoying a David Attenborough-narrated documentary about the ocean, and catching up on this, the blog that is always on my to-do list but which never gets crossed off.

So what's new? For starters, Effie wasn't pregnant, so big relief there. I mean, I love kittens as much as the next squealing seven-year-old, but I was in no way ready to be a grandmother. Especially since kittens take a lot of time and attention, and I work full time. So, happily, our number is still three and not seven or eight. Whew!

We now officially have health insurance, which feels so much better than I expected it to. It's like we have this great big cushion to fall on when one of us inevitably breaks something or gets horribly sick. We're ready for our lease to be up, have plans to move in with the Professor's parents short-term until we have enough saved up for a down payment on a house. I'm taking some summer classes and am working on getting my First Aid/CPR certification, and hopefully can start thinking about getting a job with the school district and getting my foot in the door.

And not to harp on an old subject, but I am totally feeling the baby fever again. A lot (A LOT) of my Facebook friends are pregnant or have just had babies (in fact, I just clicked over there to see that a friend and his wife JUST welcomed their son this morning!) Given that I have a wedding dress to fit into in November and that I'm not done with school until 2015 - not to mention we don't have a house of our own - having a baby should not be anywhere near the front of my mind. If anything, it should be slowly, slowly simmering on a far back, ideally malfunctioning burner. But it's hard to avoid thinking about it when it's so prevalent in my friends' lives. Even the whales on my TV screen are mothering their babies.

Lastly, the Professor and I are so looking forward to Jazz Aspen Snowmass over Labor Day weekend; we've got our three-day passes and a few extra days off, so we're going to make a little vacation out of it. Can't wait!

And so ends the update. More engaging, intellectual material coming soon, I promise.

-The Professor's Wife

Safe

Quick update on life with the Professor and His Wife: Effie the cat is still a cat, and we had an interesting visit to the animal hospital last night after we came home to find her left eye swollen shut. It's conjunctivitis, by the way, part of an upper respiratory infection (her third since we've had her). She got a nice hefty dose of an antibiotic and they swabbed her for feline herpes and other kitty maladies. The vet also hinted that - surprise! - Effie may or may not be pregnant! Which would be interesting, since the agency from which we adopted her guaranteed us that she was spayed. The vet said she didn't see any spay scars or markings, and that when she was doing the examination, felt some lumpy bits down by Effie's baby-makin' parts. Which could be one of two things: kittens, or a full colon. We are crossing our fingers that it's just a little constipation. Given the typical cat gestation period (and the fact that she has not set paw outside since we adopted her so if she is prego, it had to have happened while she was in the care of the adoption agency), we'll know in about a week! Stay tuned!

Now to the point:

I've been thinking a lot about the word "safe" lately. In my education classes at the Big University, we've been talking about helping students feel safe. Making school a safe place. Safe to tell, safe to report, safe to talk, safe to be yourself. But what does that really mean?

Given the events in Boston yesterday, it's not hard to say that the world is not a safe place. Events and places we think are safe, we think we can attend or visit without hesitation - it's becoming vastly apparent that we must always be on alert, even in places we thought were safe. Schools are quickly becoming notorious for being dangerous - school shootings, bullying, teachers and faculty being arrested for abusing or assaulting students - for the teachers who don't have a mug shot and who are actively teaching and trying to protect their students, it's becoming increasingly difficult to reconcile to the fact that we have very little control over whether or not our students are safe. We can spearhead initiatives to make our schools physically safer - metal detectors, locker searches, assemblies and programs geared toward greater student awareness - and we can make cracking down on bullying a higher priority, sure. But we cannot guard against the greater evils that threaten our students. We cannot shield them from a bomb at the Boston Marathon. We cannot physically remove them from an abusive situation, though we can do everything in our power to help someone else do so. We cannot guard them from bomb threats, terrorist attacks, drunk drivers. So what can we do?

North Korea has been in the news recently, thanks to threats of missile attacks on the United States. While they apparently aren't solid on American geography, Colorado Springs was mentioned by name. Now, I don't feel entirely threatened by North Korea, and I have great faith in NORAD's ability to head off any impending missiles by miles, given that I live in the shadow of their mountain fortress. All the same, though, what do these threats mean for the future? They seem empty now, but what happens when they aren't? Will I be responsible for the education of our children under the gloom of World War III?

Perhaps it's the murky weather outside affecting my vision, but don't things seem dark right now? Financial crisis, promises of impending doom from North Korea, death in the news every time I turn it on - how am I going to make students feel safe when they are just as plugged into the world as I am; they know what's going on, they will ask questions and seek reassurance that their world won't be getting turned on its head before they can graduate high school. And I can't offer them that reassurance. Because the older I get, the more I realize that the world is already turned on its head. That stability is a myth, and that raising a well-rounded child who knows what's happening in the world and is still willing to go outside is next to impossible. So what can I do?

I can teach my students history. I can show them how it runs in cycles, and how the stakes rise each time it comes around. I can teach them to look at their own histories, how their decisions have affected their world, how they can make decisions now that will ripple out through the future and last forever. I can introduce them to the idea that it just takes one person, one person with an idea, with the resolve to change the world. I can introduce them to the people who have changed the world, and I think I can do it well.

So while maybe I can't make my students safe, while I can't shield them from the perils of the world as it is, maybe I can help them to understand that every single person who ever changed the world, every game-changer, every revolutionary, every peacemaker - all of them started as one person with one idea, with the resolve to change the world.

What are you doing today that will last forever?

-The Professor's Wife

Baby Fever

And now, for a little personal information about The Professor and His Wife: ages! The Professor is 24. His Wife is 22. We're pretty young, pretty hip kids who have no business bearing children at this point in our lives. I, The Professor's Wife, am in school full-time, I work 25 or 30 hours a week, and would probably fail to keep a cactus alive (I do, however, hang out with our roommate's ferret sometimes, and she is still alive and well). The Professor works well over full time, is figuring out the school thing and we both come home exhausted most of the time. We don't have health insurance, our budget is so tight it squeaks, and we live with two smelly but wonderful twenty-something dudes who like to play violent video games and swear at the TV. Loud. By all rational standards, we should absolutely not be thinking about getting pregnant. 

Can someone explain to me, then, why I am experiencing serious baby fever? It seems like every time I open Facebook, there's a new picture of someone's adorable newborn, infant, or toddler. Every time we go to the store or grab a coffee, there are eight hundred curly-haired, bright-eyed giggling children running around and smiling at us. I ask myself how come we aren't jumping on the no-sleep, diaper-changing, crib-buying bandwagon? I have to keep reminding myself that it doesn't make sense for us right now. We need to be in way better financial shape, we need to have our own house, and I need to be done with school. When it's time, it'll happen. In the meantime, I will repin baby stuff on Pinterest and fawn over other people's children.

But I'm just saying, if I got pregnant on accident.. I don't think I'd be that upset. Because look at this:

If that doesn't make you want to bear children, WHAT WILL?

-The Professor's Wife