The in-laws

Mothers say all sorts of things to their daughters,
in the hopes that their grains of wisdom will take root and be the beautiful flowers of thought for their offspring.

One of my mother's seeds was "When you marry someone, you marry their family too"
I was 16.... i thought "yeah, she kinda has a point, but whatever"

and once i had a boyfriend and absolutely loved his family. they were fabulous, truly. so when we split i regretted loosing them. this was the first time i really started to take in what my mother's words meant.

well, today, I see how her advice has germinated and flowered a family of portugese people that are now my in-laws.

And yet, in the timeless tradition of in-laws, they really are like weeds.
is that terribly mean? weeds that i haven't sprayed yet, but weeds.

and ultimately this is my blog, i don't have to sugar coat anything.
That and JD doesn't read it.

Where to start?
Well, generally we don't like our in-laws because it's family more or less "forced" upon us. When we already have enough problems with our own.
It's a group of people that don't share our own tightly wound social-personal ids and egos.
In-laws are people we will seemingly forever criticize because we'll never really know why they act the way they do.
And in my case, add slight culture shock to the mix.

So, i find myself surrounded by JD's immediate family. His mother, father and brother, and sometimes his aunts and uncles....and there's still more when we go to portugal... but i digress.

I've thought a lot about it. and my commentary and criticism comes back to this.
I am someone who is insatiably curious, and loves to discuss. I moved to a country where the national passtime is discussion and debate.
These qualities of curiosity and love of discussion are not cherished by my in-laws.
Because simply enough, they are not qualities they share.

With so many interesting discussions possible: me being American, they being Portugeese, their history of escaping the dictator St.Lazar, life in Paris in the 60 and 70's, our cultures, the differences between them, life in general, the news in general, the world we live in, the upcoming presidential elections in France, the recent elections in the States, the reproductive cycles of goldfish.... you get the idea.


And yet, his mother can go on and on and on about nothing. and she does, often.
her senseless chatter makes me numb after an hour or so.
and because she is quite the gabber, JD's dad - who is already a pathalogical introvert, never feels saying anything is appropriate. It is clear, discussion for him is painful. He is a man of action.
and then sometimes JD's parents do talk, to each other, and it's often in the form of disagrement and dispute.

fun. makes me feel like i'm 5. so they avoid talking in the same discussions.
wait, we don't ever really have discussions, he doesn't talk when she's talking, which is all the time.

And then there is JD's brother who had a stroke two years ago and now has a serious speech impediment. so he says only what he needs to.
this compounded by the fact that most of the time i'm a dumb-wit and am the only person to not understand what he's saying.

so here you have it.
the in-laws.
they're coming tomorrow and leaving monday.
at least mom-in-law will stuff us with lots of good food. and dad-in-law will stuff us with lots of good alchol. it make the chatter go down a lot easier.

maybe i'll have a Portugeese Thanksgiving after all.

No Halloween, No Thanksgiving this year

Which sounds so much more depressing than it actually is.

As for Halloween,
I was tired and didn't feel like going to the only bar in town that acually celebrates it.
So, in traditional old lady fashion, I was in bed and comfortablement ready to doze off at around 10:30.
And so, Halloween came and went with not a sniffle of notice or dissapointment.

As for Thanksgiving,
I decided to save the 2 days of cooking and 200 euros (what it typically costs me to put a Thanksgiving dinner together) and eat meatloaf leftovers, in bed, with JD, watching TV on November 23rd.

What is sad is that it didn't even hit me that it was Thanksgiving until around 2 in the afternoon.
I suppose one of the hazards of living in France. Without all the turkey decorations everywhere, you'd forget too.


So, i guess in certain terms I'm saving my festivitie feelings for Christmas. For which I'm going to spend it with my family. The first one in seven years. Yeah, it was time.
I can't wait, I can't wait, I can't wait. Over-exaggerated commercialism here i come! Well, I'm looking forward to that and of course the a-do with the family.
But really, the most important of all...

who's making the egg nogg?

How important is it really?

Well,

A couple of months ago, through the school intranet, i was informed that my official title was "Full-time teacher". So that's what will go on the plaque next to my door.

no, sorry that won't do. stop the plaque making.

not in the least because, even though the gross of my hours is spent teaching, they didn't hire me only for teaching purposes.
so if they hired me for more, i want more in the way of a title.

so far, i've decided to not get snippy; and not insist they put on the door what is written in my contract. which is officially Gretta's (my collegue - and "boss") title.
although from time to time, i think, why not? It was their 'mistake' to put it in the contract, why not make them live out the consequences? And what the hell? maybe they did hire me to be her collegue and not her assistant. No one has clarified anything. to me or to her. and if they did to her, she hasn't passed it along to me.

So, american and loud-mouthed as i am, my first reflex was to go straight to the top. Gretta suggested otherwise. as she would of course. and for the moment i'll follow her advice. don't want to rock the boat quite yet.

so, i asked my cool-headed portugese what to do.
and with great clarity and simplicity he explained what to do. i so love that about him, what is a confusing mess to me is clear as a bell to him.

first i should write up a job description.
then get Gretta to sign it, then get the next higher up (Martine) to sign it, then send it to the big boss.
good, that's good.
something written, something signed. administrations like that kinda thing.

so, toute de suite, i put myself to writing a job description.
and yes, it's quite a fine job description.
However, as obvious or as clever as it seems, in the list of six or seven categories of functions on the list, teaching comes last.
I put it last on purpose, not to say it's the least important of my official functions, but to point out that there is more to my job than just teaching.

not so much later, i present Gretta with it - to which she responds

"Well, I never had a job description...... and you put teaching last...."

to which i think "this is clearly not about you"

to which i reply "I did that on purpose"

It has now been approxomately a month and a half since i gave her a final copy to sign. it has since been buried under piles of things on her desk.

passive aggressive behavior anyone? rumor has it Gretta avoids conflict at all costs.

so i find myself at an impass.
Do i type out another one and ask her again?
this seems to be the most logical step. i seriously don't see her taking this in hand again.
so yes, next week, a new one will be handed to her.

Really, what a shame. I had illusions that we would sit down and really discuss between ourselves, in detail, what responsabilities she wants to give me. Really hash out some things she's willing to pass along.
There's been no passing, there's been no discussing, there's been no hashing. There has been no task giving.

I'm young, I'm ambitios, I'm hard working, I wouldn't mind her giving me things to do.
And yet so far I find myself inventing projects to do. Indeed, I'm doing useful things, things the other teachers appreciate.
But, and devil of me to say so, I get the feeling she's hoarding the work.
How strange is that?
Not.
As was so perceptively explained to me by a friend last week, it could be that Gretta's afraid of me "stealing" her importance. This job is a large part of who she is. maybe too large ?

What contributes to this hypothesis is that I get the feeling that it still hasn't registered that the school has hired me to help her. And yes, that is why they hired me. in addition to the teaching of course.
Again, her behavior makes sense when I consider the "stealing " aspect.

I am egotistical. I recognize it. I need to feel important. I get it. I want to be trusted with projects. I want to be tested.
And then I think.....Leila, don't be an idiot. You come, you do your job, and you do as much or as little as you want -outside of the 22 hours of teaching a week. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

So really, what is going on here?
1. I want a cool title to go outside my office door.
2. I now realize i'm a hell'of'a self starter. I can find projects to keep me busy no problem.
3. I have hit bottom with the number of posters I can make for the staff English teachers office
4. Gretta is hogging the work & doesn't realize she doesn't have to do to work of 2 people anymore.
5. I'm too ambitious (?)