Gone Suburban

So it seems I am soon to be a tutor, for over-privileged suburban kids, to the tune of $30/hour (except, of course, at one local high school, where the going tutoring rate is $50/hour, which is what my mother used to make at her moonlighting job during her residency--yikes!).

I have various objections to being a tutor, although I'm afraid that the money means that none of them are going to keep me from doing it. My first objection, of course, is that people who live here already have enough priviliges in their life, and they hardly need a Latin tutor to insure that they get better scores on the goddam SAT. (So far as I know, the only reason anyone ever studies Latin is to up her SAT scores. This is not why I studied Latin, but I was an odd duck. I studied Latin because of my dead father. Dead fathers are, of course, another time honored reason for doing things, so perhaps I'm not that odd).

In other news, it seems that I am now married. Three or four times in the past couple of weeks I have either been addressed as "Mrs.," or asked for my husband's name or profession. I suppose they think any woman out and about here in the 'burbs in the middle of the day must be a housewife. (The vet's office has been the chief culpritl, although I will say that they all love my cat, even when I told them I was a single cat mother). When I was a graduate student, people seemed to assume that I was basically asexual and never dated. Now it seems everyone assumes I'm married. Either way, as I recently said to a friend, I'm not getting any.

Tonight I feel like an ad for something: drinking my brand-name microbrewery beer (but not too micro, mind you--we want it to be recognizable to the American viewer), watching a rerun of The West Wing, playing on my laptop computer. Frightening, I tell you.

It seems that Rob Lowe (not settling for top billing in The West Wing), will now be starring in his own NBC sitcom, about (of all things) a law firm in DC. Yeesh. This is what our lives have come to.

The nice thing about doing the dishes is that it always works.

This may not seem to have anything to do with the suburbs (other, of course, than those many cleaning product commercials featuring the prototype of the soccer mom and her mother), and it doesn't, except that, what with the number of technological and electronic and mechanical innovations and improvements we've been doing around here lately, the dishes, as a chore, seem quite appealing. Better, I would say, than being on hold with the cable company or the DSL provider or the phone company or what have you, or setting up any of the above things (the dual-deck VCR, the DSL, the digital cable, etc.).

Comparatively speaking, you see, I find the dishes almost soothing. Hot water, soap, dishcloth; apply repetitive motion, and there you go.

Then again, I do like the DSL. What is one to do?

Corporate coffee experience No. 2: While walking by Starbucks the other day (a different one from the aforementioned Star$$$$$), noted large group of junior high aged kids. Said one to another, "So, like, who are your friends going to be _now_?"