Day 2

Ta da! Will's quilt!

For those of you keeping score at home, this is Day 2 of my month-long daily blogging experiment. If you haven't read yesterday's entry, please do so now, especially if you're Angela, who may have no idea that she's supposed to send me sausages at the end of the month.

It's a beautiful autumn day here in lovely North Carolina. Sometimes I'm torn between Spring and Fall: which is my favorite? It occurred to me today that we tend to get longer stretches of loveliness in the fall. Our springs are gorgeous, but they heat up quickly.

Did I mention that I organized Will's classroom Halloween party this year? Yep, I did. Will's teacher is new to Our Fine School and has been a little taken aback by our party atmosphere. We will party at the drop of a dime at Our Fine School, and Halloween is the biggest party of them all. When I asked Mr. B what his druthers were, he begged me to keep the sugar to a minimum, which I thought was an excellent idea, and so we did. One of our activities was donut races, it's true, but that was the big sugar event of the party.

Other than that, we had mummy races, where the kids wrapped each other up in toilet paper--a huge hit, by the way--and pumpkin decorating, and Halloween story writing (my idea, and less of a big hit, but pedagogically speaking, quite sound), and a spider making activity. It was all good fun, and the kids seemed to enjoy themselves.

Here's the trick to having a good classroom Halloween party: Get dads on your party committee. First of all, it's good to have a male presence in the classroom; it keeps kids on their toes. Second of all, the dads totally lack that Martha Stewart impulse which makes some folks use the annual Halloween party as a way to exorcise all their decorating demons. So we had tablecloths and balloons, but that was it for decorations, and it was great. Other classrooms were the Taj Mahals of Halloween. They were glorious, sumptuous, absolutely aflutter with Halloween spirit. But, you know, who has the time? Or the money? And if you're decorating on this level for the third grade Halloween party, what's the Sweet Sixteen going to be like? Outrageous. And silly.

So it was a good party. And later that day, at pick-up, Mr. B pulled me aside and said that the other third grade teachers spent the lunch hour moaning and groaning about how wild their kids had been, how out of control. His was the only classroom where the kids had had a rollicking good time, but didn't self-destruct. So the party was a success, all is well, and Halloween is done until next year. Thank goodness.

Okay, tune in tomorrow to read more scintillating tales! I'll be here--will you?

Crazy Idea

Will, taken a couple of weeks ago. He looks like a little boy in this picture with his rosy lips, but yesterday he turned nine. Nine!

I'm thinking about posting every day in November, just to do it. Just to see if I can do it. I've been very sporadic in my blogging this fall, and I haven't meant to be. It's just been that sort of fall so far. But now I'm ready to settle down. I don't have any travels, any school commitments, any anything except a life to live here on the homefront.

I've been going to the gym, so I could write about that. Mostly I work out on the elipticals and lift weights. I find the elipticals more or less boring after fifteen minutes, but I love weight-lifting. I find it very meditative, to breathe through my nose and pretend to be strong. The funny thing is that I have no upper-body strength whatsoever. I sit down at a machine and have to move the weight key to the lowest, lowest weight. Like, one-tenth of a pound or something. It makes me giggle. I'm like the before-picture in the old Charles Atlas ad, except chubby.

Or I could write about how we've decided to stay put in this house for the next ten years, even though we don't love it. We like it a lot, but it's not our dream house. Still, it's close to the boys' schools and we have nice neighbors and the only backyard in a twenty-mile radius that gets at least six hours of full sun a day in the summer. Woodsy around here, is what I'm saying. So I guess we better hunker down and get out the DIY manuals and start saving up for a new oven, as I have the worst oven in the developed world. Tiniest oven ever, and horrible for roasting things in. An Easy-Bake oven would be better.

Jack's report card comes home next week. That should provide fodder for several days' worth of blogging. I think it will be an eye-opener. I predict straight B's at best. But could it be worse? It might be. Stay tuned.

So let's give it a whirl. We'll see if I can do it. If I do, what's my prize? What will you give me if I blog every day for the month of November? Think about this. I think Angela should give me sausages, since her blog has essentially become sausage central. Pom Pom could give me a pixie. Jody could give me a sheep. Really, you all have something to offer. Let's make this blogging thing worthy my while!

Okay, I'm getting silly again. Back tomorrow with pictures of Will's quilt, which I finally finished. Amazing!

Driving and Smiling

Shovel. Photo by the Man, taken on his new iPhone using some sort of funky filter app that makes your pictures look like Polaroid shots.

I can be a pretty snarky driver in the morning. It's hard not to be when dropping off children at Our Fine School, with its signs posted every five feet that announce "This is a Cell Phone-Free Zone! Please hang up your phone so you don't run anyone over, you moron!" (or something to that effect), and all the moms in their SUVs chatting away on their cell phones.

That gets my goat, and I feel I must express the fact that my goat's been gotten. The boys think I'm hilarious, but I suspect I'm not setting a good example. I've written about this before, I think, and I still haven't mastered myself.

So today I tried something new. I plastered a smile on my face and kept it there. It felt really weird. I've read that if you want to cheer yourself up, just smile, and there seems to be some truth to this. I felt oddly cheerful and full of good will. I also felt somewhat medicated in a Stepford Wives sort of way.

Sadly, my happy smiley feeling did not stop me from wanting to plow down the guy in his tiny MG who whipped around me in the drop-off line to get a prime piece of curb territory. No smiles for Mr. Mid-Life Crisis, no sirree bob.

***

I'm fighting off a cold. I've been taking zinc lozenges that are supposed to lessen and shorten my cold symptoms, and they seem to be doing the trick. I expected to wake up this morning feeling horrible, but I actually felt fine, aside from the fact that I couldn't breathe with my mouth closed.

I think that's it for now. I am smiling as I write this. It makes me like you very much.

Friday Report

Who am I? Do you recognize this bird? It's got some of the markings of a thrush, but that red spot is distracting. Help! Photo Credit: The Man

I have joined a gym. In fact, I'm just back from a session where I learned how to use the various weight machines. Given that my arms are little more than limp noodles dangling from my shoulders right now, it's quite remarkable that I'm able to write this entry.

I've joined a gym because I'd like to lose twenty pounds, and though I walk Travis five mornings a week for forty-five minutes, it's not much of a workout. We meander. We ramble. We pause often to mark fire hydrants and mail boxes with our personal scents. Well, at least one of us does.

So off to the gym it is! I have to tell you, there's a secret part of me that dreams of being Super Workout Woman with lots of muscles and incredible endurance. Believe me, that would be total makeover. Of course, when I envision myself as Super Workout Woman, I'm always about 5' 10", lithe and lean. In real life, I'm 5'4" and highwaisted and sort of chesty. I could lose thirty pounds and none of that would change.

Anyway, even if I don't turn into Super Workout Woman, I'm pretty sure I'm going to turn into one of those babes who wears workout clothes wherever she goes, because, honey, they are comfortable as all get out.

The best thing about my gym? It's not really a gym. It's the fitness center in the new Jewish Community Center, which is just a hop and a skip from my house. When I go to work out, it's me and a lot of other middle aged folks with creaky knees. No pounding music. No young bucks. It's the most peaceful gym I've ever been to.

I'll keep you updated on my progress, and will definitely let you know if I get any taller. In the meantime, I hope you have a lovely weekend and that I'll regain the full use of my arms before it's time to fix lunch.

How Do You Slow This Thing Down?

I was looking for a picture to give this post some color. Here's an old one of Jack taken on my MacBook. I'm looking forward to the day when he's in a smiling mood again ...

I love the autumn months, but they always seem to speed by so fast. I've got one thing, and then the next and the next, and they're all wonderful things. They're lunches and walks and coffee with friends. They're working on quilts and books and sketchbooks. They're online classes on design and creativity and in-person classes on food and theology. It's all good, and it's all a bit too much.

***

So do you have your Christmas shopping done yet?

***

I'm giving a speech at a conference on Sunday, so the last few days I've been walking around the living room, talking to the dog. The dog naps through it. Is this a bad sign?

***

Can you tell I'm feeling silly? I just wanted to post a post and say hello. To say life is good, but I wish I could slow it down a little bit.

***

The online class I'm taking is called The Artist's Toolbox. It's through Quilt University and taught by the reknowned art quilter Lyric Kinnaird. It's a process sort of class, and it's good for me to be creative for creativity's sake.

A friend and I were talking recently about journey people v. goal people. My friend is a journey person. She's interested in what happens as she walks down the road and isn't so concerned where the road is leading. I'm a goal person. I like to know where I'm going and what's going to happen when I get there. There are benefits and drawbacks to both ways. And sometimes you can be a journey person and set goals, and sometimes we goal-oriented folks do stuff just for the heck of it. But it's hard for us.

It was hard for me today to sit in a cafe and draw textured wallpaper, but that was my assignment (to draw something textured) and so I did it. Just to do it. No goal, no grade, no finished product other than a piece of paper with a lot of hashmarks signifying texture.

I don't know how I feel about that.

***

Here's what I feel good about: The fall garden! The Man has planted spinach, lettuce, and collards. He's ordered bok choy and garlic. We long for broccoli, but have had icky experiences with green broccoli worms that you're lucky to catch sight of right before you put the broccoli in your mouth. So no broccoli for us.

***

I guess that's it. Just stoppin' in to say hey, as we say down here. Hey. Now you are free to go back and look at colorful Jack. He is a lovely boy, isn't he? He got an A on last week's history test. Yesterday he laughed at one of my jokes. I guess we'll keep him after all.

***

ETA: Pom Pom was surprised to hear that I'm a goal person. It is surprising! It might be easier to think about it like this: I'm a project person, and I tend to finish my projects (even my knitting projects, except for the ones I give up on because there's no use going on). Really, I'm the sort of girl who needs a carrot dangling in front of me. It's the only way I get things done. Also, setting goals gets me energized. I love the process of doing things, and I'm not at all about doing things perfectly, so I'm not Type A. But I do like having a goal to work toward. It's because I spent the first twenty-seven years of my life being absolutely worthless. Now I'm self-correcting!

Friday Odds and Ends

Some of the leaves Will and I found in our travels.
Photo credit: The Man.

What I meant to write: "Her skin was flecked with little pieces of grass."

What I accidentally wrote instead: "Her skin was flecked with little pieces of grace."

***

There were ten million things I was going to accomplish this morning, but here it is almost noon, and mostly I've been fooling around. I've been writing a picture book manuscript for no unearthly reason. I don't write picture books. But this morning I had an idea, so I started playing with it. It reminded me of writing a poem.

I don't know if I ever mentioned this, but I used to write poems. I have a graduate degree in poetry writing. I love poetry and poems, but for some reason, in my mid-twenties, I found it too hard to do anymore. I don't know why. I went to a therapist to talk about it. She said maybe I would write poems again later. Maybe there was something else I needed to be doing at that very moment. She said not to be too hard on myself.

She was a good therapist. Shortly after I finished my sessions with her, I started writing children's books, and that's worked out well for me.

But I miss writing poems. I miss polishing sentences and playing with words that way. So writing a very small story this morning was nice. It reminded me of the kind of fun I used to have writing poetry, minus the cigarettes.

***

Nothing going on this weekend. Nothing going on this weekend! And it's going to be a beautiful sixty-five degrees. I think I'll be taking some walks. And buying new walking shoes for the 5K I'm doing in a few weeks. I'll be sniffing the air a lot, and finishing up the sweater I'm knitting. And making spaghetti pie for Jack's youth group on Sunday. And reminding Jack to make pumpkin pie.

***

And who knows? Maybe I'll get an idea for a poem. It could happen.

What are you going to do?

Where Did Last Week Go?

(Last Sunday, Will and I took a walk with the goal of finding ten interesting things. We called this stick we found "Singing Opera Lady." Photo credit: The Man)

It is a strange thing to lose an entire week. Where did it go? Is it hiding under the couch? Did the dog chew it into little pieces?

I have no answers. What I know for sure: I did a school visit. I didn't do much cleaning. I wrote in the mornings. The weather was wet, humid and gloomy, inviting armies of mushrooms to invade my front yard.

What happened to last week? What happened to fall? Where is my cool, crisp air? Why are mushrooms so disgusting?

The funnest thing I did last week was make lists of interesting things I saw throughout the day. This is a good exercise if you feel a need for minor league delight. Given the icky mushrooms in my yard, I needed all the delight I could get. It takes a lot of delight to counteract a mushroom attack.

Some of the things I saw as I made my way through the week that disappeared:

1. A periwinkle blue mailbox.

2. A private street sign that read "Blue Dog Road." (Isn't that a great street name? I wish I lived there.)

3. A little girl on Our Fine School's playground twirling around in a red, sparkly skirt.

4. A license plate that read "FishFndr." Is that Fish Finder? Or Fish Funder? Or maybe Fish Founder?

5. A woman wearing big curlers walking her dog.

6. A crow eating a potato chip.

These are not especially amazing sights, but they cheered me up and made me glad I'd taken the time to look around. Did you know there's a carport in my neighborhood with a chandelier hanging from the ceiling? I've walked past this carport over a hundred times in the last few years, but only noticed the chandelier last week, and only because I was actively looking around, wanting the world to delight me, if only for five minutes.

So that's sort of what happened to last week, that and mushrooms and really bad allergies that made me feel sleepy all the time.

I am going to leave you with the last stanza of one of my favorite poems, "I Am Waiting" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. If you want to read the whole poem, you can go here.

(And don't worry, this week doesn't seem to be going anywhere. I guess it likes it here.)


I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
youth’s dumb green fields come back again
and I am waiting
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long careless rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other up at last
and embrace
and I am waiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder