sudden shift

As of today, this blog is formally retired. Farewell.

I'm combining my parenting/family/learning to live and learning to love stories with my children's books and teaching entries into one, great big blog conglomerate. That blog will inherit this one's title, or a variation on it, but will be located at my book blog address, cuz the tags and history and previous work over there are more important to me to keep in circulation.

Anywho: thanks for playing. I hope to see you at: Amy's Breakfast Platter.

Much Love! A

A Burst of Blogging

I dunno if I'll be tethered to the digital world, at all, for the next 14 days, so I'm having a sudden burst of blogging energy. An interesting meme traveled the kidlit world a couple weeks ago. I've never been "tagged" for a meme, but my understanding of the biological metaphor (DNA, heredity, and genes) leads me to question the practice of tagging. A meme either catches, and gets passed along, cuz it has some kinda "cool-to-blog-on-fitness", or it becomes extinct. Maybe that's just sour grapes cuz I've never been tagged. Nah, I really believe in the organic nature of idea sharing on the web.

Anyhow: Here's the meme. First, write four things that were new to you in the past four years, and then write four things that will be new parts of your life in the upcoming four years.

New things in the last four years:

• I became a mother when we adopted three lovely children.
  
• We bought our first house (and still like it so much it that I can't imagine moving).
• I finished my formal schooling with a Master's of Education degree.
• I've become happily certain that teaching is my life's work.

New things in the next four years:

• We'll have one baby (this is NOT an announcement), just a hope and a plan, for now.
  
• I'll become a better writer and a much better writing teacher.
• My relationships with my daughters will continue to deepen; and I'll find a way to break through Aninga's concrete shell.
  
• I'll find several new, delicious meals to cook regularly.

Coming up with a fourth new thing that will happen in the next four years was hard. I don't like being overly ambitious. I prefer to be realistic. Teaching sixth grade will be new, but not that different from what I've been doing for several years.

Clue #1

I adjusted my glasses and looked carefully at Easter, who was sitting at the kitchen table eating scrambled eggs. She was brand new to America and had only lived in our house two days. How well can she communicate in English, I wondered? What sort of a little person is she? Will she like me? Meanwhile, Duncan, our enormous Bernese Mountain Dog, was eating his breakfast. After Duncan finished his dog food I firmly commanded him, "Duncan, outside." Instead of obeying, he ran away from me, hustling to get away from the outside door. I stood up and walked toward him and repeated, louder, "Duncan, outside." He hurried around to the other side of the kitchen table, where I couldn't grab his collar. He looked at me with playful defiance. Suddenly Easter burst into a loud, mischievous giggle. "He refuses," she said.

Writing Ambitions

Our writing group meets next on June 22nd. I mean to have some serious work ready to share with the group by that time. What small steps might I map out to reach my goal of having something worth sharing? Well, I could at least put in a certain number of minutes per day. 30 minutes? Yes, fine. Good.

Counting Down to June 1

My students this year were quite a splendid bunch and I'm going to miss them all. These last few weeks are turning out to be hard enough, though, that I'm also going to be full of relief on June 1. The building is too hot, the kids are antsy and keep staring out the windows, and despite all my efforts to keep them busy learning, we keep finding ourselves with too much time to fill. I'm always exhausted on Fridays and usually come home and crash, but today the crash was particularly intense. I'm still surfacing from a deep nap and can barely move my legs. That's what I get for taking Dance Dance Revolution to our Outstanding Attendance party.

I still can't get over the joy of being done with my own 25 years of schooling. I'm the kinda kid, still, that has a hard time relaxing and enjoying any type of formal education experience (except when I'm the teacher!). I always feel pressure to impress the professor, to be perfect, to master every concept, to write pristine papers, and to get straight A's. When I'm taking any class, I have a constant buzz of anxiety. My grad school GPA, by the way, was a 3.9. So was it worth it? Certainly. I can now afford to continue doing the work I love, for at least thirty more years.

The Mormons

I liked the PBS documentary. Overall. There were parts where I felt the representation was unfair, and furthered stereotypes, but there were also many beautiful scenes that got at some of the complexities and paradoxes of our rich history and faith. I also just finished watching Doug Fabrizio's Utah NOW program discussing the film. There are two delicious surprises that all this has uncovered for me. First, I have a very strong interest in mormon/utah history. (Another inheritance from Jim.) I have a huge appetite to read and learn much more of this history---from all perspectives. And, fortunately, I have plenty of time for this pursuit now that I am no longer in graduate school! The second surprise for me is how much spiritual affinity I feel toward the faith of my childhood. Enough time has gone by that I can approach the whole thing from a calmer and less guilt-ridden or bitter place. And from this place I can start to recognize an intricate, beautiful theology that came from an incredibly complicated history. A theology that I still love. It's exciting to suddenly realize that I can appreciate Mormonism's theology, honor its myths, even believe fully in many of its tenets, and yet I'm not required to believe anything that's unacceptable to my conscience. Much of the analysis of the documentary focused on how outsiders vs. insiders understand Mormonism and one way that I'm lucky is that I'm free to firmly embrace both of those orientations. I can appreciate and believe in many things. I can honor the faith and sacrifices of my ancestors. And yet I can also look in, from outside the fold, and not suffer the choking pressures of conformity or the weight of spiritually damaging doctrines. I can have my mormon cake and eat it too. yum.

my baby girl

I just found Easter sleeping, alone in her room, with the lights on, with a book open under her arm. To really understand why this discovery almost made me cry, though, there are a few things you need to know. Reading is still very hard for Easter. She isn't yet able to read independently. Almost everyday she reads out loud to me for at least 30 minutes. I do my best to always be positive and loving about our reading time, but some things are hard to hide, especially from a kid who is so astute. I think she knows that I wish she was making faster progress and that I sometimes feel frustrated. And---she often sees me reading to myself, in my bed.

At Barnes and Noble this afternoon she asked me to help her find a chapter book, "to read to myself in my bed." So we picked out a hard cover Magic Tree House book. In the car, on the way home, she was reading it, but she was struggling with so many words that it was hard to follow the story. I told her we'd read it together, later. But I was talking on the phone all evening and didn't go in to read with her until she'd already fallen asleep. But she didn't give up. She so wants to become a strong reader, and make me feel happy and proud, that she layed in that bed and tried hard to read it on her own. And I so love her for how hard she's trying, and for her lovely spirit, and for her sweet, sweet heart. She'll get there, someday, and I'll do my best to assure her that she has my love, regardless of how long it takes.

Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, it's back to work i go....

Well, I managed to get some solid hours of restful idleness in this past week. We are loving our new DDR game, and I think it even qualifies as legit cardio exercise. I quite enjoy how I can compete and exercise and dance, all at the same time. Plus--spend some quality recreational time with my bambinas.

I finished my master's project Friday and emailed my paper to my adviser. I hope the rest of the process isn't going to be too painful. I hope the whole thing is good enough, so that I can graduate already.

So, it's back to work tomorrow. There are only about six weeks left in this school year. And then we will see if I can continue to have hours of restful idleness, or if not working will make me crazy.