Check-in

It is now slightly more than halfway through the year. (Cue flailing and shock.) How am I doing with my not-resolutions from the beginning of the year?

I will spend less time on the computer and more time reading books.

Um, sort of. I still probably spend way too much time on the computer, but I have read 21 books so far this year! I've finished a total of 2 (TWO) books since school got out. You know, a month ago? Oy. I did a lot better with this when I got 20 minutes of reading time with my students times three classes a day. I didn't read the whole 20 minutes every class every day, but even with just 20 minutes a day, period, I made a lot of progress. If I wasn't suddenly hooked on the Supernatural DVDs a friend is loaning me, I would probably be getting more reading done.

But hey! 21 books in just over 6 months! Not bad, I think. If I push it, I might make 50 by the end of the year, and that would be awesome! 
 
I will purge useless/broken/unwanted/unused stuff from the house.

I had a yard sale a few weeks ago. We got rid of the queen bed in the guest room (and replaced it with a futon which takes up way less space), a little table, some speakers, the bean bag chair we never used, and our old bookcase. We now have room for two NEW bookcases (which are jam packed full! and now there are NO books in stacks on the floor in my office), and we shifted some things around the dining area so it's more open and, I think, looks nicer. Anything not sold at the yard sale was carted off to Goodwill. Yay! We also cleaned up the guest room a little, got rid of an embarrassing amount of trash, I even managed to part with some wardrobe items I never wore. 

I will write at night in my Book of Days planner/journal at least a few lines about that day.

I've been pretty good about this. What usually happens is I'll space it for a while, then do two or three or four days at a time, but that still works. (Sometimes I look at my Facebook activity to remind myself what I did!) It will be really cool to look back on this in a few years, or even a few months. However, it's not exactly something I'll want to pass on to my children and grandchildren. There's some really really personal stuff in there. It's a just-for-me treasure. 

I will be a better housekeeper (which will hopefully be easier to do with less Stuff).

After the yard sale, the house was a wreck for a while as we moved things around, waited until we had money to buy bookcases, put them together, organized books, etc. etc. Ugh, I hated it! Since we got all of that squared away, however, it's still looking pretty nice. The piles of books on the floor of my office have a place now, freeing up floor space so there's only a very small pile o' stuff in there now. For the most part, dishes are being washed and then put away in a reasonable amount of time, mail gets sorted as soon as it comes in, the laundry is under control(ish), and you can usually see the surface of both the coffee table and the dining table! 

I will be a better listener and not an interrupter or a wait-until-you're-done-talking-so-I-can-say-what-I-wanted-to-say-er.

I think I am getting better at this. Although with some friends, sometimes, the only way to get a word in edgewise is to interrupt! ;)

I will pray more.

This still isn't happening as much or as often as I'd like it to or it should be, but what I have been doing is when I tell someone "I'll pray for you," whether it's on a Facebook post or in a letter or a text, I pray right then. There at my desk, in the car, wherever, just a quick prayer for them and their situation. That way I don't forget about it by putting it off until "the right time." It's always the right time for prayer.

I will write more--more letters, more blog posts, more journal entries, more stories, more poems.

Not so much with the blog posts, eh? I did, however, participate in Camp NaNo this June. It's just like NaNoWriMo in November, only they do two sessions in the summer: one in June and one in August. I wrote 50,138(ish) words in 30 days. The quick way to describe the story is "1920's carnival time-travel romance." I really like the story and I have the next at least 20-30 pages fairly well plotted out. Past that, I have more vague ideas, but I do have ideas! I thought I might have enough for a Book Two, but now I'm thinking it'll probably just be Part Two of the same book. I haven't written anything since June 30th (that's 11 days now), and I really need and want to go back to it. I'm actually not totally sick to death of the story, and I have IDEAS! This is a big deal. I've done NaNoWriMo 7 years in a row and have never finished any of those stories. I did continue to write on a couple of them past November, but then those, too, petered out to nothing. It would be a really great step for me to FINISH a story!

I've also tinkered with a couple of short stories, and of course I've done my usual geeky RPG writing with a couple of friends on IM. (I bet between the three of us, we easily do 50,000 words a month.) And I wrote three letters just today!

I will find a lesson plan format that works for me and I will plan in advance as well as I am able.

This was mandated by my school. After a lot of fussing and asking questions and "what if"ing and discussing, we finally got a template that, I think, works pretty well. It's not overwhelming, but it communicates to the teacher (me) and any administrators that happen to walk in generally what we are/should be doing that day. It's good. I just print out a few at a time and fill them in with pencil, usually for anywhere between 2-5 days at a time.

I will remember that I am not teaching Language Arts, I am teaching people.

(This is turning into a really long post, sorry.) This isn't an exact response to the not-resolution, but stick with me. During the Midsummer Night's Dream/Summer Solstice party I helped to host and throw last month, we did a neat little ritual I read about online. Everyone wrote down one or two or a few things they wanted to let go of, then we threw the scraps of paper into a fire as a symbolic gesture of watching them float away as smoke. I wrote down "anger" as one of mine. Certainly my students, individually and as a group, would really get on my nerves sometimes, especially the last month or so of school. Too often, I came to realize, I would react in anger instead of rationally and calmly. I realized I even do it at home to my husband sometimes, even to my pets! I've been trying to be conscious of that, and when I feel that anger rising up in me, I remember (or attempt to, as much as I can) that I'm speaking to a person (or an animal) and that 99% of the time, what they're doing is not to personally upset or attack me. They're just being themselves. I need to chill out, breathe, and handle the situation appropriately. Little by little little, I'm getting a bit better at this. 

I will not dwell on the past any more than I can absolutely help.

This is hard. I miscarried my second child in February, and this is the thing that comes up to bother me the most. The most often and the most strongly. It seems like sometimes when I think I'm doing really well, almost to the point of being smug about it--"I can look at this friend's baby pictures on Facebook and not cry!" "I can have a conversation about childbirth with a friend!" "I can talk about our 'someday' nursery or parenting skills with my husband!"--that's when I get slammed the hardest. I literally feel sick and my body feels heavy. I don't know how healthy this is, but the only thing I can do, right now at least, is to push it away into the back corner of my mind and make myself focus on something else. Usually this is after I've given into the feelings for a while and cried, sometimes alone, sometimes with a person I love. I might write about it, or just compose an imaginary blog post or letter in my head because I deal with things in words. And then I have to put it away, because otherwise I can't function and have a happy life. If I dwell on it, I just can't. So I guess I'll just continue to struggle with this... I don't know how long. It won't disappear when I finally hold my own baby in my arms, but maybe, hopefully, it will lessen. I just want to be pregnant and give birth to a healthy baby so, so badly. If you pray, please pray for my husband and I.

I will Skype loved ones that live far away.

I have not done this. I should.

I will love this year.

Yeah, for the most part, I have.

Letter to Teacher

Dear Mrs. N________,

I wanted to write this letter to you to thank you! You have helped me understand literacy, and grammer alot more! I dont want you to proof this because I want it to be a surprise! Im sorry for me being talkative, and noisy during class, but that's just my personality. I'm not going to be here on Friday to say goodbye to you. I'm really going to miss your fun, and wierd style! But your style is a good wierd, because it makes you look like you dont care about peoples thoughts. I'm gonna miss you!

From,
M__________

May 25, 2011

Tea Party

I'm going to give my students index cards with the sentences below on them. They'll each have one card, and each card will show up about 3 times in each class since there are multiples. Then they'll mill around and talk to as many people as possible, like you would at a tea party, reading what's on their card out loud and hearing what other people have on their cards. After that, they'll talk at their tables and try and come up with the basic story-line. This is before reading any of the story.

Based on the following snippets, what do you think the story will be about?

One dollar and eighty-seven cents.

Life is made of up sobs, sniffles, and smiles.

Something fine and rare and sterling

“Please, God, make him think I am still pretty.”

just to see him pluck his beard from envy.

her face had lost its color within twenty seconds

“Shall I put the chops on, Jim?”

He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.

Well?

...

........

It's "The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry. Go and read it if you haven't before. It's a lovely Christmas story and definitely a classic!

We'll be talking about theme and doing some other things to understand/comprehend and remember the story. Hopefully it goes over well!

Hello again!

I haven't posted anything for nearly two months, and I can't think of anything much to say right now... so here's a little bit of an update.

There are two weeks left in the quarter. Ten days. Ten days left with a bunch of 13-year-olds who are slowly losing their minds as Christmas break approaches. Pray for us all, that we survive! And, more than that, that we actually learn some things, too.

For a number of reasons, some legitimate and some stupid, our finances are extra tight right now. Therefore, I am going to make most of our Christmas gifts this year. I was going to clean off my sewing/crafting table this weekend, but I watched movies and knit ALL DAY yesterday and ran errands and planned and graded for this week of school today, so it didn't get done. Maybe if I do it incrementally in the evenings this week, it'll be ready for crafting this weekend.

Matt has had a sore throat/sniffly nose/horrible-sounding cough for over a week now. Thank the Lord I haven't caught his cold! (I'll probably get hit the very last week of school.)

Oh, if anyone reads this on Facebook or through an RSS feed or something similar, I have a little widget in my sidebar of my "favorites" on etsy.com. If I see something cute that I like, I add it as a favorite so you, too, can see cute things! It's a fun website where people can sell their handmade items, and it's a lot of fun to poke around on. You can search by craft, key word, or even color! They also have lots of treasuries and collections of similar items (and the collections are put together by sellers, buyers, and people who work there), as well as interviews with artists and articles on a variety of topics. Check it out if you haven't!

It has hardly snowed here at all this winter, and, indeed, has been pretty pleasant all around! During the week of Thanksgiving, we had lows at -3 overnight and highs of about 15, but other than that, it's been sunny or a little cloudy and around 40-50 most days. This is fine with me, since it means I might be slightly less sick of winter than I usually am come February. It is always nice to have a white Christmas, though, and I'd be fine with another snow day this December like we had last year!

I am about to start book 8 of the Anne of Green Gables series. I re-read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows right before we saw the movie. At school, I'm almost done with Inkspell. I'll probably read Voyage of the Dawn Treader for the 234th time before the movie comes out. I just started Edgar Sawtelle, though I might come back to it later as I'm not sure I'm in the mood for it right now. I'm going to start reading a kid-ified version of Treasure Island to my students, and might read the real version of it myself. I'm also thinking a little bit about reading the original Tarzan, just because. Thoughts? Suggestions?

What are your plans over Christmas break, if you get one? (Or even if you don't, you brave souls who are in retail or other professions who have to work Christmas Eve and the day after Christmas, New Year's Day, etc. etc.) I plan to read a LOT, knit almost as much, and hopefully watch as much Doctor Who: Season 5 as possible. Oh, and SLEEP IN!

Drip.

Mini-lesson tomorrow on writing in the second person ("you" instead of "I" or "he"), and general fun creepiness for October and the fast-approaching Halloween. Students will choose a phobia from the sheet they've been working on (using the dictionary and another source to utilize prefixes and roots to find the meanings of phobias!). The following is the model I wrote.

---

Hydrophobia

Drip.

What was that?

Drip.

That sound, that maddening sound.

Drip.

Water. There is water on your floor. Water falling from the ceiling into a puddle on your floor, an ever-growing, slickly wet puddle of water.

Drip.

Each sinister drop adds to the puddle, creeping closer and closer to your safe, warm bed.

Drip.

Your toes curl. You clench your fists in the bedsheets. You squint your eyes shut, but that does not drown out the sound.

Drip.

Frantic, you cover your ears, palms pressed tight, eyes still shut, but you hear it even still.

Drip.

In your brain.

Drip.

Driving you mad.

Drip.

One...

Drip.

drop...

Drip.

at a time....

...

DRIP.