Clementines or Ice Cream-What Would YOU Choose?

During March, I am participating in the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by twowritingteachers.wordpress.com. Bloggers from around the world are posting daily, committed to the practice of sharing, reflecting, remembering...writing! Feel free to stop by this incredible March happening and check out other posts or even join in--there's no rule that says you have to start on March 1st!

Last year, many of my posts wound up being memoirs of my dad. When I met Catherine in person, one of the first questions she asked me was how was my dad. He's good, and actually, last night he was very funny.

A little background information: he fell twelve years ago and he bumped his head, hard enough that he should have died. He didn't, but he suffers--we all suffer--from his premature dementia that has intensified in the last couple of years. His prostate cancer has also intensified in that last couple of years, and how lovely for him that he doesn't know a thing about that! We all live together in a pretty symbiotic living situation for the time being, but that's another story.

Doc loves his cocktail at five, and he loves his ice cream after dinner. He's put on a little weight, so we've trying to manage the ice cream intake. Last night, when he finished his chicken, he pushed his chair back. His refrain is this: "Shall I get myself a bowl of ice cream?"

The night before, my mother had talked him into a clementine instead of his Ben and Jerry's, so I responded, "There are delicious clementines on the counter."

"Oh good," he said.

We went bacak to our conversation, and did not notice what he was doing for a few minute. Guess what? He had gotten himself a bowl and was scooping ice cream and plenty of it.

"That doesn't look like a clementine, Doc," my youngest daughter, Cecily said.

"I don't think that he really wanted that clementine," my mom said.

As Doc walked past the last remaining chocolate chip cookie, conveniently next to the clementines, he reached for it to put it on top of his ice cream.

"Half, Doc," my mom said.

Obligingly, her broke the cookie, but not in half, as you can see from the picture--this is the part of the cookie that he left behind...

We had a good laugh at Doc's face, as he knew that he was being a little sneaky, but he enjoyed his ice cream!

Bad PD Dreams

During March, I am participating in the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by twowritingteachers.wordpress.com. Bloggers from around the world are posting daily, committed to the practice of sharing, reflecting, remembering...writing! Feel free to stop by this incredible March happening and check out other posts or even join in--there's no rule that says you have to start on March 1st!

Last week, I woke up several times between 4 and 6 on the morning that I was to lead our second-grade teachers through a new writing unit. I was conjuring up every complication the corners of my brain could conjure. Maybe it was because the karma around this PD was a little shaky-- this was the fourth time this meeting had been re-scheduled because of snow days. (We have had six snow days and three were on days when I had scheduled PD for second-grade teachers! December 17, January 3, and February 5 are all days that the cancellation emails came through, canceling not only school, but also my PD sessions!!) Maybe my anxiety began germinating during the PD that I had the day before when the video wouldn't play correctly--I don't know why that surprised me since the videos NEVER seem to play properly in our schools these days. But there was more to my dreams...

• the ELMO would not focus. Would not even turn on, in fact.
• I could not find ANY of the materials that I had written as demonstration texts.
• When I did find them, they were on crumpled post-its and the person who had come in to help with the ELMO swept them into the garbage can.
• Everyone got up and milled around and some even walked out as I was talking. 

It's funny how dreams are--even as I write this, I am remembering more of the details with growing clarity...

• There was a staff developer in the room from TC, but she just sat there. why didn't she say something, add something, FIND MY WRITING SAMPLES??? I said to her that I couldn't find my writing samples and she just nodded and shrugged. (Please know that our TC staff developers are some of my favorite people EVER, and they would never, ever leave me struggling!!!)

Donalyn Miller wrote that real writers write what matters to them. (If you need another blog post to read, I highly recommend this post!) I am writing about what matters to me. These sessions matter to me. So much that I still get nervous before them, going over and over that I have the right materials that will help, support, and engage teachers, that my timing will be as constructive as possible, that I will balance the delivery of information with the opportunities to digest and collaborate and ask questions, that teachers will walk away feeling excited and ready to try something new in their classrooms. That I'll be funny. That we will all laugh and learn--isn't that the best, when laughter comes along with learning?

My PD session went fine. The ELMO focused, the video worked, the teachers were excited to teach the unit, and we even laughed a couple of times. And, I went to bed early!

Ordering Dessert Before Dinner!

During March, I am participating in the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by twowritingteachers.wordpress.com. Bloggers from around the world are posting daily, committed to the practice of sharing, reflecting, remembering...writing! Feel free to stop by this incredible March happening and check out other posts or even join in--there's no rule that says you have to start on March 1st!


At a conference last week, I had lunch with someone who shared that his aunt always ordered dessert first when she went out to dinner. She didn't like the pressure of saving room. I loved this idea. It reminded me of the days when my daughters were younger and we would occasionally have an upside-down dinner, starting with dessert. I can't believe I forgot about this!


Last night, I took two of my girls out to dinner. My husband had one of them playing in an outdoor soccer game (that's another post since we live in CT and it was less than twenty degrees at gametime...) and our fourth daughter was away for the weekend with a friend. When the girls looked at the menu, they initially struggled. It was a little fancy for them, although their close reading skills eventually revealed the options of burgers and macaroni and cheese. However, you should have seen their faces when I asked for the dessert menu first.

"Why are you asking for that, now?" Clare asked.

"That's smart," Larkin declared. "We can decide what to get for dessert before we decide on dinner."

"Actually, I think that we should get dessert first," I said.

They both started to giggle.

When the waitress came back, she asked us what we'd decided. She was a little surprised when we ordered the apple crumble and the warm chocolate cake, but I think that she assumed that we were just there for dessert.

"Should we order dinner, now, too?" Larkin asked her.

That got her attention. The girls ordered their burger and pasta, and I ordered my salad.

"But, you want the dessert first?" she asked. I didn't blame her for double checking.

We nodded and she laughed with us.

We had a great time on Saturday night--it's fun to switch up family dynamics, but it was also fun to switch up eating routines. I can't wait to surprise my other two daughters with this new tradition! Who knew that I'd learn about a fun switch-up at a Zaner-Bloser presentation?

Cheers,

Standing at the Admissions Finish Line...Waiting...

Each week the Slice of Life is hosted by the writers and teachers of Twowritingteachers.wordpress.com. Many bloggers write slices each week that you can read by following the links from the comments, or feel free to join in on the slicing!

As I await with my oldest daughter at the finish line of the College Admissions Process for the greatly anticipated results, I find myself second-guessing and wondering about the whole process more and more. While we all want to believe that the buck doesn't stop at a GPA or SAT score (especially when those scores are not in the top 2%), certainly college admissions officers, inundated by bajillions of applications for ten spots, must have some clear cut-off in mind. Maybe the cut-off mark is a little softer for the tuba players when the top player is due to graduate, but there does seem to be a tendency (and a need) to pay attention to scores.

As he frequently does, Thomas Friedman got me wondering even more about all of this in his morning NYTimes OpEd piece, How to Get a Job at Google. While Friedman does validate the experience of college for many people--"For most young people, going to college and doing well is still the best way to master the tools needed for many careers," he writes--, Friedman also quotes Laszlo Bock, the senior vice president of people operations for Google, as suggesting that too many colleges "do not deliver on what they promise. You generate a ton of debt, you don't learn the most useful things for your life. It's an extended adolescence."

Is it? Am I about to fund a $200,000 extended adolescence? My stomach hurts a little at the thought.

I would like to believe that my daughter will be one of those students who will take advantage of the learning opportunities that will be available to her next year wherever she decides to go, that she will be one of those students who gets involved in research projects, goes to the plays and art shows, has dinner with professors, travels with other curious students. I'll certainly be cheering...

In the meantime, I am having all of my daughters read Friedman's column and we will talk about what he calls "soft skills--leadership, humility, collaboration, adaptability and loving to learn and re-learn."

Still Waiting,

Still Wondering and Worrying About Saturday Night...

Each week the Slice of Life is hosted by the writers and teachers of Twowritingteachers.wordpress.com. Many bloggers write slices each week that you can read by following the links from the comments, or feel free to join in on the slicing!

I did something a little reckless on Saturday night.

I've been thinking about it since, wondering if I did the right thing. If there was a better way to have handled it. Scaring myself with the what ifs. Reminding my daughters to do as I say and not as I did...

We were driving home from a play on Saturday night. It was 10:15. My oldest daughter, Larkin, played one of the leads at a local all boys' boarding school. My friend, Mel, (my blogging partner at tworeflective teachers.blogspot.com) was in the front seat and my third daughter, Clare, was in the back seat with two of her friends. They looked especially cute, since they had just been part of the audience at an all-boys  school. As high school freshmen, they know when to seize opportunities...

It had snowed a few inches and the roads weren't great as we headed home. The roads were also narrow because we have had a lot of snow--there's not much more room to put it. Therefore, when I saw a runner up ahead of us on the wrong side of the street for running, I was worried. As we got closer and realized that this runner was in street clothes with a backpack on, we were all worried.

"He was like our age," Clare said. "Why would he be out running in the snow at 10:15 on a Saturday night?"

I picked up my phone, and dialed the police. Yes, I made a call as I was driving--another action that I never do with my daughters in the car. I told the dispatcher that we had just seen a boy running along the main road in dark street clothes with a backpack, and it definitely had not looked right. He asked for details about the location and direction, I gave those to him, and he said that he would send an officer out. He didn't seem too worried and he didn't seem too hurried.

Impulsively, but with all passengers in agreement, I turned the car around. He just seemed too unsafe. We followed the footsteps in the road. The snow made it easy. We were all impressed by how far he had gotten. When we finally came upon him, I pulled over and he stopped. Mel rolled down her window.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"Yes," he said.

"It's an odd time for a run," I said.

"I have to get back to school," he said. "I live pretty close to here and I have to get back."

"That's where we are actually coming from," I said. "We were at the play."

"I went to it last night," he said.

"You worried us," Mel said.

"I actually called the police when we passed you," I added. "You're pretty hard to see and the roads aren't too good."

"The police?" He gasped a little.

Where were the police??? I was trying to have this conversation take a while so that they would arrive. He might get in trouble, but he wouldn't get killed. I kept looking in my rear-view mirror for other cars, but especially for a car with lights on its top.

"Do you need a ride?" Mel asked.

No, Mel, I wanted to say. I can't give this kid a ride. I have other people's children in the back of my car. We don't pick up strangers. 

But there he was with a cracking voice, a school emblem jacket, a house nearby, and an extremely dangerous situation.

"Would you mind?" he asked. I think (hope) that he debated the situation. Just as I would say never to pick up a stranger, I would think that he would know to never get into a car with one. He hesitated, and we were all trying to figure out how to handle this. His school was only about a mile away, not far for the car, but far for a runner in street clothes with a backpack on slippery, narrow roads.

And, where were the police???

"What's your name?" I asked him.

He told us. (I'm not sharing it here.)

"Please get in the car. We don't want you to get hurt," I said.

I was so proud of the girls in the back seat. They were friendly and kind. They asked him questions and talked about the play. I asked him if he was drunk.

"You're not going to throw up on those girls, are you?" I asked. I had invited a stranger into the car to sit next to them. In a couple of minutes on the side of the road, Mel and I had determined that he wasn't a serial killer, but he could well be a prep school boy who was at home hitting up his father's liquor cabinet.

He assured me he was completely not under any influence.

My concern about him peaked as we drove into the school and the girls asked him where he lived. He lived on our street. I knew his family--not well--but certainly of them. I also knew how far it was! Almost three miles!!

We dropped him off in front of his dorm and watched him enter. I debated going to the door with him, shaking hands with his dorm parents, explaining how we had just gotten to know this young man. Maybe I should have.

Since Saturday night, I have had many episodes of second-guessing and the should-haves and the what-ifs. He talked about the complications in his family and I suspect that there are struggles. My daughters are pretty connected so they had an easy time finding out from people who know him that he is a good kid--funny, but in trouble a lot. I shared the story with a friend who is a friend of his mother's. She will have coffee and tell the boy's mother about Saturday night. And, I've tried to explain my actions to my daughters--rules are rules and sometimes we break them...I kept a kid safe on Saturday night.

I hope that he stays safe.

Slice of Life-The Quest for the Holiday Card

Each week the Slice of Life is hosted by the writers and teachers of Twowritingteachers.wordpress.com. Many bloggers write slices each week that you can read by following the links from the comments, or feel free to join in on the slicing!

I'm sure that there are plenty of people who can relate to the issue of finding the perfect picture for the annual holiday card. I think that the challenge becomes increasingly, perhaps exponentially, harder as the number of family members rises.

This year, my holiday wish from my family was that we head to the nearest Portrait Simple to document our family with some formal shots in time for some of these shots to be made into a card, as well. Last Saturday morning, we all got up and into our jeans and white t-shirts to head to the mall, Sonny the black lab included in the outing. This appointment had been on the calendar for a few weeks, so should I have been surprised when two of the four daughters could not locate their white t-shirts???? Fortunately, both my dresser and the Gap across the hall from Portrait Simple had some extra-smalls. 

I actually thought the session went great--the girls were funny, the dog cooperated, and we had a lot of laughs. However, the process of choosing pictures was not as easy. I loved the pictures of the girls in a pig pile. I knew that they had laughed in this pose and I loved that as the backdrop to my own experience of these pictures. "I look like a turtle," Julia declared. Personally, I didn't see the resemblance, but okay.

Sonny was a little tricky to manage, but we did get a couple of shots with all eyes straight ahead and all smiles good to go. "My eyes are droopy," Larkin said. "We shouldn't have done this in the morning before our faces get rid of the sleep evidence." I did not think of this--maybe next time? (BTW, I thought Larkin's eyes looked beautiful--drooping is not the word that comes to my mind…)

Josh the photographer caught me off guard when he offered the girls shaving cream beards at the end of the photo-shoot. They thought this was hilarious and the pictures of the girls with Santa beards are fun. Sometimes in pictures, Clare forces her smiles and I loved the authentic laughter that these pictures captured. "The shaving cream makes my teeth look yellow," she critiqued. Since we bought the disk, the girls were able to whiten her teeth using photo-shop. (For the record, Clare has beautiful white teeth and I disagreed with her observations.)

Other nominations of images were met with: "It looks like Julia is taller in that picture" (Julia is taller, but this is a truth that Larkin is not ready to admit)… "My hair is messed up"(pig piles are risky that way)…"My face looks fat"…"My smile is fake"… You get the idea.

I left the girls at home with the pictures and went to get my hair cut. My challenge to them was to use the Shutterfly templates and design a card that I could order when I got home. When I came home, they had re-enacted a photo-shoot in the front yard with candy canes and colorful sweaters. Not exactly my vision for the pictures, but they were all happy with some of the shots. They wanted to combine the outdoor shots with the ones of them holding the ho-signs at Portrait Simple. The card could read "From our 'ho's to yours." I finally had to admit that I am not ready to relinquish control of the holiday card. Not everyone is thrilled with the picture selections, but I tried to include the ideas and sentiment that the girls had begun. I wish the same to all of my Slicing Community. 

Merry everything and peace, joy, love and fun throughout the year. 

Slice of Life--Thank you Pamela Hodges

Each week the Slice of Life is hosted by the writers and teachers of Twowritingteachers.wordpress.com. Many bloggers write slices each week that you can read by following the links from the comments, or feel free to join in on the slicing!

This week, I have been grateful to Pamela Hodges , another slicer who gave me the idea to have an angel come to life each night in our house. My youngest daughter, Cecily, is at that cuspy sixth-grade age when children don't believe but still second-guess their non-belief. She has gone along with the mischievous angel. Sort of. The first night the angel toilet-papered Cecily's room--we needed to do something big to let Cecily know that there was some magic going on in the house. My oldest daughter, Larkin, took this on and was quite impressive with the roll of Charmin.

"I know it was you, Mom," Cecily said when she came into my room in the morning.

At least I could say honestly that it wasn't.

Since that night, the angel has had a n umber of adventures. She has switched places with the angel that Cecily has on her mini-Christmas tree in her room. She has dumped out Cecily's sock drawer (which needed sorting through). She has also done some nice things--she folded a large basket of laundry. made some pancake batter that was ready to use in the morning, and found a boot that had been missing for a while. Cecily has started hiding her, which makes her antics a little challenging for me.

She has some plans for the rest of the month that I can't wait to see her act on. One is to take over Cecily's bed and put Cecily into the twin bed that is in her room. I might have to photograph that! I'm open to other suggestions for my little friend that are silly, and not too time-consuming during a busy month--sorry, Pam, but even on a snow day, I don't have time to clean out my pantry right now!

As always, I'm so grateful to my writing community. In this case, Pamela inspired not only writing, but also laughter and silliness in our house!

Cheers!