I ate nothing but cookies today

I ate nothing but cookies today: Girl Scout thin mints.  I slept in ten minutes, so skipped breakfast and no time to make lunch.  I walked into our office and there they were, sitting on the bookshelf, minty chocolate, one sleeve already opened.  Now, I do keep very healthy cereal in my desk drawer for just such a time, but I’d overfilled my morning and didn’t have time to walk across to the cafeteria for the milk. “Just one thin mint to tide me over,” pop! Mmm, “one more perhaps,” pop!  And off to Latin class.  Then an anxious math student worried about today’s test, pop! Talk with another teacher about next year’s class configuration, pop! Pop! Oops, lunch meeting in three minutes – too late to run across to the cafeteria, pop! Pop! Pop!  I was having a little trouble focusing. I get nervous speaking in meetings under the best of circumstances, but all the important things got talked about and I managed to jot down some good pointers.  At one o’clock I had fifteen minutes till my appointment with a student who had missed the last two weeks of math class.  Just enough time to run out and buy a burrito.  Tonight I’m making lunch before I go to sleep and I’m giving up cookies for Lent!

Goose Eggs

Today I found out that one goose egg makes an omelet just the right size for one child and that the child will eat every bit of that omelet because they are so amazed that their omelet was made out of just one enormous egg and that they will then ask if I could possibly get hold of an ostrich egg so I could make Daddy an omelet of his very own out of just one egg too!

Waldo

When we moved from Connecticut to Colorado several years ago one of our children received a stuffed “Waldo” from the “Where’s Waldo” books.  It is a small, skinny doll, about a foot long and a very good likeness of the character.  He was packed in a random box and forgotten.  One morning, two years later, my oldest daughter ran into the kitchen screaming, “I found Waldo!”  Since then he has been lost and re-found many times in our increasingly cluttered house.  Our whole family participates in the cluttering.  My husband never passes a garage sale without finding some treasure.  Used furniture actually finds him.  He has helped friends in need furnish whole apartments with items from our basement. He also has a soft spot for old luggage. Of course I am at fault as well.  I have been known to bring home the occasional armload of truly amazing used books.  Neither my husband or I are very organized about housekeeping either.  Other stuff is more important, or becomes more important.  So, things do tend to pile up.  There is a perpetual pile of socks in front of the DVD player with the idea that when we watch a movie we can pair up some socks at the same time.  We always mean to, but the pile remains.  Most mornings at least half the family will dig for socks some time before breakfast.  We are friends with a many comedians, jugglers and street performers, so we have a lot of guests, which we enjoy very much.  When we have guests, the boy’s room turns into the guest room and we make up a bed for the boys in our big bedroom closet (it makes a great hide out J).  The pillows and blankets never quite all get put back and they have been accumulating in pile at the foot of our bed over the fall and winter.  Yesterday my husband, having some unnatural fit of spring-cleaning fever, cleared up the pile of spare pillows and blankets.  It took me a full five minutes to realize why our bedroom felt so unnaturally empty.  As I was falling asleep last night I couldn’t get comfortable with my pillow, perhaps my husband had switched it out for one of the ones in the pile?  It felt all lumpy.  I put my hand under the pillow and…there was Waldo!  I opened my husband’s sock drawer and put one sock on each of Waldo’s legs (the socks did not match) and closed the drawer.  This evening I came home and Waldo was sitting on my side of the bed, leaning back comfortably on my pillow reading one of his books.  Hmm…where should Waldo travel to next?

Key Cutting in the Matrix

I don’t know whom I’m teaching

But I know some of whom I’ve taught:

Several good parents, a community organizer,

one’s a thief in jail, one was shot.

There is a character in one of the Matrix movies that makes keys and sometimes that’s what I feel like I’m doing as a teacher, making keys to open doors. At our school students pick a topic they are passionate about to study in depth.  Their core teacher designs curriculum around their topic.  Then there are five of us who design field trips related to their topic where the students can do something hands on or interview an expert.  So, that’s straightforward – student has pointed out the door, I go to work on a key.

But today the five of us worked on a key important to us.  We are trying to intentionally diversify our contacts for field trips, especially the experts we ask to speak with our students.  It is a key and a door I don’t really want my students even to be conscious of.  I just want to walk them into a room that looks and sounds like the future I want, where no one bats an eye at an African-American physicist or a Latina astronaut.  It is an awkward key to make.  I’m working on becoming a better communicator but I’m always uncertain and the potential of offence scuttles around and works its way into my fluttering stomach.  Cutting this key is taking a lot of patience, trust and stumble tolerance.  But we have good allies, and today I am very hopeful.

Fire and Ice

Church – Daniel 8 – there’s some fire.

We don’t stay to chat long, just one quick coffee. 

Our kids went to church in their snow pants. 

They walk to the car, donuts in hand.

The skis are in the back.  We drive up to the mountain.

Gliding down the hill – there’s some ice.

For the last Sunday before lent, that will suffice.

Saturday’s sweet delusion

Ah! Saturday!  To swim slowly up to quiet consciousness, no alarm clock, fully rested, the day spread out before us, unscheduled and pregnant with potential.  Warm husband, sleeping children, hmm… the possibilities. J And then think what we could accomplish in this empty day!  All those things we usually don’t have time for but live in the back of our minds – we could lounge together, go for a long walk, stand ‘round the piano and sing a few tunes, paint a mural, go swimming, go to a museum, read Midsummer Night’s Dream aloud and all take different parts.  We could finish the quilts, cook something fun, clean the kitchen, the garage, clean the whole house even, from top to bottom using only non-toxic organic homemade cleaning products.  We could wash all the laundry; go through all the papers that lie in piles here and there.  I could look online at colleges with my daughter.  I could help the boys clean their desks so they don’t have to do their homework on my bed. We could even finish doing the taxes.  And, of course, I could take some time and really write, 5000 words at least if I set my mind to it. We could do it all today!

I know, I know – the day will unwind itself into a dozen half knotted strings.  I lie in bed, drifting back to sleep.  The sun grows brighter and, as time washes over me in great lethargic waves, I relish my sweet delusion of an open day.

My son spent the afternoon in the principal’s office...

I have four children: two girls Prima, 17, Secunda 13, and two boys Tetro 10 and Quatro 7.  Quatro decided to sit in my lap while I wrote the daily blog.

             “Quatro, what happened today at school?”

            “It’s really hard to explain.” Quatro sighs deeply and looks at the computer screen, “What are those numbers that keep changing at the top of your screen?”

            “I don’t know.  Can you tell me what happened at school today?”
            “I said it is hard to explain.” Quatro sighs again, “Mom, can I play the math computer game on your computer.”

            “No, not until you tell me what happened today at school.”

            “Ugh! Mom, I TOLD you it is really hard to explain!  I don’t even know how to say it!”

Silence

            “O.K. – just tell me what happened first.  Did your day start out alright? Can you read what I wrote?”

            “I can’t seem to figure out that last word.”

            “I meant to write: all right.  So did your day start out well?”

            Quatro slides off my lap to go watch the movie trailer his dad is watching.  It is “The Fighter.”  Daddy will be watching it this evening after going to a jazz concert our friend's son-in-law is playing. The movie was recommended by a friend.  Quatro climbs back into my lap.

            “In P.E. I was with Emily and Makayla. Makayla accidentally hit Grace with an ice pack right here.” Quatro puts his left had over his left eyebrow.  “Makayla was going to return the ice packs and...”

            Daddy chimes in, “What were you craving from the grocery store my love?”

            “A Clementine Izzy,” I answer

            Quatro continues, “I said: and when Makayla gotten back to P.E. she had her necklace caught and it got broken, and it was very special”

            “The one you gave her?”

            “No but that one got broken when it got into the dryer.”

            “O.K.”

            “Then Makayla started crying and I was trying calm her down and when we got back to class Ms. Hannon said one of the teachers is a jewelry fixer.”

            “Um hm”

            “And maybe at Friday Fun Time we could go to the jewelry fixer teacher. But I forgot the teacher’s name.”

            “That’s O.K.”

            “And she stopped crying.” Quatro pauses, “That’s all I could tell you.  All the other ones are way too hard to explain.”

            Daddy chimes in again,“My Love, don’t close this window on my computer while I’m out; I’ve got a movie downloading.”

            “So, Quatro, what happened when you were sent to the office?”

            “UGH! Please…I don’t want to tell you that.  Mom, this is way to hard to explain!”

Silence

            “Well, what book was your group reading today?”

            “Arthur’s Eyes.”

            “Did you like that story?”

            “Not that much.”

            “Why didn’t you want to write answers to questions about the story?”

            “Ugh! I have no idea." Quatro thinks a moment, "Mom, you want to know what I wrote about?  I wrote about our tornado in Connecticut.  Now can I play a math game on your website on your computer?  Can I?  Mom, just answer me.”

            “Not yet.  I still want to know why you had to go to the office to finish your writing?”

            “If I only had one wife, I’d want her to be a lot like you!” Daddy says as he leaves for the jazz concert.

            “Mom, why’d you write that?”

            “That’s what Daddy said.”

            “Mom, don’t write that down!  Mom, just let me play a math game on your computer.”

            “I need you to tell me why you went to the office.”

            Quatro starts typing on my computer.‘’’’’  ‘’’’ “Mom, how do you make those little curvy things on the top?”

            “You push down the shift, and while you are holding it down you push the quote mark button, like this.”

            “”””””” “Oh.”

            “So why did you have to go to the office?”

            “I had to finish some work.”

            “Why did you have to do it in the office?”

            “I don’t know.” Quatro sighs, “I wanted to go home.”

            “Why did you want to go home?”

            “School was boring.  I wanted to go home.”  Quatro sits up on my lap, “Can I play a computer game now?”

            “First you have to write me something that is not boring.”

            Quatro writes: playing

            “Now can I play a computer game?”

            “First you have to write me two sentences that are not boring.”

            Quatro writes:   ruing a round playing gams with my bruthr

            “Wait,” Quatro says, “you forgot the e at the end!”

            “So did you.”

            Quatro rewrites: running around playing games with my brother

            “They still aren’t sentences, I don’ know who is running and who is playing.”

            Quatro writes: Quatro likes running around.  Quatro likes playing with his brother.

            “See, can squeeze the words in right there.  Now can I play?”

            “Did you eat dinner?”

            “We ate a lot of samples at Cosco.  I ate some meat," Quatro looks at me very seriously, "It was a lot of protein.”

            “O.K.”

            “Yeah!”

            “But just for twenty minutes. O.K.?”

            “O.K. Mommy.”