End of Summer check-in

It's been awhile, hasn't it? I've had a lot on my mind, but as always, life has been busy in these parts. It pains me, but I still don't have much time to write during normal circumstances. Free time is, as ever, a rare commodity with two kids in the mix. And being summer and all, most daylight hours are spent out chasing the sun during its brief 3-month guest appearance in our world. The short and magical season where you don't need to wear jackets, plan for rain, and eat hot foods is something to be enjoyed with wild hedonistic abandon. So I lead my merry band of pirates on adventures almost every day, pick berries, play down by the river, hunt for agates, work on gross motor skills (the playground), and pretty much live outdoors all day long. Hammock is both a noun and a verb. It is the beginning of September, and by my reckoning, summer is over. I know what the calendar says, but as an almost perpetual student and teacher, school has always ushered in the end of summer for me. And school has started in some parts of the state, the apples are ripe, and the nights are getting cold. The crickets sound desperate, the yellowjackets are making their last stand, and the blackberries are dried up and long gone. If I were teaching right now, I would be busy memorizing class rosters and making seating charts to solve incipient behavior problems. As it is, nobody is terribly interested in hiring me, so I will forgo such pleasures and enjoy my two-year-old who in many ways is much more enjoyable than a classroom full of teenagers, unless you factor in diaper explosions and inexplicable crying jags. For once in my life I really feel completely satisfied with how I spent my summer, and I'm sure it has a lot to do with the fact that it's not cluttered up with work, doctor's appointments, or other forms of sabotagery. Throw in a vacation to the Oregon Coast, and it's all good.

Lost time

It's been quite an eternity since I've had time to write anything here. Free time is a rare commodity in these parts, it's quite a rare thing to have even an hour to myself.

The last few posts, it appears I was on a poetry kick--I didn't have much time to do any writing of my own with a 6-month old baby underfoot, I'm sure. That was about a year and a half ago, apparently. (These days I've been reading mostly non-fiction--and having the ability to read ANYTHING with two children in the mix is rather amazing in and of itself. Although books are out of the question, and magazines a bit of a stretch, blogs make for good interruptible reading material.) During the time that has passed, so much has changed. I have now lived in my new house for about a year and a half. My children have grown a great deal in this time, and so many things about them have changed. Sometimes I feel like a completely different person myself...

It is the end of January. If I were teaching right now, I would probably be gearing up for Black History Month by having my students read some of the bios over at the National Football Hall of Fame (there's some really good ones on there, no joke, and it's a fun way to incorporate Black History, and the Super Bowl).

As it is, I'm on sabbatical from teenagers, and immersed in such mundane realities as diapers (and no, I guess they aren't mutually exclusive...I have worked in Special Education long enough to know that. ;)

This is a season of life that is on the cusp of change...and I've had a lot on my plate. And will continue to do so for some time to come. That is the way of things.

High water mark

Today was such an incredibly good day. And it's Monday, go figure!

I was definitely not expecting such a good day on the heels of an absolutely miserable night in the sleep department with a toddler with night terrors (nothing like being woken up by a screaming non-responsive kid at 2:30 AM. Yeah. It's as fun as it sounds.) But he obliged me by taking a decent nap after all those nighttime shenanigans.

After I picked older brother from preschool, and got everyone fed, we drove over to Clinton/Division and went for a nice looooong walk around in that neighborhood. I used to work over there years ago, and retain a bit of fond nostalgia for all the time I spent over there in my carefree (child-free) days. As it turns out, it's also a great place to haul the kids around for walks, and meets all the criteria for a place where you can kill a whole afternoon with both boys (it's a good place to find bottle caps on the ground, out of state license plates, and has a plethora of fire hydrants to amuse the toddler who is in the full throes of the fire hydrant phase), and has a few strategically placed things if you need to stop and take a break/use a restroom/get food.

So we walked around for a few hours, saw plenty of fire hydrants (apparently my toddler is not the only person on earth who is obsessed with appreciates a good fire hydrant. As far as he's concerned, we could go pretty much anywhere, and he'll happily put up with it, as long as there's a few fire hydrants/fire extinguishers around. His older brother is equally enthralled with license plates and bottle caps. (I often think I should start some sort of virtual shrine to special interests, since between the three of us, we have plenty!) We stopped and had a picnic in front of People's Food Co-op, then worked our way over to the park that's across from Cleveland. (On the way, I found a great free tie-dye shirt in someone's free box...yeah!) Apparently, the good folks over in Room 263 had the same idea, because I ran into my former coworkers at the park (who had taken their class for outside for some sunshine and fresh air on this rare sunny day in January). Quite like old times.

After catching up a bit, we walked back to the car, and hit Trader Joe's on the way home. So I even got a major errand done while completely slacking and frolicking out in the sunshine, triple bonus score! When we got home, we discovered a fabulous surprise: a mysterious package from Estonia.

After such a blatantly fantastic day, I could have ended it right there, but the cards were in my favor and I was even able to get completely caught up with Downton Abbey. Seriously, I should have bought a lottery ticket because today was just competely AMAZING. (Yeah, tomorrow's going to be a complete letdown, I'm sure).

Urban Forestry Time

Today's Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday and we're cutting down trees. YEAH.

After contemplating cutting down these half-dead birch trees for most of the last year (but lamenting the logistics/time/money involved), my neighbor completely surprises me and hires someone to come do it out of the blue. Since the tree was mostly dead (no branches/leaves), and no clearance issues (no powerlines) it was a relatively easy job, and it only took them a few minutes to climb up there, cable it, cut a few deft notches, and pull it down. Since the price was right, we had them go ahead and do the other one too. So even though I was tired, grumpy, and still nursing the cold, I had fun standing there watching the crew working (and it reminded me so much of the Foresters I used to work with at AJC...sure miss those guys.) So it's time for a shameless plug for Alder Creek--As a person who spent a couple of years observing Urban Forestry training in action, those guys did a beautiful job, did a textbook perfect job, and the price was nice.

On a more relevant MLK note, I finally finished reading this fantastic book Marching to the Mountain Top that I checked out from the library (in the Children's Section) about the Memphis Sanitation Strike. It was rather comprehensive, had great information, was engagingly written, and works for a pretty wide swath of ages (upper elementary though high school, really). I highly recommend it.

Baby it's coooooold outside!

Big time temperature drop now that we're into December. It was 25 degrees this morning, and everything was frosty. Thankfully, it was also rather sunny, so with all those south-facing windows in our passive solar house, it felt rather nice inside. Once it warmed up to at least 30 degrees, I took the kids out for the day.

Today was an OMSI day, in spite of the fact that the three-year-old has been such a hot little mess lately. After such an epically bad day yesterday, I wanted to do a clean slate...and hopefully get out of this funk we've been in lately. OMSI is good for that.

TV vs Reading

Found this lovely Roald Dahl poem that neatly sums up the questionable value of television for children:

Television

The most important thing we've learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set --
Or better still, just don't install
The idiotic thing at all.
In almost every house we've been,
We've watched them gaping at the screen.
They loll and slop and lounge about,
And stare until their eyes pop out.
(Last week in someone's place we saw
A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they're hypnotised by it,
Until they're absolutely drunk
With all that shocking ghastly junk.
Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,
They don't climb out the window sill,
They never fight or kick or punch,
They leave you free to cook the lunch
And wash the dishes in the sink --
But did you ever stop to think,
To wonder just exactly what
This does to your beloved tot?
IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!
HE CANNOT THINK -- HE ONLY SEES!
'All right!' you'll cry. 'All right!' you'll say,
'But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!'
We'll answer this by asking you,
'What used the darling ones to do?
'How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?'
Have you forgotten? Don't you know?
We'll say it very loud and slow:
THEY ... USED ... TO ... READ! They'd READ and READ,
AND READ and READ, and then proceed
To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!
The nursery shelves held books galore!
Books cluttered up the nursery floor!
And in the bedroom, by the bed,
More books were waiting to be read!
Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales
Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales
And treasure isles, and distant shores
Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars,
And pirates wearing purple pants,
And sailing ships and elephants,
And cannibals crouching 'round the pot,
Stirring away at something hot.
(It smells so good, what can it be?
Good gracious, it's Penelope.)
The younger ones had Beatrix Potter
With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter,
And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland,
And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and-
Just How The Camel Got His Hump,
And How the Monkey Lost His Rump,
And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul,
There's Mr. Rat and Mr. Mole-
Oh, books, what books they used to know,
Those children living long ago!
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books,
Ignoring all the dirty looks,
The screams and yells, the bites and kicks,
And children hitting you with sticks-
Fear not, because we promise you
That, in about a week or two
Of having nothing else to do,
They'll now begin to feel the need
Of having something to read.
And once they start -- oh boy, oh boy!
You watch the slowly growing joy
That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen
They'll wonder what they'd ever seen
In that ridiculous machine,
That nauseating, foul, unclean,
Repulsive television screen!
And later, each and every kid
Will love you more for what you did.

Roald Dahl

The perfect poem for procrastination

Lost Time On many an idle day have I grieved over lost time. But it is never lost, my lord. Thou hast taken every moment of my life in thine own hands. Hidden in the heart of things thou art nourishing seeds into sprouts, buds into blossoms, and ripening flowers into fruitfulness. I was tired and sleeping on my idle bed and imagined all work had ceased. In the morning I woke up and found my garden full with wonders of flowers. Rabindranath Tagore