Ryter Rytes

I'm moving.....

2008-11-18T08:00:00.001-08:00

Inspired by a friend and frustrated with changes in Blogger, I am moving to Wordpress. The posts are all over there. Book mark my new address....

http://ryterrytes.wordpress.com/

That Kind of Day.....

2008-11-18T05:41:00.000-08:00

I am a part time Teacher. For the last eight years I have taught Kindergarten 2 and a half days a week or two days one week and three days the next week. Last year, my first as a Technology intructor, I was in class every Monday, Wednesday morning and Friday. This year I was upgraded to an 8/10ths position. I work four full days a week. It's a perfect life. My paycheck has almost doubled. I have every Tuesday off to do 'my' thing. It's for house cleaning issues, errands, appointments, lunch dates, extra school activities, etc. etc. For the past month and a half Tuesdays have been packed with 'must dos.' Except for today.

HRH is at a training session for his UAW position deep in the 'up north' of Michigan for the whole week. Where they have snow. Many inches of snow. Last night the Princess told me she had signed up for Jazz Band at school and needed to be at her middle school by 7:15....a.m. Sooo...instead of our usual 'wake Princess at 6:45, drive Prince to high school, come home, breakfast with Princess, make lunch and drive her to middle school by 8' Tuesday morning routine, I got them BOTH up at 6, made a healthy, hearty breakfast sandwich for BOTH of them, packed a veggie and dip lunch bowl for her lunch, drove him to the high school, tarried on to the middle school, dropped her off and came back home. All in my jammies, thick heavy socks and ugly orange crocs that I was ecstatic to purchase for $7 in South Carolina last summer before realizing the nobody anywhere wears ugly orange crocs in public which is why they were only $7. It's only 8:30 am and I have no where to go. For the whole day.

Soooo....I am planning to make myself a sugar free hot chocolate, pour a bowl of corn flakes with frozen blueberries on top (yum...love the way the milk freezes around those babies!), plug a movie into the dvd player and grade the 250+ papers that need to be recorded in order to mark the 500+ report cards I need to do in the next few weeks. Maybe I will do a few loads of laundry and fill another bag with clothes for the Salvation Army. Maybe..... And outside? Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!!! Loving these ugly orange crocs......

The Sixth of the Sixth

2008-11-15T07:00:00.000-08:00

Got this one from my friend, Mary. The idea was to open your 6th picture file, post the sixth picture there and explain it. What a laugh! What a memory.....

It's out of focus but I don't care. The Princess was six. Had been with us for just barely over a year. She was missing a tooth. She could sing 'On Top of Spaghetti' with the cutest Russian lilt and lisp. Decked her out with a giant fork of 'spaghetti' to sing at the church's spaghetti dinner and talent show. She wouldn't go up without her dad. Half way through the song she looked up at me (in the audience filming with the video camera), forgot all the words and ran into my arms. Completely stole the show. LOL Did it again two years later when she and her dad did a beautiful Vince and Jenny Gill rendition of 'Let There Be Peace on Earth.' It was our favorite sing along song in the car for a very long time.

Bitten again......sigh.

2008-11-09T12:47:00.000-08:00

I am doing some research for a story I am writing. Yeah...just another fan fiction thing that I do when there is nothing else 'cooking.' I have fans that have been clamoring for another 'road' piece for a while now. This time I am sending my families from a previous fic - 'The Duplex' - to Walt Disney World for Thanksgiving. Something about 'seeing' the esteemed Goran Visnjic (aka Luka Kovac) in a Goofy hat is appealing. And someone has emailed and asked that I interject 'Abby Lockhart' (aka Maura Tierney) grumbling around in a Minnie Mouse get up. Haven't figured out how to get that in but it sounds like a hilarious possibility. Hee. At any rate, I am having some mindless fun. I always do when writing fan fictions. But that's for another post. This one is all about WDW.

I thought I had outgrown the place. Seriously. I went to Disneyland twice and WDW once (the year it opened!) with my parents when I was growing up. My sister and I went to WDW together - alone - the year she graduated from high school and I graduated from college. Road trip extraordinaire! What memories the two of us have of that trip. I went once again with my husband - who was then my fiancee - for a long weekend. We took his daughters for a week several years later and stayed in a camper. We joined my sister's family there when my son was a toddler. My parents moved to Florida and WDW became an easy day trip....or a jumpstart for an extended stay. We took my youngest step, a niece and our three year old son for a week once. My son and I went back for a day six months later when we were visiting my parents. Pathetically, my son had been there six times before the age of seven. Then along came the Princess from her Russian orphanage. Our family was now four strong and I was working part time. Which meant a partial pay check. The trip became rather pricey for us. But, we had saved a day of our tickets from the year before (Disney tickets are good forever) in order to take her at some point. And we did two years after her arrival...for her 7th birthday.

It was...interesting...to experience the Magic Kingdom with a child who has not grown up with the Mouse. She had seen a number of the movies via our dvd collection at that point - Snow White, Bambi, Peter Pan, Mary Poppins and The Little Mermaid (which scared the bejeezes out of her). She even had several sing along dvds committed to memory. (Listening to 'The Tiki Room' with a Russian lilty lisp was hilarious!) This was to be HER trip. She was to pick and choose where we were to go. I anticipated having her overwhelmed with it all. Instead, all she cared about was getting pictures taken with all of the characters so she could have a photo memory book like the one I had made her brother years before. That's all. Oh...and swimming in the pool with the dragon slide at our for one night only New Orleans Resort pool. Sooo....that trip ended up being placed in the hands of the master - her 9 year old brother - who managed to get us to all of his favorite places in three different WDW parks in ONE day....and back to the pool for a late night swim. My feet had blisters on top of blisters! That was six years ago. The last time we were actually inside the parks.

So now I am researching what things are like at Walt Disney World for the holidays. What the new attractions are. Where the new restaurants are. For my story. And I have been bitten again. Sigh. My children are 13 and almost 15 now. They are more interested in their friends, their sports, their school activities. The 'master' has been to another kind of park and is now a roller coaster fiend. He wants to ride them over and over all day long. I thought the Peter Pan ride would be a hard sell. He wouldn't be interested in another trip to WDW. She wasn't much intrigued the first time around. Surely she wouldn't be interested this time. Or so I thought. I am just mulling a trip over. Trying to figure it all out. Financially. But their eyes have begun sparkling at the thought of the possibility. Heh. Walt Disney was a genius. That WDW 'bug' is freaking contagious.

Musta Missed It

2008-11-06T16:14:00.001-08:00

I seriously must have missed something here. I didn't go to the polls. Maybe that's it. I did my voting via Absentee Ballot. We had a Teacher Workshop all day long on election day and I didn't want to spend my evening standing in line. So I voted at my desk at school five days prior to the Big Day. It was a particularly tiring day so I didn't even manage to stay up to watch the counting. In fact, I was in bed and sound asleep by 10 pm. So I musta missed something.

They tell me it was a historic event....this election thing. The first time a family of color will be moving into the White House. Hmm. I musta missed something because I ceased seeing Barack Obama as a 'black man' MONTHS ago. Seriously. He was just a 'candidate.' I was paying more attention to the issues this time around. To what both candidates had to say about education, the war situation and economy. I didn't really see what color his words were. Just wanted to make sure that they were something I could support. Something that was important to me. So I musta missed something else.

Frankly, I found the last few days of this campaign to be totally boring. I hate aggressive verbal attacks. I can get plenty of that on the playgrounds at school. I didn't even watch much tv last weekend. (Maura Tierney is gone from 'ER' after all. Sigh.) I watched only to see what was happening with Senate, House and local campaigns. I was totally sick of hearing "I am ___ ___and I approve this message." Even some local candidates were using it. Bleh. Quite frankly, the tack sounded better coming from Richard Dreyfuss' mouth in 'An American President.' Very passe this time after a short while. So I think I musta missed something.

My blogging friend, Mary, at The Eleventh is probably purple with rage reading this by now because I didn't 'get' it. Or maybe she is embarrassed and is not wanting to call me a friend any more. This election was a HUGE deal for her. But, I wasn't crying when I cast my vote. I was actually trying to balance the durn ballot on top of the huge stack of letters my kiddos had written to Veterans during our Tech Lab sessions. I have very little room for a huge ballot on my desk. And I couldn't keep my eyes open long enough to watch which states were turning blue and which states were turning red. Old age is exhausting these days. And I wasn't particularly stirred to learn who the winner was. Maybe I already knew? But rest assured, Mary. I was totally moved by the bits of his grand speech at Grant Park that I heard. Gonna get that transcript sometime soon. Actually I felt something akin to the same sort of feeling when I heard a similar recorded speech at the museum in Boston last summer?

However, NOW comes my time to sit up and truly pay attention. THIS is the process I am interested in. 'Transistion' is MY thing. I am very curious about cabinet appointments. I love reading all the predictions about what the First Lady will be making her 'cause.' I am intrigued with a young family taking up residence in the White House. Who freaking cares what color they are? It's going to be interesting to see which schools are scouted for a 7 and 10 year old. (Hint to Michelle: Check out Sidwell Friends. They did good by Chelsea, already know the Secret Service drill and is a 22 minute drive from the White House. Momism knows that the ride time gives you a chance to go over those spelling word lists and Math facts!) It'll be fun to see if a dad is relegated to dog walking duty on occasion. It will be a joyous thing to see positive spirits and willingness to work hard radiating from Washington again. I am not gonna miss that!

A little cheese with that whine?

2008-11-02T10:31:00.000-08:00

I have seriously been put to shame. Spanked. Settled in the corner to 'think' about my actions of late. I have been whining about being bored. Whining about having nothing to look forward to any more. Whining about the futility of my day to day activities and chores. Not thinking outside of my little world like I should be.

During a recent online conversation, my sister responded with 'it's getting to be that time of year for you, isn't it?' How could I have forgotten?

I hate the holidays. I hate the money that is spent. I hate the feeling that I have not 'given' enough. And I have always been totally torn about where to spend them, how and with whom. When my stepdaughters were smaller there was no question. Whenever we had them we spend that time with my husband's family. Christmas Eve one year. Christmas Day the next. My sister would drag her husband and kids from their warm southern climate to our ice and snow to be with my parents and us. My steps became teenagers and the decisions about where they spent holidays was no longer ours. Our son came along and there was even more incentive to spend holidays with my far flung family. My parents moved south and traveling during the holidays became expensive....and necessary. My daughter arrived from Russia, I became a part time teacher and the money was no longer there to travel with four. My sister's family decided to spend holidays at their home and we all snagged bits of time here and there to be together. And I hate the holidays.

But today I logged on and started transversing my favorite blog sites. At the Eleventh I saw my cutie, Rabbit, in her Halloween costume and at Blood Signs, my comrade in stepmomhood was lamenting about steppers finding their 'place' on kid holidays (you're lucky P...we very rarely had the girls on Halloween but I have made several of their costumes.) At Snacks Please, it was a delightful rundown of the new vocabulary of my favorite baby girls and their big sister. ( I want them....seriously. ) But it was when I logged on to The Pioneer Woman that I was taken aback. The Marlboro Man and her two oldest punks are headed for a week in the Dominican Republic to see the work being done by Compassion International.

I have been trying to get our finances in order this month. We have more money coming into the house because of my return to an almost full time position. I sent a donation to Shaohannah's Hope, the Chapman Family's program for adoption. It was the money we got back for our tickets when we couldn't attend the rescheduled concert of last summer. Adoption is important to us. I know we will contribute there again. I signed us up to give monthly to Mercy Corps's hunger program once again. I also wanted to start sponsoring a child some where. You know...send money to the program and letters of encouragement to a kid. I figured mine are old enough to be involved as well. I had been twiddling about where...which program to use. There are so many to choose from. The Pioneer Woman's post was perfect timing.

So now my already international family has ties with one more country....Korea, Russia and the Dominican Republic. We are sponsoring an older boy because we figured - like with adoption - the older ones tend to be overlooked. Anthony is 10 and a soccer playing dude like the rest of my children. Soccer? Gads. You'd think I would have learned......

God Is No Fool

2008-10-28T19:46:00.000-07:00

It was the fall of 1973. I was a very nervous college student. I was attending a small college about 40 minutes from my childhood home - Michigan Christian College. It was my first class on my very first day as a freshman. It was early morning. I settled into an old wooden chair desk in a small damp classroom at the end of row of rooms in a 'cabin' in the woods of the campus. Pencils lined up. Spiral situated nice and square on the desk. I wasn't one to make friends quickly. Didn't really have anyone to talk to. Then in walked the 'professor'. He strode to a corner desk, hiked a cowboy booted foot to the seat of a desk and announced - with an Oklahoma drawl - that we were there for the 'Fundamental Basics of Mathematics'.....other wise known as 'Fun Math.' My college career was off and running and that particular teacher set the tone for what were to be two of the most amazing years of my life. Ken Franklin introduced us to a poetry book in that class that became a campus cult favorite. He read a poem aloud at the beginning of each Math class. We all had our own copies. I remember purchasing one at the college bookstore for my Mom - who used to make mid week donut runs to our dorm with goods from the family donut shop. I had each of my friends choose a favorite poem and write a note telling her why it was a favorite. She treasured it for a good long while.

I lost my copy of the book. Actually I had given several away to friends YEARS ago not realizing that I was giving away my last one. I would think about it occasionally. Remember a poem that was particularly meaningful to me. Wondered where I could get another copy because I had discovered that it was out of print. Well...I found one on the internet several weeks ago and paid $30 for it. THIRTY dollars. And the inside flap price says $4.25. Go figure.

But it's nice to have it back....no matter what the cost. Nice to have it on my bedside table again. It's even as ratty and beat up as my own copy used to be. Thirty dollars very well spent. Just looking at it brings back fond memories of antiquated quonset hut biology classrooms, dormitory fun, late night devotionals, chapel services every morning, my roommate, pranks, prayers, my friends, duck weed on the lake, the totem pole, Faculty Firesides, chat sessions in the hall, term papers, all night study sessions, 'Amazing Grace', campus theater productions, cafeteria meals, Beautiful Days, Bible classes, 'W Club', psych class with Ron Luckett, Hebrew History with Terry Blake (who used to always call me his 'beautiful, beautiful Lyn'), Stephanie and Casey.....so so many memories. Thirty dollars VERY well spent. And my favorite poem? I think it was everyone's favorite at one time or another. They printed it in the year book one year. It's number 43.

"Bits and pieces
Bits and pieces

People. People important to you, people
unimporttant to you cross your life, touch
it with love and carelessness and move on.
There are people who leave you and you
breathe a sigh of relief and wonder why
you ever came into contact with them.
There are people who leave you and you
breathe a sigh of remorse and wonder why
they had to go away and leave such a gaping
hole. Children leave parents; friends leave
friends. Acquaintences move on. People change
homes. People grow apart. Enemies hate and
move on. Friends love and move on. You think
on the many who have moved intoyour hazy memory.
You look on those present and wonder.

I believe God's master plan in lives. He
moves people in and out of each other's
lives, and each leaves his mark on the other.
You find you are bits and pieces of all
who ever touched your life, and you are
more because of it, and you would be less if
they had not touched you.

Pray God that you accept the bits and
pieces in humility and wonder, and never
question,
and never regret.

Bits and pieces
Bits and pieces"

Lois A. Cheney
God Is No Fool

Michigan Christian College is now Rochester College and is located in Rochester, Michigan.

Raising A Reader

2008-10-19T04:21:00.000-07:00

Okay....so I did everything right with this kid. Everything right that I would advise parents to do with their budding readers. I am a TEACHER, fer cripes sake. I KNOW what to do. I read to him from the very first day we got him. He had stacks of books at his crib side and then his bedside. We had a basket of books in the car. We had TONS of favorites. We used to write books together and illustrate them. We listened to music, sang along with the songs, played rhyming/letter sound games in the car. I invested in Sing Along video tapes that had the words running along the bottom of the television screen. We would read the backs of cereal boxes as we ate breakfast before school. I 'modeled' reading habits by daily reading of the newspaper, magazines and books myself. So how...just HOW....did I end up with a kid who hates to read?

Learning to read himself was a struggle. I know that. Just could not get the letter/sound hook back in Kindergarten and first grade. And then there was the time period when he was four and five when he would not allow me to read with 'voices' because it scared him. He took a particular liking to the DK books that focused more on pictures than words. Still loves' em. His second grade teacher introduced him to research reading for report writing. He loved doing that. His third/fourth grade teacher read aloud book choices guaranteed to draw a laugh...and he loved that. HIs fifth grade teacher told me not to worry because his reading skills were in place. She didn't enjoy reading herself so she was able to give me a new perspective. It still boggles me. How can you NOT enjoy reading?

He reads his Eurosport catalog from cover to cover when it arrives. He reads Sports Illustrated when he is in the bathroom. He has quite a collection of sports bios but I am not sure if he has managed to read any of them from cover to cover. He reads about other sports on line every evening before he goes to bed. I guess there is some hope......

However, he is in high school now and is required to read outside of the school day. They have a test on Mondays and a classroom discussion on Thursdays. Coupled with the drawing he is required to have in his sketch book on Wednesdays for his design class, our weekends are sometimes real battle grounds. VERY serious gnashing of the teeth and moaning and lamenting. And the book they are reading is Tuesdays With Morrie. Short. Sweet. Written by a sports writer. I gave six copies away as gifts for Christmas when it first came out. I love it. I thought he would love it as well. But alas, the words that get spewn around are things like 'stupid' and 'who cares?' I finally had to decide that it was going to have to be read together if it was to be read at all. I bought a copy for his dad. They are reading it together....when I remind them that it needs to be done. I'm saving MY participation for the next novel battle. If he thinks reading a short, moving book about a man's ongoing relationship with his dying teacher is 'inconsequential'......just wait till we have to tackle To Kill A Mockingbird. And it's one of my absolute favorites. Heh.

Just got his report card. That English Lit class?? He has an 'A-' and his grade was followed with 'Outstanding performance' and 'Outstanding attitude' comments. Go figure......

Hummingbird Cupcakes

2008-10-11T08:51:00.000-07:00

Still caught up in the whole NYC thing. Still totally bamboozled by the coolest city I have ever been in. It simply never occured to me that Hummingbird Cupcakes could be made anywhere else in the world but at the Magnolia Bakery in West Village. It has become kind of my New York 'thing.' One taste and I was totally sold...and hooked. They are the kind of taste you can get a 'hankering' for on a cold winter night when nothing else will do. Hummingbird cupcakes...heavy with the moist fruit of crushed bananas, pineapple, coconut and pecans....covered with a creamy, real sugar cream cheese frosting. Yum. So, imagine my surprise when I ran across a recipe for 'Hummingbird Cake' in a large collection of cake recipes emailed to me by my sister. And imagine the equally stunned surprise of my children when they awoke to the smell of baking cupcakes this sunny fall Saturday morning. (DH was at work....serves him right for working on a Saturday!) Cupcakes they were not allowed to touch until they had been frosted with a buttery yellow cream cheese frosting.

But now I am crushed. I just did a web search. The Magnolia Bakery does not have a 'secret' recipe for these decadent items. Naturally, Martha Stewart has her own spin on them. With dried pineapple flower adornments. It's an old southern recipe apparently. And the bakery even has it's own cookbook. There are no 'secrets'. You can buy them. Sigh.

But mine turned out really, really good actually. Not quite as heavy with fruit as The Magnolia's. And of course I haven't managed to master the Magnolia way of frosting with that cool little swirl....yet. But right now I have a counter full of the things. Gotta do something with them. Ice cold glass of milk anyone?

The Fifth Grade Caucus

2008-10-04T03:39:00.000-07:00

I am a Technology Teacher. I was actually grading them on their computer generated letter writing format. I wanted to make sure that they knew how to insert a date, formulate a salutation, write a paragraph and then an ending. And I love reading things written by fifth graders. They know enough about changing fonts and colors to make the reading interesting. It's easy on the eyes and I had 134 of them to read. So this task wasn't any different than usual. Just tugged at the heart strings and twanged the recesses of my mind. The innocence and enthusiasm of fifth graders. Dang.

Their job was to write a letter to one of the four candidates - Barack Obama, John McCain, Joe Biden or Sarah Palin. They were to tell them the three most important problems the new president had to solve. I didn't really keep track of how many of them wrote to which one. I probably could have predicted the outcome of the upcoming election had I done it. The issues they chose included several references to school lunches and soccer field conditions but most were deeper. Thought provoking. Here are a couple of random selections.

"Dear Senator McCain, I think if you get elected you should stop global warming. You should also help kids get more exercise. You should make sure every kid gets and allowance so they can save money for their future. Sincerely, Billy T." A ten year old...worried about his financial future?

"Dear Barrack O'Bama, You need to fix sending the troops back bcause if you don't we'll have another 9/11 and we don't want that to happen again. You also need to make taxes the same amount instead of making rich people pay more and poor people pay less because it won't be fair. You also would make a good president because you will make history and so would Sarah Palin but I am going to vote for you because my Mom is. You also need to stop saying bad stuff about McCain because it is rude and he is rude to because he says really mean nasty things about you. Sincerely your friend, Chris." We play nice and fair on OUR playground.

"Dear Barack Obama if you become president please help the environment by stopping global warming before it reach's durrasic measures. I hope you can accomplish this. Please also stop wars and terrorists before it can't be helped. Maybe it would lead to world peace and with world peace people can accomplish anything. Please acclompish this or things could end badly. Sincerely, Jacob" Amen to that.

"Dear Barack Obama, There are two problems that I think are very important things for the new president to solve. One problem is Global Warming. One reason I think it is important is because the air we breathe is getting polluted. So for some kids, it's hard to breathe. Another problem is how high the gas prices are these days. When we get our license the prices will be up to ten dollars. P.S. By the way, good luck in the election. Sincerly, Nathan" Love the post script... before the ending. We are big on encouragement and positive comments in elementary school. .

"Dear Senator John McCain, The one thing you could fix is all the jobs that families are losing people are going to other cuntries and gas is not a big deal to other rich people but it is to us and we are 11 and 10 years old so if we see it, you should....Thank you for reading, Stevie" Gotta love this kid but she is already aware of economic distinctions?? Did I even care when I was ten?

"Dear Senator Barack Obama, There are two problems I think are very important for the new president to solve. One problem is gas prices, they are very high and will probably get higher if the new president doesn't change it. Another problem is global warming. I think more people should recycle, even though a lot of people all ready do. I believe there should be a law that says every single classroom in the U.S.A. should have a recycling bin in it. Sincerely, Julia" We are a green school. We have recycled paper, plastic bottles and foil/styrofoam packaging from lunch trays.

Then there was the kid that suggested stopping the gas price rise so he wouldn't have to quit his soccer team. And the girl who wants new jobs in the USA so her dad doesn't have to work in Sweden any more. And the child who suggested making hurricane proof housing in hurricane areas....and growing more food so people do not go hungry. And the boy who suggested the new president lower the voting age to 13 because 'we have good ideas and we know how to problem solve.'

And lastly....this one from a challenged student....

"Dear Senator Barak Obama,
Help people in the streets. So people don't die.
People stop littering. And globule warming just
So living things don't die.
Sincerely, E"

Their world in a nut shell......Fifth Graders.

Are we listening?

To Bag or Not to Bag?

2008-10-01T19:10:00.000-07:00

When we went to Disney World nine years ago, I wore a fanny pack into the park. Excuse me....a belly bag. It was convenient at the time. It held our tickets, my camera, a change purse full of money and a bottle of sun screen. Over the past nine years it has proven to be SO convenient that I never went back to using anything else. Oh sure, I carry a back pack that generally holds everything I need for school...lesson plans, papers to be corrected, hand lotion, camera, lunch, water bottle, paper plates, craft supplies...and generally my belly bag. Carrying everything in a back pack saved me from the infamous purse snatcher who unknowingly trip trapped through several halls in my old school taking money and check books and credit cards from every purse he/she could find....twice. Who would think of looking in a backpack when they were actively searching for...purses?

But I came home from New York City carrying a purse. A $19 purse I picked up at Meijer on my way to the airport. It was a practical decision actually. You are only allowed a carry on bag and a purse for the plane. The purse holds more. More room for a cell phone. M&Ms. Tissues. An apple. People Magazine. I seriously expected to ditch the purse again when I got home. Seriously. It bothers me to have the straps keep falling off my shoulder. But I never - ever - anticipated the excitement I would create by having this faux leather black bag.

"Hey, Mom.....I LIKE the purse!" she said. "Mom has a purse?" he said. "Hey, Hon...are your keys in your purse?" "I hear your phone ringing in your purse." "Did you put the mail in your purse?" "Do you have any gum in your purse?" Yes...I do. Along with a cell phone, a wallet, a leopard print change purse, a hairbrush, antibacterial lotion, new school pictures, my Playbill, my key ring, school id badge, flash drives, my camera, cough drops, TicTacs, band aids, sticky notes, ink pens, two Sharpies, pony tail holders and an empty 16 oz. cranberry juice cocktail bottle. It holds a LOT more than the belly bag. And that is not always a good thing.

I had my belly bag contents down to a science. The wallet (a gift from a student several years ago...bless him) took the most room. Pens and pencils nestled in the bottom with several cough drops. The cell phone fit on one end and the digital camera on the other. The leopard print change purse could be tucked in front of the wallet. Tissues and several band aids were stuffed into the front pocket. Concise. Organized. Perfect. And cause for much less 'excitement.' But I decided to maintain the purse for a while to see if I could make it work with my current lifestyle. All told, it's actually been kind of aggravating thus far.

Can't tell you how many calls I have missed on my cell phone digging through the dang purse to find it. Pens never seem to be in the pocket you thought you left them in. One cough drop has already wormed it's way out of it's wrapper and adhered itself to a band aid. My camera has some mysterious scratches on the lens. Fortunately most of them rubbed off. I've lost a cover to one of my flash drves. TicTacs have spilled and roll around the bottom pretending to be solidified lint. And pennies are everywhere already. Everywhere.

So, I am left with a dilemma. To bag or not to bag? What is the big deal? Is there something more 'normal' about carrying a purse? More...adult? Something that makes me like all the other moms and wives out there? Eh...I can deal with falling straps if it makes my family happy. And the first time someone tries dipping in for money...or check books or credit cards...I can whack 'em with the purse. Right?

This Girl......

2008-09-28T16:40:00.001-07:00

This girl was glad to see her Mom come home from New York City. This 'get your hair out of your eyes where are your glasses skateboard loving soccer playing do I hafta wear a dress woe is me still the shortest kid in the whole class' girl missed her old Mom. There is a different kind of rythm to your life when you are the only girl in the house. I know. I strummed that rythm before she came into our lives. Things are changing for her right now though and I am not quite sure she is ready for it. We dropped her big brother off at his first high school Homecoming dance last night. The sight of all the girls - some of whom she knows well - gussied up in their sequined gowns and shorty dresses with heels tripping into the high school gym has her worried. The seventh grade dance is coming up. I have assured her - several times - that we will find some slacks and a shirt/sweater/blouse that she can live with. Something nice. Something girly.....but not too girly.

Her 'Gotcha Day' is coming soon. Eight years since we brought her into our family from Russia. Thanks for changing the rythm for your old Mom, Sweetie Pie. You rock my whole world.

The New York 'Adventure'

2008-09-27T05:21:00.001-07:00

It all started with the finger nails. I have always bitten my nails to the quick. Never been able to stop chewing them. Last December - when the Princess got a box from Santa and didn't like them - I discovered the plastic glue on things. Can no longer live without them and I haven't gotten brave enough to get the 'real' things. The night before - while lost on the way to a soccer game 90 minutes from home and the gas tank settling in the red zone - I peeled the most recent set off. As I was on my way to New York City for a big adventure, I needed new ones. Stressed for time, I hadn't had time to put them on at home. So...I figured that sitting in a bathroom stall at Metro Airport was as good a time as any. Call it 'multi-tasking.' Oh, I know, the nail technician in you is horrified. But, never done it before and will never do it again. I mean, they went on okay. Broke two off trying to get toilet paper off the roll, stopped and glued them back on only to discover that a bit of toilet paper had gotten caught in the edge of the glue and when I tried to pick it off...two fingers were glued together. Arrggghhh!

Once out of the bathroom I made the first of several 'walking mistakes' of the trip. I eschewed the brand spanking new tram ride to the other end of the tarmac where my gate was located. It was only 18 gates away after all and here were the moving sidewalk things to ride. Right? Heh. One was working and the other was not. My cute little cherry covered satchel minus wheels got heavier with each step. (Note to self: NEVER try a plane trip again without the carry on bag with wheels....even though cherry covered satchel is cute.)

Made it to the gate okay...made it on the plane okay....and that's where the days and days of stress began to peel off in layers. Stress of the new school year beginning. Stress of getting to know and organize again the 767 students that pass through my computer lab each week. Stress of soccer practice/games/tournaments here and there at the same times. Stress of preparing materials for a substitute to take over my most chaotic scheduled school days of the week. Stress of just getting two kids back and forth to school and their various activities. Stress of trying to manage home and hearth. Peeling away in layers. This trip was mine. Three days visiting a city that I have wanted to see since I was eight years old. A city described to me in wondering delight by my mother after a visit for my dad's army division reunion in 1964. On my way at last.

When I first began planning this trip, I made reservations at a cute little bed and breakfast in Greenwich Village. A room for one for one night. I planned to see the play I had tickets for on Tuesday night and then again on Wednesday night (yeah...call me crazy but more on that later) and take a plane home immediately after. When it became clear that the airlines were not going to cooperate with my little plan and I would need to stay another night, I contacted the B&B. They weren't going to be able to accommodate the second night. I needed to find another venue. Expensive. VERY expensive. I began thinking about finding a travel partner. Someone to share hotel and taxi expenses with. That's when I discovered a new friendship in 'Indie.' (Not so much named for the devil may care adventurous spirit she shares with one of my favorite Harrison Ford characters as much as from the small Indiana town she hails from.) Through phone calls and text messages we got to know each other a little (she is unbelievably shy), made hotel arrangements that suited us, purchased her ticket to the play and made plans to meet. Which is why I ended up sitting on a bench in front of a popcorn stall in the baggage claim area of the Delta tarmac at LaGuardia airport. Her plane landed 90 minutes after mine and I was watching for her. We had shared pictures so I sort of knew who I was looking for. Sort of. She came trudging down the walkway toward me and I smiled. She stopped and turned around, apparently not seeing me, pulled out her phone and started texting. I walked toward her and she stopped. Shared smiles and we were off in a taxi toward our hotel in Chelsea.

You have undoubtedly heard about New York cabbies. Believe me. Every single word you have heard is true. Better buckle up! They are brash, brave and determined to get you where you are going....just maybe not in one piece. Traffic from airport to city was horrendous and complicated by emergency vehicles trying to get through. Horns honking, sirens going....it was everything my mother described. I LOVED it! Every second of it.

Once settled in our hotel room we set out on a walk to nearby streets for a place to get something to eat. Our hotel was convienently nestled between Broadway and 6th Avenue. We found a tiny little deli across 6th Avenue and purchased very un-midwest like sandwiches to take back to the hotel.

I was meeting a friend at the Playwrights Horizon Theater on 42nd street before the play I had come to see. She and I had 'met' online through an AOL message board that focused on 'ER.' We share an affection for the show, the work of Maura Tierney and writing. She has done it professionally and is a retired life time member of the Writer's Guild. I just do it for fun. Over the past three and a half years we have shared a lot of other things as well. This night we were meeting face to face for the very first time to share a meal and an evening at the theater to see Nicky Silver's 'Three Changes', starring Maura Tierney, Dylan McDermott and Scott Cohen. So I set out for my first encounter with hailing a NY taxi on my own.

It wasn't so bad I guess. I'd done it in Chicago. I'd seen it in the movies often enough. I mean, if Doris Day can do it, so can I. I held up my arm as a bevy of taxis rushed down 6th Avenue. One pulled to the side and rolled down his window. I said I was going to 42nd street and he shook his head and sped off. Uh oh. This was going to be harder than I thought. I held up my arm again and a black car pulled up to take another rider. He rolled his window down and asked where I was going. I told him and he nodded. I slipped in the back alongside a gorgeous black business woman. We started to chat. She was delighted to find out I was from Michigan and regaled me with her first encounter with the Great Lakes ('like the Atlantic without waves!')at a Traverse City wedding the previous weekend. Then our conversation slipped into the economy, Barack Obama, education, fashion shows in Bryant Park, theater, where to go in the city and on and on. She pulled out her money and told me softly to give the driver $12 when I got to the theater....and then she was gone. My driver continued several blocks to the theater, did a U turn in the middle of the street and dropped me off right in front. He accepted my money, tipped his head and was gone. So there I stood. Directly in front of a theater I had been planning to attend for months. It was a heady feeling.

I checked out the windows. Walked the length of the block to see where Indie (aka Shawna) and I could grab a bite the next night and then meandered back to the theater. People - staff - were starting to arrive. And then my friend arrived. Big smiles...hugs...and whispers about waiting for the cast to arrive. While we were talking I noticed playwright, Nicky Silver, and cast member, Brian J. Smith, standing near the corner of the building smoking. Silver was decidedly ignoring us. I stepped forward to help him with the Orange Crush bottle that was unknowingly falling out of his jacket pocket, shook his hand and told him I was looking forward to seeing the play. Exchanged smiles with Brian J. Smith (a very young looking cutie who plays a rather despicable character) and my friend and I were off to take our dinner reservation at 'Chez Josephine', right next to the theater.

We were met at the door by a delightfully polite and happy elf of a man - who I later found out was Jean-Claude Baker, the owner and one of Josephine Baker's adopted 'Rainbow Tribe' sons. We were led to a small table in the midst of a narrow colorful art deco dining room. Dinner was a salad of endive leaves with Roquefort cheese and toasted walnuts and a bowl of Spaghetti Bolognese. Yum! As we left we were presented with a large post card featuring his mother. I wish I'd done more research before going. I would have loved to have talked to him for a longer period. Anyway....onto the theater!

The Playwrights Horizon theater is lovely and modern and has wonderful stadium type seating. It holds just 198 patrons. Not a bad seat in the house. My friend had an extra ticket and happily sold it to someone waiting in line. The house was absolutely full. We went inside and sat and waited. The lights went down and when the spotlight came up on her, Maura Tierney delivered the opening lines and the play began. The reason I had come.

'Three Changes' is a perplexing piece to say the least. It's funny. It's emotional. It's dark and dreary.....and confusing. I haven't talked to a person yet who was able to say they understood what was really going on with these five characters. One had it all...he thought. One lost it all....wanted what the other had and set out to get it. One was trying hard to create the persona that she DID have it all....but knew, deep down, something extraordinary was missing. Into the mix we stir a selfish, clueless 'other woman' and a darkly affective homeless teen. 'Three Changes' Not exactly family fare. Not exactly....what? I like my plays to have a satisfying ending. I like to have the pieces of the puzzle 'fit.' This one was like the button box Laurel gives to Nate to help him cope with his depression. When the buttons are sorted and in their place, the box is dumped, mixed up and you start all over again. I was a bit exhausted at the end. And depressed.

But the ACTING? The acting was phenomenal. Maura Tierney does not disappoint. Never has in my book. She was delightful as a woman who tried to turn every situation with a quip and a smile....and yet easily twisted to reveal layers of unhappiness. Dylan McDermott drove his character from a reasonably happy man to one struggling with confusion and despair. His life was on a train track going in a direction he didn't want to go....literally. Scott Cohen was the man with the plan. An interesting actor with an interesting role. Aya Cash played clueless and was delightfully funny. Brian J. Smith's portrayal was funny in his enthusiasm and yet very unlikeable. So that makes him a good actor, right? Frustrating in that I have had students with the same sort of persona he created....and that's pretty scary.

The people who have known me for a while are going to appreciate this bit. During the break between Acts I and II, I stood up to stretch and talk and overheard my friend talking with someone sitting next to her. They were wondering about the noise they had heard all during Act I. I asked if it was a high pitched squeal and reached to check my hearing aid. My friend she thought that it was me but wasn't quite sure how to let me know without being rude. I told her to BE rude and laughed. I was told that there were hearing assisted devices available at the snack bar but before I had a chance to get one, someone from back stage came out and offered to get it for me. All I had to do was hand over my driver's license. Two minutes later I was presented with a head set. Hee. Nothing like making your presence known. And if people only knew what kind of trouble not being able to hear that squeal has gotten me into....

After the show I was returned the head set and retrieved my license and my friend and I were talking about how long to wait for the actors to come out. I was going through my bag looking for a picture I had made to have signed for my daughter when Maura entered the lobby from backstage. She was walking at a clip but stopped with a huge smile when I asked if she would sign something. Dang but she is cute in glasses. I handed her a pen and the picture, explaining that the top part was from an essay my daughter had written about me when she was in 4th grade...about how I 'liked watching 'ER' because of a cool character named Maura Tierney and how I might get to meet my 'cool character' some day.' Maura started to read it and I told her she didn't have to do that...just sign it. She laughed and said she wanted to and then signed it for me. She had been talking to my friend about the play and was totally accommodating about having a picture taken....four times....and yet they were all out of focus. (I keep my camera on forced off flash and forgot about that...dang) I kept pulling away and she kept pulling me back. Heh.

Indie (aka Shawna) was waiting for me when I got back to the hotel. She wanted a recounting of every single little detail. Several. Times. Over. It was fun being with someone who didn't mind that. Who has as much invested in Maura Tierney fandom as I do....well...maybe even more. We were up quite late talking about whatshesaid, whenshecameout, whatshewaswearing, howtheplaywent, howmanystayedforautographs, whatisgoingtohappentomorrow....etc.

Wednesday morning I was up before five - as is my habit. I took my book into the bathroom to read for a while. Showered. Dressed. Waited. When Indie (aka Shawna) was up we headed for the free breakfast offered by the hotel and then we were off. Now, my friend from the previous night was concerned that we would not have a proper 'New York experience' because our visit was to be so short. I am still not sure what that 'experience' might be but we did good on Wednesday. First we hailed a cab and headed for the Grayline Double Decker Bus tour. Wandered around Times Square a bit looking for the stop we were supposed to get on at. Climbed a board and took a quick tour of the city's downtown loop. Now, I love watching how people react to things...especially when I can't follow the narration being given. Our bus pulled up next to a nondescript building to wait for a light and I saw the late 60ish woman in front of me gently nudge her husband and slightly tip her head. Turned to look and I snapped a picture of 'The Museum of Sex.' "Sheesh, they have a museum for everything!" I snorted quietly and she grinned when she turned to look back at me. And then she outright laughed when I suggested that we take a field trip there. Hee. Teachers. Always on the lookout for a new 'learning experience.' We are so funny. Sometimes.

When I look back at the pictures I snapped on this tour, it's apparent that I was taking photos of tall buildings that no one was really going to care about but me. I did snap one of a police officer on a horse in the middle of traffic (my daughter's career aspiration) and a couple of interesting sidewalk sights. I was looking around trying to orient myself but it's impossible in a city that contains so many different 'personalities.' When we reached the pier we were changing buses and everything smelled so good. Lots of smells to get those salivating glands running. The next stop was in East Village. Indie (aka Shawna) and I had kindsorta plans to lunch at a restaurant MT had mentioned on the 'Martha Stewart Show' back in the fall. I asked our bus driver if it was possible to walk from East Village to West Village from where we were. His eyes widened a bit and he pointed out a nearby bus stop. He said we could walk it but to take the bus.....please. Heh. My adventurous counterpart, Indie (aka Shawna), and I disembarked, counted out our dollars and waited for the bus. As we climbed aboard, we were told that we needed $2 in change...which we didn't have. Another rider pointed down the street and said we could buy a bus pass 'down there.' We went down the block a bit and found a taco joint with a window open to the street. The young kid working inside had no clue where we could buy a bus pass but gave us two Sacajawea dollar coins for our bills. He emphatically told us to make sure we got a bus exchange ticket with our money as well. Sweet kid. Back to the bus stop and after a 10 minute or so wait, we were on the road again.

I love the 'villages'. East Village. Greenwich Village. West Village. They are away from the honking horns and flashing lights and overcrowded sidewalks and streets of Manhatten....which was the only part of New York we had seen yet. Here they had huge shade trees covering the sidewalks. I had a googled map to Morandi so we stopped and sat in the sun on a sidewalk bench to get our bearings for a moment. My mom called. After reassuring her that we were having a good time and I actually DID know where we were going, we were off again. We found the corner where the restaurant was supposed to be, turned around and there it was. So cute. The sidewalk was almost completely open to the inside and we were offered an inside or outside table. Given that the outside was a bit filled, we chose the quieter inside atmosphere. It was like dining in a Sicilian wine cellar...or at least what my mid-west mind imagines a Sicilian wine cellar to be like. Sitting in a corner table, we perused the menu and selected an apple/toasted macadamia nut salad recommended by our waitress and a grilled focaccia caprese with cherry tomatoes, mozzarella & basil. Again...yum. And the presentation was beautiful. Almost too beautiful to eat. So....I took pictures. The waiters were laughing and enjoying us...I think. : ) Forgoing dessert at Morandi we headed out for an easy stroll toward the Magnolia Bakery.

West Village exudes wealth, youth and charm. It's pretty. Relaxing. People were friendly and I was most intrigued by the book stores that I saw. Little one room setups filled with shelf upon shelf of paperback books....expensive paperback books. I am a reader. I read in the morning. I read before I go to bed at night. I read while things pile up around me. I read on vacation. I read on long car drives when DH is driving. My children love bookstores. We go for full half days when we get the chance. Browsing. Looking. To meet authors. I could easily have spent several hours in this one, purchased a book and found a sunny bench to sit on to read. I need to go back. Seriously.

The Magnolia Bakery is well known in New York circles for it's cupcakes. And you gotta love a place that has 'cupcakes' in it's website address. Luckily it was a good day and there were only eight or so customers in a very small shop. There were many more employees baking and frosting and decorating. We chose four cupcakes from the window display area and made our way back into the sunshine. Here is where I made the second of poor walking decisions. We decided to walk back to the hotel....an easy walk, according to our waitress at Morandi. Heh. Next time we master the subway system. Totally.

It was an interesting walk though. We passed schools with parents and nannies waiting to pick up children, high schools with snickering teenagers in plaid skirted uniforms, a hospital, mothers and nannies pushing strollers with babies, privately owned brownstones and shops. People walking dogs. People asking for money. People selling things. And all around the 'music' of traffic, voices, construction machines....the music of a city. Didn't hear that so much in Boston last summer. Didn't hear it with quite the same intensity in Chicago. Definitely not in Detroit. New York has a 'music' all it's own.

After relaxing and napping for a bit, we headed out for the Playwrights Horizon Theater. Indie (aka Shawna) was a bundle of nerves and had been for most of the day. She was there to see the play....and to meet Maura Tierney. It had been a long, busy day for us both. We arrived a bit early and headed for the Papaya Dog at the end of the block for something to drink as we waited. At the theater we sat in the lobby for a moment waiting for the doors to open. I traded my license for a hearing assistance head phone. (The non hearing impaired person always thinks they are wonderful but they aren't. This set made it sound as if the actors were speaking inside a box....hollow and echoing.) An elderly gentleman who looked very tired and very perturbed headed toward the couch near me. He sat down with a sigh and I told him he looked very happy to be there. He rolled his eyes and laughed. His wife dragged him there a lot, he said. Some good plays and some not so good plays. Then we talked about the fun he had driving home from a Michigan family vacation through Canada. Nice chat. He was sweet and interestingly enough, was sitting in the spot directly behind me inside.

In the theater auditorium, Indie (aka Shawna) nervously settled herself in her front row seat. I sat on the stage edge and we talked about the set and where the actors were going to stand. We were hoping the person sitting next to her would be a single as well...and willing to trade their ticket for mine so we could sit together. That wasn't to be so I headed back to my row 7 center seat (THANK you, Holly!!), put on my headphone and settled in for a second performance. Given that it was the second show of the day, it didn't seem quite as edgy. MT caught a couple more laughs than the night before. Brian J. Smith - a good deal less. I also caught him 'secretly' sticking his tonuge out at MT...twice. Probably an attempt to break her concentration. Brat.

As someone who has directed/produced in community theater and is used to observing 6 to 8 weeks of regular rehearsal, one full week of dress rehearsals and then - at least - three to six actual performances, seeing a show twice in sucession was almost mandatory. When I had the chance to purchase two tickets and no one close to me was interested in going, it was a no brainer to see it twice. It's not like watching a movie twice where everything is exactly the same. Theater changes with the tempo of the audience...with the time of day....etc. Each performance tends to take on it's very own 'personality.' Twice? It' a given.

After the show we headed to the lobby to wait for the actors. Brian J. Smith left in a hurry. Scott Cohen and Aya Cash were talking with groups of friends. Dylan McDermott, bag in hand, was leaving at a clip. I was actually surprised to see him because he hadn't come out at all the night before. He stopped when I spoke and grinned when I told him he'd done a wonderful job tonight and had an even better performance the night before. He was surprised that I had come twice and I explained that I was a Teacher from Michigan and was skipping school to be there. I asked if he would mind signing a 'please excuse....' letter for my principal. He laughed and asked where I taught as he signed my note. He handed it back and said 'this is great' then with an evil little chuckle, shook his head and left. Sigh. I think he may have kick started my long dormant Dylan crush into action again. What a hottie.....sigh. Time to break out the 'Home for the Holidays' dvd again.

Maura Tierney had slipped out of the door and was visiting with several groups, including the ones circling Aya and Scott. She caught my eye and grinned and eventually made her way toward us. Indie (aka Shawna) was mesmerized. She was frazzled and very nervous. She was choking on her words. Maura was patient and accomodating to us both. She was cute and sweet. She talked and signed and posed for pictures and then said good by. She was standing outside on the sidewalk with Scott Cohen and the people they were talking with. They stood between us and the place we had decided to eat at after the show. Indie (aka Shawna) could not bring herself to walk past them so we waited for them to move. We followed as they made their way down the street, all talking and laughing. We moved into our Papaya Dog stand and ordered one of the best tasting hamburgers I have had in a long while. And it was a little difficult to eat. I was dealing with the very first cold sore on my lip that I have ever had in my life. My tonuge and roof of my mouth were raw from continually sucking on cough drops for two and a half hours during the show....twice. (The first night I was almost choking as I held back a cough until the loud sound of a subway train, which I had been forwarned about, started.) Dang nasty mid-western cold!

Thursday morning brought breakfast, shopping, packing and airports. It was a way cheaper ride back to LaGuardia than it had been coming. Indie (aka Shawna) got her boarding pass and we went to the main terminal for a last lunch together. We went back to the bus stand, took silly pictures together on our phone cameras and rode the bus back to our terminals. We hugged when it came to her terminal and then I rode the route again to mine. On my plane I was seated next to a wonderful older woman who was on her way home from Washington DC, where she was part of a group lobbying for more $$$ for cancer research. SHE had her picture taken with Senator Stabenow and was very excited about that. She was pleased about their progress for more funding and I was properly impressed. Nice chat.

When I landed in Detroit, I made my way through the terminal. And yes, I rode the tram this time. Found the bridge to the long term parking garage. Found the elevator that would take me up three levels to where my car was parked. Non-functional. Dragged my not so cute any more cherry covered bag without wheels up three flights of stairs and through the garage to to open section where I had parked. No car. I looked everywhere. Still no car. A businessman on his way home helped me look. No car. He left me standing there, trying to punch DH's number into my totally dead cell phone. Finally I pulled out my envelope where I had written the car's location. Heh. I had parked it in 9-D...not 9-A. It was down the entire length of the parking structure. I started trudging with my bags, found a rolling cart and tossed them a board. Kept walking. Found the car. Tossed my bags in the back seat and headed home. Back to 'real' life. Back to lesson plans, laundry and soccer games.

There were people that thought I was totally nuts to embark on this trip alone. There were people that thought I was very irresponsible to be meeting with people I had met on the internet. There were people that thought I was crazy to sit through the same play twice in a row. Nuts to you! This trip has had it's lessons to be learned.

It has totally ruined my mid-western palate. I have always been an 'adventurous' diner and this trip has stepped that up a notch. No more plying to the desires of family yearning for meatpotatosandcorn. That's boring. Hold on to your forks, folks. We are trying new things in the future. Things with....basil.

I was able to finally meet and enjoy an 'old' internet friend in person and discover that we may not have a lot in common but there is some wonder and comfort in knowing and enjoying one another. We'll get a good picture next time, D. I promise. The Princess and I are already planning to visit in August for her 14th birthday.

I was able to watch a new friend spread her wings a little and do some things that were way out of her comfort zone. She was nervously game for any new adventure I had laid out for us. And she was very patient with me. She is also the fastest adult text messenger that I have ever seen. Shawna...you totally rock.

I was able to meet and greet an actress that I have had tremendous respect and admiration for her talent for a very long time. Was not able to open my mouth and tell her that however. I become verbally challenged when faced with someone I admire. The fact that I didn't ask how she manages to stay out of the paparazzi loop.....how she really feels about leaving a show that brought her into our homes on a weekly basis and basically bought her some financial security....what is next on her career agenda.....what makes her laugh.....what book she is currently reading.....kills me. The fact that I didn't ask those things will be a huge disappointement to my internet circle of Maura fandom. Dang. Can handle the cabbies and the random strangers about the Great Lakes and driving through Canada and field trips and cancer research without breaking a sweat. Go figure.

Mostly though, this New York adventure handed me the realization that I can still enjoy things on my own. That I still have the courage to try the things the I want to do. It allowed me to show my children that if they have something they really want to do - it's possible to make it happen. And it has stirred enough chutzpah in me to actually think about making an appointment to get some 'real' nails put on for a change. By a real technician. Now....if I could just get a hummingbird cupcake or two shipped to Michigan......

Swing Vote

2008-09-20T06:24:00.000-07:00

We were looking for a movie last weekend...something we would ALL enjoy....and found 'Swing Vote' at a local second run theater. This movie, starring Kevin Costner, was about a drunken ner'do well father that finds himself the center of national attention when HIS uncounted vote will determine the outcome of a presidential election. His dismay at having voted at all - a vote actually cast by his disgruntled 10 year old daughter - and the ensuing attention from both political camps as they try to sway his vote was fun, and a little frightening, to watch. The lengths that politicians will go through to get your vote was amazing. The play acting. The 'half truths'. The 'gifts.' Costner's character, driven by his frustrated daughter (a cute performance by Madeline Carroll), begins to see and understand the responsibility of his vote. As the movie ended at a moment that does not reveal the winner of the election, it caused a lot of discussion in the car on the way home. Mostly between HRH and I. Then a voice popped up from the back seat asking if you really HAD to vote.

The Prince has always been my child to whom transition and choices are difficult. He has as much difficulty choosing between Cinnamon Life and Fruit Loops now as he did when he was four. (I will never forget the morning I finally just poured BOTH into his cereal bowl....and he was supremely happy.) This is a little disconcerting. He is too young to vote in this Presidential election, but will be able to cast his vote in the next one. I worry that we have not prepared him for that.

My Dad and I could really go at it in a political discussion when I was growing up. I was always ready to voice my opinion on anything and everything. It was at our dinner table that I learned to be responsible with my choices. If I felt strongly about a candidate or an issue I had to be prepared to defend my stance. I have tried to foster that at my dinner table as well. HRH doesn't like to be challenged and tends to back down after sputtering a bit. My son does that as well. It won't be a problem with my daughter. She is like her mom in being willing to stand up to any issue. (Our current debate? Why a sloppy, hand me down tee shirt is not appropriate for school. So far I am winning that one.)

Choices are always harder when you have had more experiences. Now that I am an adult, so many more things come into play when making choices. The biggest being how it will affect my children and the world they live in.

Because of our experiences with infertility and adoption, I have issues with Pro-Choice that I have difficulty reconciling. Because of their tactics and inappropriate use of pictures with aborted fetuses, I have HUGE issues with Right To Life. Because of the difficulty I have scraping together enough pennies to fill my gas tank, I tend to look long and hard at a candidate's stance on oil drilling on US soil. But, because of my affinity with and respect for the natural world, I tend to be more aware of messing with natural habitats of...say...polar bears? I simply can NOT support sending US soldiers off to fight wars on foreign soil. I do not feel that 'The American Way' is the best way for everyone. Viet Nam was a huge part of my adolescence, after all. And yet I am constantly having to check myself when talking to friends whose sons, grandsons and nephews are stationed in hot spots defending the democratic way of life. I listen to Christian stations on my car radio because I am one and like the music...but always lose patience with the hosts who constantly slam and rant and make 'Christian' comparisons. Don't even get me started on health care. I have parents on a fixed income with health issues that suck away at their bank account and students whose parents cannot afford to repair eye glasses or get proper meds when they are sick because they are too 'wealthy' to fit the too poor scenario. My family is enclosed in a cushion of excellent health care programs that I honestly wish I could share and am selfish enough to want to maintain at all costs.

So, how to impart on my son that it is his responsibility to be aware and to make the choices he feels are right? I am listening to what he has to say. I am silently frustrated with some of his decision making processes but am reminding myself that he is still a kid....with fewer experiences. I am encouraging him to discover that there is a reading world outside of 'Sports Illustrated' by having newspapers, 'Time' and 'Newsweek' handy. No more Cartoon Network'. The only thing they are allowed to watch in the morning on a school day are news programs - hoping that they will 'catch' something other than just the weather as they eat breakfast and get ready to go.

My children WILL go to the polling place with me in November. They always do. This time I hope they begin to realize what a way cool and responsible right it is to be there. This time, we have chance to make history....no matter what the outcome.

Why I Am Boycotting the Emmys

2008-09-16T17:06:00.000-07:00

The Emmys will be on Sunday night and I will be watching something else. Definitely. This year I am boycotting. Grrr. They bypassed Maura Tierney....again. By all rights, Tierney and Goran Visnjic should have been nominated for the 13th season's premiere, 'Bloodline', alone. That fact that they weren't was an outright crime. Toss the riveting 'Murmurs of the Heart' and the sweetly done 'I Don't' later that season and the crimes multiply. Bloodline? THAT episode was a wonder to behold. The editing, writing, direction, sound, the acting enemble....everything came together....but especially the characters of Abby and Luka. Watching the two actors play off one another...well...see for yourself. These clips were provided by friends. The music is choppy because I edited out the bloodiest bits. SHE was in a bed for the entire episode and flat on her back for a good chunk of time. HE was working from behind a surgical mask. The fact that Goran Visnjic was able to convey his character's horror and anxiety and frustration while half his face is covered is important. The little tricks they use, hand holding, sighing, eyes rolling....and watch his slight rolling on the balls of his feet when he needs to convey indecision. The look in his eyes transversing from intense studying to sick worry in an instant. And the subtle touches between the two of them that convey the intimacy between two people very much in love. Wow.

The past 14th season totally belonged to Maura. She dragged her character - and her audience - kicking and screaming - into the lowest possible place Abby Lockhart could have gone.....and brought her out again slowly but surely. 'Blackout' - the episode in which Abby reaches the depths of despair made me physically ill even thinking about it. For days. I lost my writing muse. For weeks. Watching the character - finally - ask for the help she needs weeks later...was heart wrenching. Watching this actress ply her craft was a wonder to behold. You see, when you are hearing impaired you rely on so many other things to get the gist of a scene rather than just spoken dialog. And she delivers....every time. Needless to say, these two can convey more with a hug than others can with pages of dialog.

The 15th and final season of ER is upon us. Maura Tierney has already filmed the last of her regular appearances on the show. She is off and onto new things. The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences has lost it's chance to recognize her work on 'ER.' And this one viewer isn't watching. I think I 'll pull out a movie....or give myself a pedicure....or sort the straight pins in my sewing box....or pack. Because on Tuesday morning, I am off to New York City for a couple of days. I have been planning this for months. I have tickets to see a new Off Broadway play titled 'Three Changes'.....which stars Maura Tierney. Heh.

The Concert

2008-09-13T06:58:00.000-07:00

Because of a scheduled soccer tournament, we were unable to attend the rescheduled concert at Pine Knob with Steven Curtis Chapman and Michael W. Smith. I cashed in the tickets and sent the money to Shaohannah's Hope - the foundation for adoption established and run by the Chapman family. Steven and Caleb Chapman appeared on The Early Show last week. Beautifully done segment that included the new version of his hit, 'Cinderella.' Kind of ironic because this song was the only one that Nina really, really wanted to hear him sing. Here is a link to a video.....
The Early Show with SCC and crew.

Time Marches On.....part deux

2008-09-11T20:10:00.000-07:00

There is this big plastic crate under my computer desk. It gets in the way of my feet as a rule but sometimes lends itself to becoming a foot rest. It's contents are both aggravating and precious. It's full of school papers....from my children. Kindergarten writings...fourth grade reports....second grade Math papers...report cards....awards....you name it. Things that collect dust and take up space but that you know you just can't pitch. I am not really the sentimental type and tend to be pretty stingy about what I keep. But it just keeps piling up. I was just rifling through it but didn't find what I was looking for. I know it's there and I wanted to scan it to post here. It's a 'report' that the Prince wrote in second grade.

His second grade teacher was absolutely brilliant. If they finished their classwork they were 'allowed' to go through her book collection to write reports. They could read them aloud to the class. For extra credit. My son took to that notion like a bee to honey. We went through nature magazines for pictures he HAD to have to illustrate a piece of work. He became obsessed with bobsledding during the winter Olympics that year and wrote a report. He wrote about tigers and rain forest animals. He wrote about people. And on September 12, 2001 he wrote about the World Trade Center.

I had learned about the 9-11 tragedy while in school the morning it happened. I had actually accidently flipped on the radio button of my CD player before morning circle and heard desperation in the reporters voice. Parents who were helping for the morning took their children and left school. Televisions and radios were on in obscure places all over the building. Teachers gathered in the speech room...the office...the Teachers' lounge....to watch it as it unfolded. We said nothing to our students during the day. When I came home, I was glued to the television set. My children were outside playing. I tried to talk to them about it - to make sure they weren't afraid - but neither seemed too interested. They were 6 and 7 and a half. More interested in playing street hockey. And riding bikes. I didn't push it. I knew the issue would come up at some point in some way. I just didn't expect it to happen at 6:30 am the very next day.

Sleep didn't come well the night before and I was up early. I was looking through the newspaper. There were pictures and reports coming from New York. My little Prince came stumbling out of his room and climbed onto the chair next to me, mildly interested in what I was reading. We went through the newspaper pages and I explained what had happened. As I got up to fix him a bowl of breakfast cereal, he was looking through the pictures again and the found a pair of scissors. And went in search of paper and glue sticks. Froot Loops forgotten, he began writing a 'report' with a vengeance. Obsessed. He was suddenly a man on a mission. How to make sense of this horrifying piece of his world?

It was only 4 pages long. Four 9 by 11 sheets of computer paper stapled together with a construction paper cover. One page had two pictures of the twin towers in flames and a sentence explaining that planes crashed into the buildings. There was just one photo on the second page of the fallen buildings. Another page was covered with pictures of people fleeing the streets and a sentence explaining that people were running away. The last page was my idea. We found pictures of people helping and praying. I remember that he wrote - 'The helpers are here' - as a caption. Simple. Concise.

He took the report to school to share. I was serving as a helper in an Art class that afternoon when his teacher came to find me. She hadn't looked at the report when he'd brought it in. Not until her lunch break. She had been stewing all day and wondering how to address the 9-11 event with her second grade class. Then she came across his report on her desk. An answer to a very literal prayer. Perfect. Simple. Concise. To the point. And in a child's eye view.

Sometimes we forget. And we mustn't.

Instead, we get caught up in the mundane of every day life..... gas prices..... unemployment.... foreclosures.....elections.......

I think I wanna write a report.

Time Marches On......

2008-09-07T15:36:00.000-07:00

The First day of schol...er...um WEEK of school has passed. For years....well, minus two when I had to be at work and DH didn't remember the camera....we have taken pictures on the front steps as we have gone out the door for the very first day. Princess is going to hate this year's one day. Since Prince was off to his first day in high school and had to be at school 90 minutes before her, she chose to sleep in till we left. Hence the bed head and pajama tops. Hence the dark sky in the background. It was freaking EARLY! So now we have a new morning routine. I am up at 4:30am when HRH leaves for work. I answer email, write, do lesson plans, fold laundry etc. until waking the Prince at 5:30. He showers. I shower and dress, make lunches, load the dishwasher, start more laundry, etc. He dresses, gathers his school things and we are out the door at 6:45am.....after I have woken her up. While I am gone, she showers, dresses and packs her back pack. I return, after dropping him off at the high school, have breakfast with her and we leave for school. I drop her off at 8:10 am and then drive next door to my school - 45 minutes early.

I am actually liking this morning routine. It gives me some much needed one on one time with each of them and extra morning time in my classroom. When the weather changes we may have to adjust things a bit. Princess will likely have to give up her beauty sleep but she's okay with that. We found a bagel shop between the high school and middle school drive. They are doing well. HE is handling high school like a trooper. His favorite classes are Algebra II and Economics. Math??? Coulda hit me with a ton of bricks. I NEVER saw that one coming. SHE is liking being the only one at the middle school and hates Social Studies and Math. I am just melancholy for the good old days sometimes. The days we all went to the same place at the same time. This one is from first and third grade. Back when they would let ME pick out their clothes.....sigh.

A Question About Love

2008-08-21T11:26:00.000-07:00

It was a question asked out of the clear blue about eight years ago. The Prince had gone to school with me and was running around on the playground with my Kindergarten students. A mom had stopped by to take her child home early and was standing with me enjoying the sunshine, the sight of healthy, happy little kids racing all around, swinging and climbing on play structures. She noticed my Korean born child and started to ask me something. Something that was stuck in her throat and then came out in a rush. She said she loved her child more than she could possibly have imagined. She had from the very first...as he grew inside her. She stumbled over the next part and finally asked me how I could possibly love MY children in that same way?

Wow. That was an interesting moment. It has stayed with me all of these years. Pops up at odd times. Wierd times. I can still see her face...and the face of her child so much like hers. I have thought often about this incomprehensible, defining kind of love that she was talking about. Did I? Do I? I have never felt the stirrings and movements of a little body inside mine. I have not shared that sort of thing with my husband. I have not gone through physical labor pains. I have not given birth. I don't know if those things could possibly make my feelings any different than they already are.

My husband has daughters from another marriage that he loves desperately. I don't know that he feels anything less intense for the son and daughter that arrived by plane. He has definitely has had more 'quanity time' with these two. Back in the days of weekend visitations we used to commisserate by telling each other we were giving his girls 'quality time' at our house. I have since learned that 'quality/quanity' doesn't really matter. It's 'time' that does. Any kind of time. But that's getting off subject.

My son was four months old when he was first placed in our arms. My daughter was five years old when we first hugged her. We did a paper chase and a homestudy process and bared our souls to strangers and to one another trying to decide if we were right to be parents...and if we were ready to be parents. We waited with hearts in throats for those phone calls and papers that validated our decisions and searches. We put together a crib ...and later a bed. Selected clothing we wanted to see them wear. Chose curtains and first books and first toys. Is that kind of what you go through with a pregnancy?

I would imagine that those first photographs that we saw were very much like the first ultrasound images that other people see. I knew instantly that these were my children. I didn't cry...which I think surprised our caseworker. But I remember a definite tightening in my throat. A swelling in my heart. I couldn't wait for them to be here. To be in my arms. To feel the softness of their hair. To kiss their cheeks. To smell their smells. Is that what you go through too? The waiting?

Our labor took place in a court room. The 'birth' was completed with the dash of a pen. But those days were the happiest days of our lives. Overwhelming happy days. They were safe. They were finally here and they were ours. Is that what you go through too?

We celebrated and stressed over first steps...first teeth....first missing teeth...first days of school...homework woes....and little friendships and fights. We planned overwhelming birthday parties and laid back sleepovers, attended parent conferences and programs. We've sat in emergency rooms waiting and worrying. Looking ahead we see boy friends and girl friends, first dates, proms and....shudder.....driver's licenses on the very near horizon. Is that so very different than you?

I worried about missing the babyhood firsts with my daughter....but I didn't. We shared a different kind of firsts. The firsts of an older child. The look on a five year old's face when she bit into her first piece of watermelon....sat on her very first bicycle....went swimming for the first time. It was all there. On a different level. Much like your experiences?

It's hard for someone who has not gone through an adoption process to understand how we could - so completely and utterly - love someone elses' child. But they miss the point totally. This is our child. Our son. Our daughter. No more. No less. Completely. Incomprehensible. Defining. Like yours.

"The Case of the Missing Brown Betty"

2008-08-18T12:42:00.000-07:00

I have been gifted with children who do not like to eat breakfast. They never have. But I guess I can identify because I am not a breafast food eater either most of the time. They would rather wait until lunch to eat. However, when they don't eat, they - the Prince especially - become evil, growling, snapping turtle beings from another world in another galaxy. Always. So the beginning of the school year presents a challenge in planning to get something into their tummies before the bell rings. The Princess will eat cold cereal....but she likes it dry...in a baggie. Eeew. On rare occasions - when I don't have the time really - I can talk them into poached egg on toast or a scrambled egg sandwich. Oatmeal with a scoop of ice cream (it's just frozen milk and sugar...right?) usually lasts well into October. We had a run on cheese quesadillas once....for about a week. My own personal junior high favorite, bologna and mustard on toast, is always a standby and not necessarily that healthy. So I try to get creative. Every summer.

Today I wandered over to one of my favorite blogs - The Pioneer Woman - where there is an outstanding collection of picture perfect (and not so perfect) recipes. Looking for something fruity and different to use for breakfast this fall, I happened upon this recipe for Apple Brown Betty. I love the Pioneer Woman. She makes me want to cook butter for my family....and if you have ever tagged through her recipes you know that 'butter' is not a typo for 'better'. Heh.

Anyway, I made some changes to the recipe based on what I have in my kitchen. I cut the brown sugar in half...well way more than half. I dutifully cut seven slices of fat free, whole wheat bread into tiny cubes. I peeled and thin sliced 4 Granny Smith apples. I added a handful of soaked dates - just because I had some leftover in the cupboard from HRH's chocolate chip date birthday cake. I watered the layered fruit, sugar and bread layers with 4 tablespoons of water and covered it all with slices from a stick of my favorite 'not really butter'. Wrapped it all in foil and baked that baby. It was out in time for the kiddos to try for.....lunch. Taste tested it with a warm healthy sized serving and it was deeelicious. The Prince wouldn't touch it. The cooked apples were too brown for him. And he is also suspicious of anything with apples and cinnamon because I have a tendency to toss some hideous raisins in with it too.....or dates. Princess liked it. She likes anything with fruit and can over look the hideous raisins...and dates. She ate a healthy serving. Had another healthy serving myself. Yum. Saved the rest for HRH's dinner treat.

And then while I was working on a cold tuna salad thing to stick in the fridge for dinner because we have soccer practice and a soccer game in two different directions tonight, I had another spoonful...right from the pan. The not-butter and brown sugar carmelized with the bread cubes quite nicely. So I had another spoonful to celebrate my good cooking skills. Stepped away for a while to check my e-mail and wandered back to stir the cooking macaroni...and took another bite. One wasn't enough, so I took a second. Or was it a third? Anyway, HRH's serving kept getting smaller and smaller. Sigh.

So now the pan sits in the sink filled with hot water and soap, soaking all that stuck on carmelized sugar away. And HRH is wondering why there are so many spoons in the sink. Heh. Next time I will save my spoon.

Thank you Alexander G. Bell!

2008-08-16T07:23:00.000-07:00

I love my cell phone. Truthfully I was the very last kid on the block to get one. I fought it tooth and nail. Why did we really need it? Cell phone waves can give you cancer, right? WHY did we really want ANOTHER bill??? HRH got a cell phone for 'work.' Had it for almost a year before the soccer practice mixup incident.

It was one of those nights when he was working late and the kids had to be in two different directions for practice. Prince ended up having to go to a different location. I passed him off to another parent to drive, took off with the Princess to her practice and suddenly realized that HRH would be going to the first location to get the Prince. Envisioning the poor Prince standing all alone at the second field waiting for SOMEone to get him after practice was probably the very first time that I could justify having a cell phone. So I broke. I agreed to get a cell phone. THAT was three years ago.

This is the phone that I got. I insisted on red. No one knew why. And I kept it a cryptic secret for well over a year. Princess was the most adament about finding out why. She loved playing '20 Questions' about my phone's redness. I kept telling her that she had SEEN the reason why but she could never figure it out. Heh.

I love my phone. I can actually HEAR on it. It was just the right size and shape and weight. The hinge has loosened enough to flip open at the flick of a wrist. I can text easily with a single thumb...and I text....alot. HRH got a deal from Sprint one day recently. Ordered two new FREE phones. One for me and one for the Princess. Just like his. Heh. BOTH were sent back post haste. Princess is NOT getting a phone of her own till she is fourteen. Only 357 more days. As for me, WHY would I would want a phone like his? I LOVE my phone. I picked it out myself. I was not ready to give it up. Sprint keeps calling. He keeps telling them I will look when I am ready. Heh.

So, it's been three years. He keeps hinting. The kiddos and I went looking yesterday. Went to three different places actually. Nothing felt right. Too square. Corners were too sharp. Not...thick...enough. Can't hear on them. Sigh. Till I found this one with a camera....and a memory disk so pictures can be printed on the computer. I can hear on it. It has a keyboard for texting but I will have to learn to use two thumbs. I guess I am coming up in the world. At least we are still in touch with one another. And Princess is STILL not getting one till she is fourteen. Only 357 more days......

Oh...and I insisted red because of this scene from a season 12 episode of ER. Abby has a red phone. Yep. Once an ER addict, always an ER addict. Heh.

My kid.....

2008-08-12T19:39:00.000-07:00

My kid worries me sometimes. It's summer. She is out of bed by 9 a.m., chokes down a baggie of dry cereal and then takes off on her bike. She reports in every 30 minutes on the dot, lets me know where she is and who she is with and leaves again. She is generally in the middle of every game, every circle of skateboarders, every bicycle brigade. Sigh. I know where she is and I don't know where she is. Worriesome.

Today we were running errands. We stopped at the mailboxes on the way home and she took the keys to get our mail. I watched her chat with an elderly neighbor for a moment and then head back to the car. The woman was inching her way after her, struggling to walk. "Well....thank you for saying that!" the woman called after her with a surprised little smile. My kid tossed the mail key and three advertisments in the car and took off walking for home. She likes to do that. Easier to get out of chores if she is not around when I get there. So, she was off playing with her neighborhood cronies and I didn't have a chance to talk to her again till we were making our special veggie pizza for dinner. I asked her what she was saying to the neighbor at the mailbox.

"Oh, she was complaining because she didn't have any mail and I told her not to worry. I don't get much mail either."

Sometimes she is just my favorite kid ever.....

Summer Vacation 2008

2008-08-08T18:58:00.000-07:00

Vacation n : leisure time away from work; devoted to rest or pleasure [syn: holiday] Yeah....riiiight.

Friday - Driving all ding dang day. Arrived in Owego, New York. Stinky hotel hallway but okay room. Used the pool.

Saturday - We were on the road early and had stopped in a small town to have breakfast in a little open diner. There was fog. The streets were empty. All I said was 'Well, this is very Children of the Corn....' and the prince refused to get out of the car. Absolutely refused. We found a McDonald's drive through and we drove on to Cooperstown, NY. Spent the morning exploring the Baseball Hall of Fame. Wonderful exhibits. Babe Ruth. Ty Cobb. Al Kaline. Red Sox. Baseballs....and more baseballs. On to the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA. We had been there 16 years before with my stepdaughters. HRH opted to stay in the car. Kiddos followed along...begrudgingly. It was crowded. It was hot. The painter in me loved it all. But, I guess am still looking for someone willing to hit the art museums with me. Sigh. On to Boston. We arrived at our hotel in Brookline exhausted and a little tense having encountered some crazy city drivers. 'T' station stop right across the street.

Sunday - Red Sox game at Fenway Park. Got a little help on the way purchasing a 'T' pass for the rest of the week. Wondered if we would really use it. Prince wanted to get to the game early. 90 minutes early. In bleacher seats. In the sun. The hot sun. Quietly observing the Big Green Monster. Clouds were rolling in. Third inning light rain felt like the misters at WDW. The 6th inning rain drencher delayed the game by 38 minutes. We left. The Red Sox were winning by 3 anyway. Leaving our car in Brookline through the good graces of the hotel, we moved on to the Marriot Custom House down town. By cab. $26.90 worth of cab. Nice suite of rooms that we were not prepared for. No pool. One bed. One fold out couch. Fridge. Microwave. WAY cool observation deck on the 27th floor. Nice game room on the 26th. Right in the middle of everything. Went in search of dinner in Faneuil Hall and found one we have enjoyed before in Chicago. Crazy waitress made hats with funny offensive comments for all of us. THEN she took the Princess to the back and returned her with 13 helium balloons tied to 13 strands of hair in honor of her upcoming 13th birthday! The Princess was mortified...and yet delighted. We made her leave them in so we could play with the helium when we got back to the room. She was stopped no less than 6 times on the 2 block walk so people could take her picture. LOL Note to self...and anyone else who is interested : The Gettysburg Address sounds WAY too funny in a helium induced voice.

Monday - Marriott Vacation Club spiel. The guy was pinch hitting for the regular salesman and let us go after finding out we usually camp for our vacations. Hee. Took the Trolley Tour but had to walk across town to station 6 in order to get our Go Card issued tickets. Sheesh. The hotel was right across the street from station 1 for crying out loud. We were ready for a ride. Kids were most impressed with the decor of China Town....I think. Didn't want to eat there though. Got off at Faneuil Hall Marketplace. Shopped a little more. Discovered that Obama was in town. Limos EVERYwhere around our hotel. The observation deck was closed because the Secret Service was using it. In fact, the entire top 7 floors (including the game room) were off limits to guests for the night. The Princess was pissed.

Tuesday - The Princess and I had reservations for a whale watch excursion. HRH and the Prince were headed back to Fenway for a tour. They were also going to be taking our bag back to the hotel in Brookline for the duration of our stay. Whale Watch...hmmm. REALLY looked forward to it. We started out in the bow of the boat because that's where the 'good seats' are. It's also cold when you are going out to sea and the 'good seats' are sans padding. Heh. Bouncing and bumping as the boat slaps the unforgiving waves, I was barely keeping myself - and my camera - together. Princess headed into the covered lounge area because she was cold. I didn't trust my sea legs enough to move. Took nearly 90 minutes to find whales but did we ever find a mess of them. Wow. The boat engines stopped and the rocking and rolling from the animals diving and breeching and slapping all around us took over. I snapped some pictures, bruised both elbows and bobbled my way to the 2nd deck lounge area to discover the princess stretched out on a padded seat cushion holding her head. Not really sea sick. Sick from seeing OTHERS being sea sick....and a little frightened by the whales flipping all around. Not really her cup of tea after all. We sat there watching for about another hour and then headed back to shore...this time WITH the waves. Inside. On a padded seat. Met the guys at the New England Aquarium. Having done the Ripley's Aquarium in Gatlingburg a few weeks back, this was a bit of a downer. Blue Fairy penguins were cute though. Didn't stay too long. Got back on the trolley and saw the stuff we missed the first time around. Had dinner at the City Place food court and then went in search of the 'Make Way for Ducklings' statue in the oh so very peaceful Public Park. This was a huge deal for me. I remember hearing the book read aloud when I was 4 years old and have used it in my classroom every single year that I have taught. The kiddos delighted in the fact that squirrels were taking peanuts right out of their hands. LONG walk back to the 'T' station because of the whale watch bouncing and my aching back. High praise for my very patient family. We were ready for bed back in our Brookline Holiday Inn.

Wednesday - Dreary and cool day. We took the 'T' to the JFK Presidential Museum and Library. What a wonderful, wonderful museum. It began with a short film about the beginning of his political career and then you followed an exhibit path that took you to the middle of the convention hall, a shop window where you could watch the televised debates, a set of benches to watch a video of the inaugration and a series of rooms that focused on the development of the Peace Corp (first proposed in a speech at U of M!), the space race, the elegant White House atmosphere created by Jacqueline, the Cuban Missle crisis (with another short film describing the issue), the Kennedy brothers...and finally a small dark hall with multiple small tv screens running the Walter Cronkite report of the assasination and funeral. Very short and tasteful...definitely designed not to over shadow the accomplishments of the Kennedy Administration. As you walked out there was a television screen with Bill Clinton describing his meeting JFK as a high school student and the impact it had on him. Nice end to a good visit. On the bus taking us back to the 'T' and planning what to do next when the Princess grabbed my arm and asked that we PLEASE not have to look at any more OLD stuff. LOL. So we hit Newbury Street. There were definitely some shops of interest. In Newbury Comics I talked the Princess out of a teal studded black belt and flying bat belt buckle and into a more appropriate and funky Mario Bros. imprinted belt. (Sheesh. She is just THIRTEEN!! What kind of adolescence are we in for???) HRH found a rare BTO recording -meaning he doesn't already own it - and the Prince and I became button collectors. Found one for him that reads 'No one knows that I am a Ninja' and another one that reads 'Guns don't kill...Ninjas do!' He was delighted. Hee. We found a small market and got some fruit and sandwiches to take back to the hotel for dinner. It was a hike to a 'T' station and we moved over a block from Newbury St. to find it. Definitely NOT a normal tourist route. Got lots of disdainful looks as we studied our map. Heh.

Thursday - Up early and on the road OUT of Boston before morning traffic could hit. Nice weather and a pretty drive. .Arrived in Gettysburg around 3:30. Hotel is small and very old. Cheap too....considering. Hit a touristy gift shop. Bought a CD for the car which would take us on a tour of the battlegrounds. Rainy and cool so we decided to try it out. Lots of monuments. Got lost. Stopped for dinner and tried again. The middle school band had played a piece about the battle called 'High Water Mark' (Prince had a trumpet solo) and that's the spot we were post interested in seeing.. Well, the Prince and I anyway. HRH was just driving. Princess was napping. Too many OLD things. Hee. We found High Water Mark - the location of Pickett's Charge - and Prince got out to roam a little bit. The rain storm was giving me some very dramatic sky for picture backdrops. Cool.

Friday - Happy 13th birthday, kiddo!! On the road again...headed for home. Nice, cool drive the whole way. Very little traffic actually. Everyone is tired. Lots of talk about all we had done and seen. Relaxing. Got home around 5 pm. The cat was glad to see us. Emptied the car and picked up a very dusty and happy dog up from Puppy Camp. Everyone is in it's place. All's well with the world. Mountains of vacation laundry to do. Ugh.

If the slide show below doesn't play for you automatically....just click on 'view all images' and it will run. Enjoy!

Big Busy Three Days

2008-07-31T20:14:00.000-07:00

The Princess will be 13 in another week. First it was a skateboard ramp....and then it was a rip stick.....and she finally settled for a new bike. A motocross bike. Like the one she flipped over at camp. Which is now sporting a broken back brake cover after just one day 'cause we gave it to her early and she was crowded into a skid by a car going too fast on a dirt road. Scraped knee....BIG time.....lots of tears....but Dad fixed it all and a new cover is on it's way from the manufacturer. And THIS is what 53 looks like. Finally. There were 15 of us. Dinner was great. The song and horns were obnoxious. And oh so much fun. Sometimes it's a good thing that my birthday comes first. Hee..... My son, the Youth Police Academy graduate. His team of ten students - one of four - took the Best Teamwork medal tonight. He has learned to take finger prints, dusted for finger prints, driven a golf cart on a traffic school course, participated in simulated traffic stops, practiced criminal take down methods, done a crime scene investigation, practiced shooting fire arms on a simulator, observed a K-9 drug busting unit in action, and on and on and on. I think it was the highlight of his very busy summer!

And NOW the dog is at Puppy Camp, the car is packed, the ipods are charged and we are OFF to Boston for a week!

Summer is winding down.....isn't it?

2008-07-29T19:20:00.000-07:00

I went in to school today for a meeting about Summer Reading Club - which I volunteered to help out with. It begins next week and I will be absent. Friday morning - bright and early - we are headed for Boston...
determined to have a great time.

I have never been so anal about anything in my entire life. Our 'vacations' are usually limited to a weekend of camping or running from one game to the other for a soccer tournament. There have been three weekend trips to Chicago and trips out of town to visit family but this is the first BIG trip to somewhere new. By ourselves. This time we have hotel rooms reserved - and PAID for...tickets to a Red Sox game at Fenway... reservations for the Princess and I to join a whale watch expedition....and Boston Go Cards guaranteed to get us into all the fun sights. We have list after list of the free stuff we wanna do too. Before we get there though, we are stopping at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown and the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA. And we are diverting our trip home to include a swing through Gettysburg National Park. We are going to have a GREAT time dammit. And I haven't even packed. I am packing for four because I am the only one in the family able to color coordinate things. REALLY. Ask ANYONE. It's my fatal flaw.

But BEFORE we go, tomorrow we have reservations for 15-17 immediate family members at a restaurant to celebrate HRH and his twin's birthday...Thursday the Prince 'graduates' from the Youth Police Academy...and right now the Princess is off and running on a brand spanking new motocross bike...10 days shy of her 13th birthday. We are going to be on the road for that momentous day so we gave in and she got it early. Hey wait a minute. Didn't she flip over the handle bars of a motocross bike and land on her back at 'the best camp ever'?? With the bike on TOP of her?? How did she sneak that one by us??? Sheesh. I need Tylenol.

The week after our return are four - count 'em FOUR - days of high school soccer team tryouts for the Prince and that is followed by a week of soccer conditioning camp for the Princess. I will be putting in my time with Summer Reading Club for two weeks. Then I think there is a long weekend before I have to report for staff development training. Heh. WHY does all of this stuff have to happen at once??? I think I need a vacation from summer vacation. When does school start again??

PIZZA!!!!

2008-07-27T17:44:00.000-07:00

I thought I had been thoroughly spoiled for pizza. Sorry Dominos, Pizza Hut, Little Ceasars, Jets and Home Town Pizza. Stucci's has it all over you. That's a little ice cream shop in town with a pizza take out businees on the side...literally. They have a little personal Chicago style pizza that will knock your socks off. Tasty, full of just the right amount and mix of meat and cheese....yum. Don't get it much though 'cause it's a little out of our way. And then I was web crawling over to one of my favorite blogs - The Pioneer Woman - and she posted pictures of a pizza baking experiment. Dang if it didn't make me hungry to try it. I mean, if she can cook like this for her Marlboro Man and Little Punks....then so can I! And I love my little vegetarian wannabe Princess more than usual on some days. She was totally game to try something new with me. Had to make two pizzas though. Prince and HRH were not so eager to give up their tomato based sauce from a jar. Heh. We started with a premade pizza crust. It was really good but I think I will be experimenting with my own crust recipe next time. Might be a little softer. Brushed that sucker with a little EVOO. Thank you Rachel Ray!! I feel really cool when I say 'EVOO'......and feel even cooler that I even have 'extra virgin olive oil' in my kitchen.
Now three people near and dear to me just had to tell me that this stuff looks like 'crap'. It smelled delicious. Pesto Sauce. Straight from a jar. Gonna try the fresh made stuff next time. Spread it all around..... Fresh mozarella cheese slices. COVER the pesto sauce. HIDE that 'crap!' And yes....I love my cheese! Yum....
Veggies......tried to get the princess to try some fresh mushrooms but we like the soggy ones from the can. Used thin slices of Roma tomatos, thin shards of green pepper and onion this time around.
Add some grated Parmesan to top it off.... And bake.....according to the crust package directions.

Lions and tigers and bears....oh MY! What a difference it makes not to have a tomato based sauce. It's more....exciting. Smells even better. Yum. And made even MORE special with a brownie sundae chaser. You see, when the Prince saw his sister baking and wanted in on the action, I handed him the brownie mix I keep on hand for those 'I'm so bored' summer moments. He is 14, after all. He can read the directions on a box. As for me....I like the pictures. Heh.

Decisions....decisions....

2008-07-25T05:31:00.001-07:00

Two days ago they couldn't wait to show me the compressions around their wrists from being hand cuffed. There was all kinds of talk about 'pressure points' and 'take down methods' on the way home. When I picked them up yesterday there were six - no maybe eight - police cars in the parking lot....lights a'flashing. There were 41 7th and 8th graders in their navy blue tees/shorts uniform swarming over the cars, rotating through various traffic stop scenarios. WAY cool. Next week they get to drive through the vehicle training field in golf carts, will do a crime scene investigation and learn to brush for finger prints, travel with the marine unit on a local lake and have a 'graduation' ceremony. THIS was the summer activity that was designed with MY kid in mind.

My kid who was a Three Musketeers fanatic at 5 and was D'Artagnian for Halloween that year. My kid who - as a first grader - insisted that his US Marshal costume would NOT be complete without a real bullet proof vest....something accomplished with a piece of blue quilted material, bias tape and 'magic' stuff inside that was 'guaranteed to stop bullets.' He has wanted to be a police officer for as long as I can remember. He's lost that goal in recent years. In 5th grade he decided that society would be better served if he were a professional soccer player and sports writer. As an 8th grader he had lost that vision entirely. Doesn't know what he wants to be. But hopefully this first ever Youth Police Academy in our community will get him back on track toward SOMEthing.

Lordy but I would HATE to be a kid in this day and age trying to find their way. So many things to choose from. So many things to block the way. I just hope he is happy with whatever he does. Oh, and that he will be able to give his old Mom a break when she is caught going too fast down some obscure dirt road...which is where I tend to get MY speeding tickets. Heh.

Her Very First Concert

2008-07-17T20:09:00.000-07:00

Just got back from taking our Princess to her very first concert. The Prince would have been along but we had dropped him off at soccer camp earlier in the day. We went to the DTE Energy Theater - which will forever be 'Pine Knob' to me - and had an absolute blast. We were to see Steven Curtis Chapman and Michael W. Smith. Both are esteemed Christian singers with quite a resume as song writers and award winners as well. It is very interesting to attend a concert that begins with prayer....and is beleaguered with one power outage after another. I thought the event would be a bit heart wrenching and instead we got to see an awesome entertainer who tried his hardest to put on a show. His first song, the one he said resonated through his head and heart on May 21st when his family lost it's youngest member to a devastating accident - 'Blessed Be Your Name', was the only song he managed to finish before the theater blew a fuse. LOL He laughed a little, prayed a little, danced a little, read the Bible an little and generally kept trying again and again. (There were power outages in surrounding areas that caused the problem.) What a guy! Such courage. Such tenacity. Such a sense of humor!! He declared that 'electrical power may be iffy but the power of God never goes out.' And my favorite part was during his second attempt to sing. When the power quit again, his son Will, who was playing the drums, kept wailing away not realizing that his Dad had stopped singing and the other instruments had ceased playing. SCC rolled his eyes at the audience, turned to Will and signaled him to CUT. Very cute. The crowd was patient as lights flickered and they tried one thing after another. At one point we could hear a huge section of the lawn seat patrons singing their own songs. In the end, Michael W. Smith joined Steven Curtis Chapman on stage for a short sing along with the audience, a keyboard, an acoustic guitar and a single spotlight. It was a beautiful ending to what could have been a disappointing evening. I think they both underestimate their talent and their audience. I could have listened to another hour with just the two of them, the keyboard, the acoustic guitar and the audience. Lovely. So. Very. Lovely.

The Princess declared drummer Will and his guitar playing big brother, Caleb, to be 'hotties' (and I am still telling myself that she has NO idea what that means yet...please!), went to the bathroom 15 times (okay, so I am exaggerating...maybe), ate her way through a tub of popcorn and a package of candied almonds, drank her way through a bottle of water, a lemonade, a Pepsi and a blue raspberry Icee, and bought a glow in the dark necklace. She also delighted in catching the fireflies that were flitting about in the dark as we waited. On the way out of the parking lot she declared the concert to be 'lots of fun'. They are going to try to reschedule so we are supposed to hang on to our tickets.....but I wouldn't have missed this evening for the world. Do you hear that Steven Curtis Chapman and crew?? You totally ROCK!

The Plan

2008-07-13T18:02:00.000-07:00

We haven't seen them in 14 months. My folks were going to be at her house from Florida for the 4th of July. The plan was that I would drive down with the kiddos on the Monday after for a few days. We decided to surprise them and drive down on Sunday instead. We left in the morning around 7:30ish. I called my Mom once when we were in southern Ohip and was told to bring some games 'tomorrow.' Hee. I called my sister when we were an hour away from her house and told her about the discussion we were having about the correct exit we needed to take. Hee. All the way down we were trying to come up with a funny way to surprise them. Well, around 9:30 pm, my kiddos stood at my sister's door in South Carolina with their arms full of the Girl Scout cookies that were ordered last winter and.....

In A Perfect World

2008-07-12T17:52:00.000-07:00

My children are Asian in a Caucasian world. It sounds like such a simple statement. But it's really not. People who adopt outside of their own race tend to see a child. Not an Asian child or a Black child or a Hispanic child....or any of the combinations in between. We see just a plain old child whose toes we have kissed and whose hair we have learned to style. We see the child that stresses about oatmeal for breakfast and spelling tests and social studies projects. A child.

And since they don't really see themselves, as a rule, I think it takes a while for a trans racially adopted child to see that their parents are different from them. My son was blessed to attend a small daycare that encompassed a myriad of shades in it's clientele for a couple of years. The director/teacher tried very hard to foster acceptance and awareness of differences. She worried that my son wasn't aware of his. After spending a week or two collecting pictures of faces of many races, she set out having her students compile a mural about themselves. They were to select pictures to glue on their posters beginning with a face that looked like theirs. My son looked them all over carefully and then selected one of an adult Black man. His teacher tried to get him to exchange it for the Asian face but he said 'no'....that the one he had was correct because he had black hair too.

Because we knew the state of things in his elementary school, we started early 'desensitizing' him to looks and stares and questions. We hoped that we were giving him tools to help people understand and to make him proud of being 'different.' We must have done our job well enough because it never crossed our minds to do the same with our daughter. The first time she was teased about her 'Chinese Eyes', it devestated her....and ME. But that moment was just a blip in her expanding world. She is well liked because she is funny and positive and a gifted athlete. My son has a killer sense of humor, a dry wit and is also a gifted athlete. He is a quiet kind of leader, willing to follow and not really understanding that he has others waiting to follow HIS lead.

We were having dinner in a restaurant in my sister's small southern town recently. I caught a lot of people - especially older people - watching my children. Some, in the same way that I watched the little girls with huge bows and freckled face boys with big eyes at the buffet bar....and some not the same way at all. People wonder. And so do I. I wonder if it is going to matter that they have been raised a minority in a Caucasian world. I wonder if it's going to matter that they have really shown no interest in learning more about Korea or Russia. I wonder if it will matter that I never forced it on them. I wonder if their birth origins will matter to the people they want to spend time with.....to date. I wonder if knowing so litle about their biological family will matter healthwise. In a perfect world it won't. And when we can look at another person and not see the Asian face...the Black face...the Hispanic face....or any of the combinations in between....just a person....it will be a perfect world.

Gotcha Day 2008

2008-06-29T20:28:00.000-07:00

Fourteen years ago today, this was the scene at the international terminal at our metro airport. It was the hand off of the smiliest, cutest little bundle of Korean joy ever. He had a head full of hair, one deep dimple and eyes that totally disappeared when he smiled. I had gotten him first....and then my Mom.....and finally his Dad. Best way ever to give 'birth.' No spinals. No stitches. No ice chips. Just open your arms and BINGO. Instant parenthood. Unconditional love. Right from the get go.

And today, this was the scene at another of our favorite restaurants. Same kid. Same dimple. Same Dad. Same head of hair...not. Parting with previous 'Gotcha Day' traditions (pick of places for dinner, choice of a family activity), this year we gave him a 'gift.' Five whole days of being an only child again. Sigh.

TODAY was the day we dropped his sister off at the greatest summer camp EVER. Dad is home from work. Mom is off on summer vacation. Okay, so it wasn't actually PLANNED this way but I am a 'seize the moment' kind of gal. Opportunity unexpectedly arose. Besides, the agenda now is to smother him with so much attention and affection so he will actually be GLAD to see the Princess on Thursday.

Wish us luck. : )

And how was YOUR day?

2008-06-27T04:31:00.000-07:00

At a message board I visit, people were comparing the activities of their days. Dentist visits, shoe shopping, college classes, writing all fit in somewhere. Here is a rundown of what MY days have been like this week.....every day.

8 am Wake up kiddos and ask if they want breakfast
8:10 Chocolate chip pancakes in the pan and onto plates
8:20 Jump in shower
8:30 Dry/curl hair, dress
8:40 Jump in car to drive princess to band camp
9:00 Drop Princess off at the middle school
9:20 Buy a Gatorade at the market for Prince, coax/reassure/humiliate him that he does NOT suck at soccer, remind him that he is playing with kids 2,3 and 4 years OLDER.
9:45 Sit in front of high school soccer field to wait for someone for him to walk in with so he doesn't feel like a 'dweeb'.
10:00 Watch Prince saunter to soccer field with other freshman dweebs for a 'volunteer' Soccer practice.
10:30 Sit in a hot car at the middle school parking lot to watch Princess march with middle schoolers practicing for a holiday parade.
10:37 Smile/wave/take pictures/wipe away sweat streaming down face.
10:45 Smile/wave...again...as band comes back up the parkinglot drive.
10:49 Read new favorite novel.
11:00 Pick up Princess and a friend from Band Camp
11:03 Listen and nod aimlessly to a discussion about who is 'hotter' - Josh Hutcherson or the kid with the drum.
11:04 Listen to them hoot when I say that I am hotter because I was sitting in the car.
11:15 Drop friend off at home. Chat with friend's mom.
11:30 Drive to high school to retrieve Prince while singing along with Princess' new favorite Faith Hill song.
11:33 Count blessings that it is Faith HIll and not Miley Cyrus....again.
11:47 Sit in hot car waiting for Prince and watching Princess flirt with a school friend who is taking a tennis lesson. Wipe away more sweat.
11:50 Sit up straight and wipe away more sweat with the sudden realization that she KNOWS how to flirt.
12:00 Watch Prince saunter off soccer field with older high school soccer friends. No longer a dweeb....for now.
12:04 Try - in vain - to get Prince to recount how practice went.
12:30 Take Prince and Princess swimming/bowling/movies/driving range for 'fun'. Spend too much money. Read a few more pages of new favorite novel when they aren't looking.
3:30 Return home. Relax and read mail.
3:32 Smile when Prince says he did really, really good as a goalie during practice. Refrain from saying 'I told you so.'
3:35 Remind Prince of 'no television' rule, tell Princess 'later' when she asks to ride her bike 'a little while'.
3:38 Ignore Prince's whine/argument about the 'no television' rule.
3:45 Start dinner meal for HRH. Recount everything done for 'them' when there is argument about setting table for dinner.
3:55 Demand that SOMEONE set the damn table.
3:57 Tell Princess she may NOT ride her bike to the 'little store' until tomorrow. Respond to Prince's argument/whine about 'no television' rule.
3:58 Ignore the slam of a door as Prince goes to his room.
3:59 Tell Princess she may NOT ride her bike around the block right now....even though she did set the table.
4:00 Kiss HRH as he comes in the door.
4:05 Pitch dinner at HRH's head when he dares to say, "It must be nice to be on summer vacation."

Bob Wernet's Super Chief

2008-06-26T15:34:00.000-07:00

Every family has one, I am sure. The little greasy spoon...restaurant dive....that holds memories galore. For my children and I, it's this place. The Super Chief. Foot long coney dogs with buttery grilled buns and messy, mild chili. The greasiest, best tasting onion rings in the world. Cherry cokes still made with real cherry syrup and bits of real cherries in the bottom of your cup that plug up your straw. I don't think I have ever had anything else there in....forever. I know we went for breakfast one Saturday once...but it wasn't the same.

We had an argument today about how many people the place holds. I said 33 but the Prince said I am imagining things. HE says it's less. At any rate it's small. They have added a small patio with picnic tables for the summer months. Maybe 4 tables. The cozy crowdedness is actually part of it's charm. We have never had to wait for a seat. And there is always a steady stream of customers.

The Super Chief has been a favorite of my family's for a good long while. Back then it was a drive in. You pulled your car in and someone came out to take your order. Food was brought to your car on a tray that balanced on your half open window. The perfect place for a summer evening dinner. I am not sure when they moved to this building. It may even have been a move back. My dad used to stop in for chili dogs when he was still driving a truck....way over 50 years ago. Once we gave my dad a tee shirt form the store as a Christmas gift. He was wearing it in Daytona Beach, Florida and was stopped by someone who knew the place. So they chatted a while. Memories....and chili dogs.

When my son was about 4 years old and my parents were visiting from their new home in Florida, we went for lunch. I remember him in shorts and a tee shirt, feet in tennies swinging, as I explained our family history with the place while my dad leaned against the counter and talked with deceased owner's wife. My son had a quizzical little look on his face for a moment and then said. "Pop brought you hera when you were a yiddle girl....and now you are bring me hera." The frown deepened a little. My guy. At four he had figured out a new concept. Continuity....and chili dogs.

The restaurant is right around the corner from the building where I would spend hours working on materials for my classroom every summer. I would drag the kids there, set them to work and promise them the work session would be followed by a visit to the Super Chief. One such late summer day we sat in a tight corner booth having a rollicking conversation as we sipped away on cherry cokes. The Prince and I had discovered a - then new - Lewis and Clark coin in my change purse. We were talking about how cool it was when the Princess piped up with some comment. The Prince was rather disdainful and told her she didn't even know about Lewis and Clark. She informed him that she did so. It was Superman! Heh. (Before school routines involved watching a bit of 'LOIS and Clark' on television every morning.) That particular day a very well dressed lawyer type woman who had been reading the paper at the table next to us during our exchange, stopped by to tell me how much she had enjoyed my family that day. Heh. That's the type of place it is. No secrets.....and chili dogs.

Another time we were there during the winter. Just the kids and I...again. Funds were a little tight that day and I knew she wouldn't finish a whole foot long chili dog, so I planned to eat part of the Princess' meal. When the waitress came to take our order, she asked if I wanted anything. When I said no, the Princess burst out that we didn't have enough money. Well, two orders of onion rings, three foot longs, three cherry cokes and no bill later....we were the recipients of the owner's generosity... something she does all the time, I was assured. Heh. Heartfelt generosity....and chili dogs.

Bob Wernet no longer owns the Super Chief. Neither does his wife. Bob passed away in 2002. The new owners have pledged to run it just as it has always been run. And just to make sure, Bob's wife shows up for work there - every day. She has a huge candy bucket that comes out when kids are handy. The same Native American art works hang on the walls. Cheesy paintings of perfect people with feathers in their hair. There is a sculpture of Chief Pontiac on a shelf over the drink dispenser. And a drawing of Bob on the wall next to it. We took a friend with us this time. And a camera. I planned to take pictures for this blog entry. Unfortunately, we forgot to get a picture of the chili dogs before we ate them. Heh. Guess you will have to see one for yourself! Onion rings....and chili dogs

Bob Wernat's Super Chief is located at 340 W Walton Blvd , Pontiac, MI
And they do take outs too. Phone - (248) 333-2028

A Foot

2008-06-20T05:15:00.000-07:00

When he was a baby I was fascinated with his hands. I tried and tried to capture that sweet softness, busy-ness and squishy loveliness of his hands with my camera. Never could come close. Now that he is older I am fascinated with his feet. He is embarassed when I pull out my camera and does not want his picture taken....at all. So I have to content myself with an occasional sneaky shot. This time of a foot. A big foot really. A foot I used to stuff into socks and sandals and tennis shoes and snow boots. A foot that has worn out too many pairs of soccer cleats. A foot that actually danced with a girl last winter. A foot that is always on the move. You have to wonder where it's going to take him in life. I do.

One down....

2008-06-18T02:45:00.000-07:00

Gotta love a new coach who calls to thank you for selecting their club and tells you that your daughter 'has the 'head' for soccer but also the 'heart'." He was amazed at how quickly she fit in with the others. She will be playing for $%@*&%!#& Community Soccer's premiere U-13 team next year....and they are thrilled. So am I. Her team will practice at a school just 15 minutes away from home.

Musings...continued.....

2008-06-15T05:01:00.000-07:00

Dang but he was short......and cute. The Prince is the one in the yellow shirt. This was a game between the big kids and the little kids as a season ender fun day. And the end of the dual season. We were in the middle of our adoption paperwork for Nina and I couldn't remember where I signed him up to play. Turned out to be both the YMCA and the local soccer club. Heh. One was full out, full team soccer and the other was 3 on 3. We were going to pick the one he enjoyed the most but ended up playing both. Practice/games four days a week. Fun....and funny when they are small.

Soccer Musings.....

2008-06-14T15:00:00.000-07:00

We played our last games with WAZA Flo today. WAZA is Japanese for 'technique'. When the kiddos were younger and went to summer soccer camp, 'remember your WAZA!' was sort of like a battle cry. And it was a good one. The Princess has played for this soccer club for four and a half years and her brother for two. The practice field has changed twice in that time and we have driven close to an hour each way two or three times a week....for practice. This year we were lucky that another family from school decided to play there as well. Car pooling became the name of the game. However, sky rocketing gas prices - among other things - have led us to decide to find a club closer to home.

I didn't expect to feel melancholy today but I did. Watching the Princess play in the HOT sun with soccer friends - some of whom she has played with for four years and others for two- was a little sad. They have come a long way as a team - together. They have all really grown up....and in some respects, out. Heh. Thinking about where they were as as eight year olds and now they are twelve and thirteen....where does the time go?

My soccer fiends have both gained so much in terms of skills and confidence with WAZA. Seeing what his sister was trained to do is what precipitated the Prince's decision to switch soccer clubs. He went through alot of taunting and bullying at school for changing. He even had a circle from the old club tease and pester him from the sidelines during an actual game. He was tagged a traitor by kids who shouldn't even be allowed to say the word. I thought staying out of it and teaching him to deal with it by 'blowing it off' was the way to go. After all, he was going to have to deal with the same sort of thing for the rest of his life, right? A friend taught me different when she stood up for her son....who was going through the same thing for the very same reason...by cornering the parents of the kids doing the bullying. It stopped. Sort of. MY lesson learned.

We have planned tryouts at three local clubs in the next week. We shall see where we actually end up......

The School Year Endth and the Summer Commences.....

2008-06-12T08:17:00.000-07:00

It's the last day of school. The Prince is at an amusement park 3 hours away with his fellow, newly graduated 8th graders. The Princess is at a local rollerskating rink with her fellow 6th grade buddies. They will be returning to school to eat pizza and watch a movie. I am at home. Listless and bored. I still have to peel a few things off the bulletin board in my classroom. I have covered my bookcase with paper to protect the books from dust and dirt and what not. Nothing like I have had to do in the past. I'll get to it in another hour or so. No hurry.

Yesterday - at the last staff meeting for the shcool year - my principal asked that we share a 'celebration' for the year. What was something that had gone especially right for us? As they went around the large circle, I sat there pondering what my celebration would be. It would have to be the whole freaking year.

Last year at this time I was scurrying to empty out a classroom that I had inhabited for five years. There were boxes and cupboards and shelves and more boxes to be sorted through. I know that I pitched $5000 worth of books and teaching materials in the dumpster. No one wanted them. It broke my heart. There were other boxes and toys and books given to an incoming Kindergarten teacher. 26 years of teaching were honed into 6 plastic bins, one book shelf of books and one small cupboard shelf.It took many, many hours. Today I have to peel some things off a bulletin board, clear some names and files off some computer programs....and I am done. Finished for the year. Heh.

And I love my job. I LOVE my job. I LOVE MY JOB! It has been more creative and challenging than I ever thought possible. I have gone on an adventure where Kindergarteners dug their little fingers inside an open computer to see what they could pull out. Second graders were visually and vocally awed when I showed them something new to do. Fifth graders fairly burst with pride when I would study their project and then say 'wait....show me how you did that again...' Fourth graders....ah those people pleasing, ever positive fourth graders...truely delighted in becoming independent and productive and sucessful in the Tech Lab. I can't wait for school to start again.

Between now and then are eleven weeks of camps and events and vacations. I will be in the road to soccer tryouts, band camp, skateboard camp, soccer camp, Youth Police Academy, sleepovers, etc. We are going to Boston in August. We are hoping to get a little bit of camping in as well. And I can't wait for school to start. Maybe I will feel differently in August. The Prince heads to high school in September. Yikes.

Go Figure

2008-06-09T04:00:00.000-07:00

The Princess and I had a wonderful day together on Saturday. The Prince had spent the night with a friend and was not going to be home till late afternoon. Her daddy was working so we decided to check out a skateboard shop someone had told us about. It was about a 45 minute drive from home. Nice place. LOTS of board choices and she found one she had been eyeing online for a while. She was willing to empty her summer vacation money fund to get it and I was feeling pretty amiable so I agreed. We were driving home and she was caressing it and chattering on about it. Struts and bearings and grips. My daughter. A skateboard. Heh. Not exactly what I expected.

I have been a doll lover from the get go. Patty Play Pal. Chatty Cathy. Barbie. Tiny Tears. I had them all. And I played with them. My sister will tell you that she learned more about history by playing Barbies with me than she ever did from a textbook. We contructed Conestoga prarie wagons from shoe boxes so Barbie and Ken could travel the Oregon Trail. We filled the bath tub with water and set them sailing on an 'ocean white with foam' as they became Irish immigrants escaping the potato famine. They were forever running away from the Nazis. The bendable wire in Tutti's leg broke. No problem. We wrapped it in pipe cleaners and thread and the little doll became one of Sister Kenny's polio patients. Heh. I was doing the history/doll thing LONG before the American Girl Doll company came up with Felicity and Molly and Kirsten and Samantha and the rest of that very expensive gang.

As an adult I discovered a tremendous ceative op in learning to make porcelain dolls. Made quite a few over the years. So did my mother and my husband. I have also made large rag dolls in the Raggedy Ann style...with my own face design and costumes. Sold a number of those. Made two of them several Christmases ago for my stepdaughter's twins. Is it any wonder that I could barely contain my excitement at the thought of having a daughter to share that love with? Riiiight. But that's not what I got.

Oh...my daughter likes dolls. From a distance. Or stuffed under her bed. Or shut away in her closet. I should have known when we first saw her in Russia. Two little girls in her orphanage family group were off playing with a play hospital set up in the corner of the playroom. SHE was rolling on the floor with the little boys, playing with several toy trucks. I had brought along a small Beanie Baby doll for her to play with while we traveled home. She was much more interested in using the travel sewing kit to put beads and trinkets on the doll's little dress. She was five. When she could finally speak English well enough she said she has never liked dolls because they 'stare at her' all the time. Heh.

Well, I kept on plugging. She had a baby doll with a box full of clothes but didn't really know how to play with her. Stuffed in the closet. She is not really into clothes at all so Barbie held no interest. Stuffed under her bed. On her first trip to Chicago - when she was eight - I was so excited to take her to The American Girl Place....where Felicity and Molly and Kirsten and Samantha and the rest of that expensive gang reside. Kind of snuck in there actually. She really had no clue. She and her brother were fascinated by all the 'little' stuff. Little guitars. Little hiking boots. Little lunchboxes and plastic foods. They were playing quite happily with a little school set in the middle of a room for 'Hop Scotch Hill Kids' dolls when she stood up. I was watching her face as she slowly gazed around at her surroundings. There were dolls on display along the tops of the showcases. On the shelves below were boxes and boxes of dolls with an oval cut out so you could see the face of the one inside. Faces. With open, glassy eyes. All around her. All staring at her. My daughter's brows lowered and her hands balled into tight little fists. "Get...me....outta...here....this place is FREAKING ME OUT!" she began shrieking. Loud. VERY loud. And very clear. I grabbed her by the hand and we made our way - quickly - out of the store. Past the dolls with staring eyes. Past mothers and daughters with their dolls, heading for the doll boutique and the Tea Room where dolls had their own little seats at the table. Never tried to get her to take to a doll after that. Heh.

So now she is not quite thirteen, sitting in the car seat next to me caressing a new skateboard and chattering on. I guess I can learn to love it too. It has a drawing of a girl skateboarder on it after all. She is going to add the struts and wheels....and bearings...herself. MY daughter. Go figure.

(The picture is an old one.....when she was six. You probably can't see that her tonuge is hanging out as she does this trick....a habit that still sticks today.)

Something New.....

2008-06-09T03:57:00.000-07:00

It's the last week of school. Only four more days. We have had snow days and ice days this year. Today - Monday - we are having a 'Power Outage Day,' courtesy of the storms that blew through here last night. Dang. I have never had such a day when we might be the only ones at the pool!

Maria, Maura and More Moaning.....

2008-06-01T17:50:00.000-07:00

What wierd one last week. On Monday I was still obsessed with the tragedy of Maria Chapman's death and a grieving process for a little girl I have never met. It breaks my heart. On Tuesday Maura Tierney - someone I have also never met - taped her very last scene for ER - an episode to be shown next fall. That breaks my heart...and an 8 year obsession with that particular show. On Wednesday my principal told me not to be spending the money yet but they have 'penciled me in as the only Tech teacher in my building.' This upgrades me from a half time Teacher to a four fifths Teacher....full time employment being something I have been seeking again since the Princess started first grade....six years ago. Why was I not...happier? Thursday there was a horrendous emotional battle about a ticket to an 8th grade carnival the prince had been looking forward to for months. Adolescence angst....beginning to break my heart. Friday, in order to not miss their scheduled planning times, MY day was unexpectedly flipflopped by classroom teachers and someone else presented my technology trophies to the top graduating 5th graders at their awards assembly. I had been looking forward to that. Dang. Broke my heart again. I was looking forward to the weekend and it was beautiful. Busy...sunny and well....busy. Only eight more days of school left. Gotta get busy on report cards. Only 380 to go! 380 comments to write about some really, really nice kids. Sigh. I guess my heart is begining to sing again. : )

The Circle Game

2008-05-30T16:28:00.000-07:00

Rick Ely recorded this Joni Mitchell tune when I was a teenager and I bought his album (yes Daniel....a RECORD album...a flat thing that spins on a player with a needle and makes music....sheesh) because of it. I was pleased to find it on line about a year ago. Today I was thinking about the Chapman Family, as I have been most of the week. Was doing a search for a video blog that I subscribe to and found this video. Steven Curtis Chapman in the middle of the kids in the Chinese orphanages he has dedicated his giving spirit to. The video brought back memories of Nina's Russian orphanage......

What a heartbreaking day.....

2008-05-22T15:26:00.000-07:00

I didn't work today. Well...I did several loads of laundry...loaded the dishwasher....vacummed....mundane stuff. I should have been grading the MOUNDS of papers I have in my backpack. I planned to. Really. Instead I have been riveted to my computer gleaning news about a family I have never even met. Celebrity Baby Blog (okay...I go there to see what's up with Angelina and her crew...and to ponder exactly what purpose Tori Spelling serves in the entertainment biz??) had the news of the tragedy in Steven Curtis Chapman's family. I went immediately to his family web site - and I subscribe to his video blog as well. The loss of their youngest child, a just turned five year old and one of his three 'China Angels', had been killed in an accident in their very own driveway. Just hours after a family celebrated their oldest daughter's engagement and before another celebration of a son's high school graduation. I can't get my mind off of this. So unbearably sad.

Adopting a baby from China had been their eldest daughter's idea. After adopting Shaohannah, the entire Chapman Family was driven to do more for the children in need of families in China. They adopted twice more, bringing home Stevey Joy and Maria Sue. SCC gushes with pride and joy about his family at every opportunity....at every concert. He is a ridiculously adorable doting Dad. He has taken his family to China to do mission work in the orphanages there. Because of my own connection with international adoption, I read about their 'Shaohannah's Hope' foundation that provides financial aid to families wishing to adopt shortly after they formed it. I have seen blog posted pictures of their crazy play dates with other families who have adopted their own 'angels.' I remember chuckling a bit as I watched their youngest bouncing on the bed as she sang a song to their blog audience, thinking that she had the energy level of my own daughter. I remember thinking 'God help those poor souls!' LOL And He certainly did.
The Chapman Family has been very, very blessed to have had God lead them to Maria Sue. And she has been blessed that God brought them to her. Even for such a short time. My heart goes out to all of them right now. Losing a little one so full of life and joy at such a precious time in their life is truely heartbreaking. So give the child in your life a hug today....in remembrance of Maria Sue.

They're off!

2008-05-16T14:32:00.000-07:00

Last night after dinner and a shower, I had the pleasure of escorting my son to his middle school to catch the bus for a long awaited extended weekend trip to the nation's capital. FOUR busloads of hyper charged 8th graders - girls sitting with girls and boys sitting with boys, that's the rule - cameras flashing and parents waving. Ever have one of those moments where you can't WAIT for it to happen and yet you're a bit melancholy when it does? Crazy that a simple trip like this makes you miss the little boy that was...... By the way, mine is the one shying away from the camera. Handsome dude.

We're Growing up!

2008-05-14T13:05:00.000-07:00

I was surprised with a very cool Flip Video camera for Mother's Day this year. I have checking them out for ages....loving it! What's very neat is that you can easily video those odd moments that cross your path...like this one. It was the Princess' second attempt at pumping gas for me. Ah...the delight of having kids old enough to do those mundane chores while they are young enough to think that it's fun. : ) And as always...she does things with such STYLE.........

Boggled by Boston

2008-05-11T19:29:00.001-07:00

Okay...so we are planning a vacation to a city where none of us has ever been. DH nixed New York...where I have desperately wanted to go since I was eight. Chicago is a favorite family vacation spot but we have been there before. I randomly selected Boston for our summer vacation. Okay...so my favorite actress is from there and had done a little tour of the city for the Today Show when we were deciding. Can I help it if no one else in my family pays attention to the Today Show?? We have been researching like crazy on the net. The Princess created a brochure about the city for her computer class project. The Prince is desperately seeking reasonable Red Sox tickets but will most likely be unsucessfull given the date we will be in town. As for me, I learned tonight that DH was not able to get our stay in a vacation club location extended. He's known for weeks. Heh. Didn't seem like a good thing to strangle him on Mother's Day when he'd gifted me with the Flip video camera I had my eye on. Maybe tomorrow.....

Sooooo, I have been on the prowl for a cheap but accessible place for us to stay...near enough to the sights that we don't have to drive everywhere (my research says that Boston is not an easy city to get around in by car). So far no luck. The more I look, the more confused I get. I am totally boggled by Boston at this point. And all I really wanted to do was soak up some history and channel one of my favorite kid authors by playing here for a little while....

Community Theater

2008-05-08T16:43:00.000-07:00

I love theater. I have been writing and producing plays since third grade. Never got involved in Drama Club in high school though. I was too busy chasing down journalism. Took a theater class in college. Even won the class 'Tony Award' for playing the mother in law in workshop production of 'Barefoot in the Park.' Could never bring myself to be on stage in front of an audience though. I was convinced that MY destiny was to be the reviewer...the writer...the producer. A housemate dragged me into the community theater scene. I actually had NO idea such a thing existed. Outside of school I thought there was only the professional stage....like Broadway....or Broadway touring shows. Who would have thought that 'normal' people could do this? Teachers and Engineers? Mechanics and Housewives? Wow! My friend auditioned and volunteered me to do make up. The production was a revue of shows this group had done in their past 10 years. I hit the ground running and brushed stage make up on kids who were performing in segments from 'The Sound of Music', 'Showboat' and 'Oliver.' After that it was on to 'The King and I'....where I needed to transform 32 children - of various sizes and shades - into the Siamese progeny of one very pompous King. What fun. They discovered that I could paint and I was roped into doing flats - those wood framed canvas...flats...used for sets. And I could sew. So I was 'volunteered' to sew costumes. And my 35mm was never far from my hand in those days so I was soon taking publicity shots....and then writing the press packets and programs. I labored for a particularly curmudgeonly architect on sets for 'A Funny Thing Happened n the Way To The Forum.' Wanted to actually kill him when he made me redraw lines that were just an inch off. But I did it and he became one of my very best theater friends. I think I have done basically all of it. Heh. I have even been on stage. We couldn't find anyone willing to do the housekeeper's non singing role in 'The Sound of Music.' As assistant director, I had been reading the lines during rehearsals and the director sort of MADE me do it. I am glad that I did. My next project was to direct 'Annie.' That was back in 1988. Over 2000 people attended those performances....and I learned not too long ago that that production STILL holds the record for tickets sold for that community theater group. I dragged my husband into productions of 'Scrooge', 'The Sound of Music', 'Annie' and 'Annie Get Your Gun.' He has a nice singing voice and is generally guaranteed a part. I dragged my DAD on to the stage for a production of "Shenandoah.' We needed a guy who looked like a rebel soldier who could carry a gun. He even sang....albeit very quietly per the music director's instructions. Hee. Life stepped in and I became a parent. Community Theater is a very intense little world for three or four months. Hard to drag a two year old to rehearsals. Hard to afford a sitter NOT to drag a two year old to rehearsals. So, we backed out as participants. We still attended performances....but it was difficult. I felt sooo left out. I still wrote and directed plays for groups of children in the school I worked at. Peter Pan....twice....Tom Sawyer...twice...The Wizard of Oz...The Little Princess.... As my children grew, our family shifted it's focus to sports. We seemed to be tied up in practice and games and tournaments whenever there was a show to see or do. Then this spring we were hit with a double whammy. My son became part of the backstage crew for his middle school drama club. And I...was invited to assistant direct a production of 'Tom Sawyer'. A musical. With a cast of 35? Maybe more. I haven't had this much FUN in a very long while. It was incredibly intense. Things have changed since I directed 'Annie.' High school auditoriums are no longer free for theater groups. You have to pay for your rehearsal times. Our rehearsals took place in the Music room of my elementary school...a space roughly 1/8 the size of the theater we would be performing in.And sets had to be built on the fly...since we couldn't get into the theater until the week before we opened. Sets are no longer built with wood and canvas flats. Now we use sheets of styrofoam insulation. It's light enough to be carried, durable enough to last for the run of the show and can be carved and painted into just about anything. After the final two weeks of nightly tech and dress rehearsals....and a weekend of performances...I was exhausted.....and exhilarated. There is something so very wonderful about witnessing a 50ish year old woman who has never been in a play, pushing herself to actually sing a solo to an audience. And exciting about hearing an incredible voice come from an old friend that you didn't even know could sing! There is something oddly exciting about hearing lines flowing correctly from a child who has NOT been able to give up the security of reading it from a script. There is something incredibly heartwarming about watching parents build sets, pass out fliers, sell tickets and ads as they support their children's acting efforts. And there is something thrilling about seeing a cast come together as a 'family' of sorts, supporting one another and cheering one another on. Intense. For a short period of time. Friends forever....never to come together in the same way again. We will smile and hug when we run into one another at Wal-Mart...or Blockbuster....and breathe a collective sigh for the good times gone. Satisfaction for a job well done. And you thought all the hard work was just for YOUR benefit as an audience member? Naw. Next time the opportunity arises, volunteer to paint or sew or brush on stage makeup. I guarantee that you won't regret it.

(pictures are from a recent performance of 'Tom Sawyer.')

There are days.....

2008-05-03T13:39:00.000-07:00

There are moments...and days when I really love my children. I mean really, really REALLY love them. Today just happened to be one of them. DH was at work. We got out of bed and dashed across town - an hour away - for a soccer game. Nary an argument from either of them. Okay...maybe one about a misplaced sock. Her team won. We headed home and stopped at one of MY favorite restaurants for lunch. It happens to be one of their favorites as well but that doesn't matter. I even sprung for the big dessert to share.
Then we headed to the BIG book store. I gathered an arm full of books and settled in a cozy corner chair to peruse my selections. They left me alone. For 45 whole MINUTES!! They came with several book choices of their own and were pleasantly surprised when I agreed. Rare occasion when we agree about that stuff. I tend to shy away from fandom soccer things. We have too much of that littering bedroom floors as it is. They disappeared again for 20 more minutes. Fifty five dollars later we headed home. All of us sated and happy. And there were cards in the mail inviting us to the middle school awards event. Both are receiving awards this year. Did I mention that I love my children?

Who Would Have Thought?

2008-05-01T08:49:00.000-07:00

I have been painting children's book characters on sweatshirts for the past 17 years. It was a 'hobby' that started sort of accidently. I wanted to wear a sweatshirt to work one day and painted a favorite book character on it first. It was an unexpected hit. Then I painted another one as a Christmas gift for our Media Tech. She approached me about painting shirts for the school staff to wear during our 'reading month' activities. They would bring in a shirt and a copy of their favorite book and I would be painting far into the night while watching television. I don't think there is a classic book I haven't painted - and read while doing it. I have painted hundreds over the years. I have done sweatshirts for birthday gifts....retirement gifts...end of the year teacher gifts...shower gifts...etc. I have painted them for visiting authors and illustrators - who actually LOVE them and never caution me about copy right infringements. One illustrator essentially gave me verbal permission to use any of her work in this manner. I loved it...once. It was relaxing and the sort of thing I was very good at. The 'business' end of it has basically gone through ups and downs. There was a time when a fan in another state ordered something new every fall. She must be retired now. Haven't heard from her in a while. And then there was the person who called me from across the COUNTRY to order something similar to one she had seen a person wear on the beach in California. And the Dad of the local author/illustrator that wanted shirts for an entire family to meet his daughter in at the airport. It was an honorable business. So just HOW did I end up positioning plastic in the crotch of a pair of size 4 panties before painting bunnies? Well...a teacher friend was comisserating over the fact that her daughter HATED the only character that graces little girl underwear and she needed something to boost the potty training efforts. She begged and I painted Miffy the Bunny on four little undershirts and eight pair of panties that wound up in a three year old's Easter basket. Okay, so my friend paid me to do it but I swore I wouldn't do it again. It made me feel kind of....kinky. But it was a hit and the potty training has sucessfully commenced. And I have ANOTHER bag of undies to paint for ANOTHER staff member with a little girl who hates the character that is on the store bought stuff. Here we go again. Max and Ruby. Maybe I should just drop PBS a line and tell them to go into the toddler underwear business. Anyone have their number????

I Told You So.....

2008-04-23T20:36:00.000-07:00

The 'Mom Talk' on the way to school had to do with many things. 'If at first you don't suceed......being proud of what you have accomplished....since we are not rich, college means scholarships and this is ONE more thing for that particular application....and finally 'you are a role model for all of those 7th graders who did not make it in this year either...and if you DON'T want to be their role model then I am ashamed of you.....' Heh. I insisted that he go to the practice...and swore that I would call the school during 2nd hour to make sure he was there....and THEN if he found it unbearable he could make the decision not to go.

I was in the principal's office of my school getting a piece of candy for a job well done (remember the 750 white pine seedlings that needed to be bagged??) when he walked in. I casually asked if we were going tonight and he nodded ever so slightly. My boss asked where we were going and he didn't want to tell her. She dragged it out of him that he was being inducted into the National Junior Honor Society. Her mouth dropped open. "That's like a really big thing," she said. "You know that right?" He just nodded. I am not sure I am liking this 'ultra cool, let's not get excited about anything, 14 year old' stage. But it was cool...and sweet and inspiring. There were candles being lit, pledges being said, certificates handed out and he even had fun. He actually admitted it. Heh. Oh...and there is another 'ryte of passage' on our agenda. He has been invited to his first boy/girl party Saturday night and he actually WANTS to go? I am SO not ready for this........

Insomnia......Thy Name is Exhaustion

2008-04-21T19:51:00.000-07:00

I am exhausted. Totally, inexplicably exhausted. So why am I wide awake writing this? We started back to school today after a week long spring break. I had three classes of very excited second graders who could not get the words out fast enough for what they had done over break. Set them to work writing 10 sentences about their vacation in Microsoft Word to use for an assessment next week. Gotta make sure they know how to maneuver their way around fonts changes, font size changes, font color changes and inserting pictures. Short lunch break spent wolfing down a toasted tuna sandwich and cucumber slices in between bucking up the Music Teacher/Community Theater Director I am helping with a production that opens on Friday. Several actors still haven't gotten their lines down....sufficiently. Sets have not be completed. He is getting nervous and needed reassurance. After lunch there were four classes of fourth graders who slipped in to the lab and became total Power Point Gurus as we explored the 'action button' process. Heh. And they thought 'custom animation' was fun. In between classes I fielded no less than 30 emails regarding a tree bagging 'event' to take place tomorrow. 750 pine seedlings need to be bagged, tagged and twist tied so students can take them home on Wednesday in celebration of Earth Day. Someone 'forgot'. Guess who is going on on her day off - which was supposed to be spent painting Max and Ruby on little girl underwear more on that later...heh - to organize and oversee the assembly lines manned by enthusiatic 4th graders to get the job done? Heh. That is AFTER I meet with the producers eager to show me the work they have done editing the cable show on literacy we taped a few weeks back. Immediately after school we picked up a take out dinner and went to rehearsal where my kiddos learned the ropes of being 'back stage crew' and I finished painting faux gravestones and stressed over costumes. I took pictures of 50+ cast members that need to be printed, autographed and laminated. Or was that printed laminated and then autographed?? In and out of this activity was an ongoing argument with the Royal Prince regarding a Junior National Honor Society induction ceremony tomorrow night - for which we are skipping play rehearsal, soccer practice and a clarinet lesson to attend. He has suddenly decided that he doesn't want to go...to participate...to be inducted. Sheesh.

But I know we will go and he will participate. He will be inducted. 750 pine trees will be bagged, tagged and taken home to be planted so we can have more options for cleaner air. Pictures will be printed and autographed and hung. The play will happen on Friday and the sets will be done. The lines will be learned and the costumes will be okay. The Kindys will love the books we will read on Wednesday in class and the 5th graders will become Power Point Gurus as they explore the 'action button' process. As for me.....well..... think I will sleep in on Saturday. Unless we have an early soccer game.

It is only Monday, right?

Welcome to MY life. What's new in yours?

YOU KNOW YOU’RE AN ADOPTIVE PARENT IF…

2008-04-05T05:53:00.000-07:00

1. The fact that there are 143 million children without a parent to kiss them goodnight has made you lose sleep.

2. You realize DNA has nothing to do with love & family.

3. You can’t watch Adoption Stories on TLC without sobbing.

4. You spend free time surfing blogs about families who’ve experienced the blessing of adoption.

5. It drives you crazy when people ask you about adopted child’s “real” parents. (This one actually doesn't bother me. My kids know who their 'real' parents are....I think)

6. You’ve been “pregnant” with your adoptive child longer than it takes an elephant to give birth. (well....8 month wait for one and 11 month wait for the other doesn't really count...)

7. You’d no idea how you’d afford to adopt, but stepped out in faith anyway, knowing He’d provide.

8. You’ve taken an airplane half-way around the world with a child you just met.

9. You realize that welcoming a child into your heart & family is one of the most important legacies you could ever leave on this earth.

10. You know what the word “Dossier” means & you can actually pronounce it correctly! (And 'apostile'...that one was OUR biggie.)

11. You’ve welcomed a social worker into the most private parts of your life.

12. You shudder when people say your child’s so lucky that you adopted them, knowing full well you’re the blessed one to have him or her in your life.

(found this on someone else's blog...thought it was pretty neat.)

Gifts

2008-04-03T09:43:00.000-07:00

I have been cruising through blogs based on infertility lately. Don't really know why. I post occasionally and share our adoption story. Infertility has been an issue with us but not a deeply rooted one. We were older than most when we were married. He had two biological daughters from another marriage so it wasn't a real issue with him to have another. I had been curiously interested in adoption from a very young age. Probably because - when I was 10 - one of my favorite books to read and reread was one called 'The Family Nobody Wanted' by Helen Doss. It's the inspiring story of a minister and his wife who adopted twelve children of different races and varying shades into one family. And then there was 'They Came to Stay' by Marjorie Margolies. This her adoption story - Lee Heh from Korea and Holly from Viet Nam - as a single parent. Interesting that it wasn't difficult - after all these years - to remember their names. I could probably still reel off most of the Doss kids as well.

Thanks to the internet, I have been in contact with both authors in the past several years. I let them know how their stories came to play in my own life. Adoption? No biggie. Lots of paperwork. Lots of curious questions from people who have not done it. Different? Don't really think so....in the long run. We have our differences and similarities based on the fact that we are males and females who share the same house...the same experiences....the same arguments.....same laughs. I wasn't really sure if my kids really felt the same. Are the lines between biological and adoption as blurred for them as it is for me? Maybe.

I went to my daughter's educational planning meeting the other day. Her Study Skills teacher told me that she'd given her students a paragraph to write in class and was very impressed with my daughter's work. She had a little conference with her to discuss how thoughtful the piece was...how varied the language...how well written it was. She said my daughter just smiled and leaned in close - conspiratorially - and whispered, "Yeah.....and I get that from my Mom."

The Game Winning Goal

2008-03-30T18:06:00.000-07:00

I bought the tickets last January in a price reducing promo for Michigan schools. Stuck them in their Valentine cards and made their entire week!DH and HRH have been before but this was the very first Red Wing experience for my daughter and I. We were up in the nose bleed section but I don't think there is a bad seat anywhere at the Joe Louis Arena. The game was also very special in that it was an 8oth birthday celebration for Gordie Howe...Mr. Hockey....a Red Wing hero when I was a kid. Sheesh. But the best thing of all was that I was a bit bored by the nothing/nothing score in over time and rueing the possibility of a shoot out. Was playing around with my camera and just happened to be focused on the net when the Red Wings crashed in their only goal for the game and won!!! I think HRH is going to be a bit easier on his old Mom for a couple of days....hee.

Dipsy Doodle's Flower Pot Shop

2008-03-29T11:15:00.000-07:00

Well, it finally happened. Something I did on paper actually came to life. Real live bouncing pink coiffed life. Heh. I posted earlier about a weird little idea that I had regarding a show for our school cable channel. 'Dipsy Doodle's Flower Pot Shop...a place where seeds of learning are planted.' The theme song was written by a first grade teacher in my building and recorded by her students. Another Kindergarten Teacher friend read a story aloud on camera...which was also pre-recorded. Last weekend my husband built a store counter for the set.....in my kitchen because of a snow storm. I had to remake the costume because - much to every one's surprise - dark purple with black flowers and silver threads does not show up on a blue screen. My daughter looked like a floating head as she was modeling it. (Hey, I am just glad that we tried it out a week early!) The plan was to start shooting on a Thursday afternoon and do as much as we could. If we needed Friday, the place was available. So, I arrived at the high school television studio two hours early with the counter, a huge collection of plastic flowers, one three foot live plant, baskets, watering can, kiddie cash register, gloves and everything else we needed for three episodes. My three producers helped set up the set. We played around with the background to get it perfectly aligned. We arranged and rearranged plastic flowers. Tried tape....and finally drove in screws to use flowers to hide imperfectiosn here and a latch or two there. The girl who had agreed to play Dipsy arrived shortly after. She had spent the weekend in Las Vegas with her best friend's family and had had no sleep the night before as she was doing 'catch up homework' all night. (I am in awe of teenagers. How DO they do it?) The elderly friend playing 'Farmer Bob' brought along his wife. High school students were in and out. Farmer Bob's daughter - a Teacher at the high school - popped in to see what was happening. We rehearsed and re-rehearsed, tried camera angles, moved set pieces, rehearsed again and finally began shooting at 1:45. We shot, reshot, rearranged, rewrote and rehearsed again. By 3:15 we knew we would need to finish. Everyone had places to be after 4 pm. It had been a long, tedious process for a short kids' show. Finally we were done with one episode. Dipsy had split to her afternoon job. Farmer and Mrs. Bob were gone. We tore down the set and packed it all back in the bag I'd brought. I loaded my car and left to pick my children up at their after school play rehearsal. Exhausted and entirely exhilarated. Weirdly let down. I have been working on this for three months. Chasing down copy right permissions, conscripting help from friends, writing and rewriting, searching web sites for costume pieces, worrying, bouncing ideas off of anyone who hadn't lost patience to listen...again. Now I will wait for the editing process to take place. I was assured that I would be part of the thinking process for another episode. In the mean time, Dipsy Doodle is no longer just a figment of my imagination. And that's pretty amazing.

Need a laugh?

2008-03-09T06:44:00.000-07:00

I LOVE Anita Renfro. Her 'Momsense' video of all the things a Mom says during the day is a classic. Reminds me - whenever I need a reminder - that I am not the ONLY one. Heh. Just discovered her 'Dadsense' vid. Here are the links. Haven't figured out how to add a You Tube videos here yet. Enjoy. I did.

Momsense: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W95Y8hNQiH8

Dadsense : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtNGFh-dCe0

Sad/Happy Truths

2008-02-29T19:14:00.000-08:00

Dang. We were right in the middle of crossing a busy street in Chicago when she said it. Just came right out and asked. "So...are you my STEP-mom or what?" The Mom walking with us stopped for a split second and did a double take back at us. We scurried across to the sidewalk and I assured her, matter of factly, that I was her MOM....that she also has a birth mom but we don't know anything about her. That I was Kylee and Linnea's step-mom, because I was married to their birth dad. She shrugged and nodded. End of conversation.

Until we were on the bus to a museum the next day. She was standing and holding the pole for support - just because she wanted to stand - when she asked me if I knew anything about them. I knew who she was talking about. I knew she was mulling her history over in her head. But I made her ask.

"Who?"

"My mom and dad? My BIRTH parents?"

I told her that I knew nothing at all....except that they were very smart. She thought that over for a moment and then asked me how I knew. I told her because of where they left her.

"At a BUS STOP?"

She was horrified. Almost angry in fact. And then I explained that they left her at a busy place where they knew someone would find her quickly. They could have left her in the woods where a wild animal could have gotten to her....or in an abandoned house without food and water. They were smart enough to leave their sweet little toddler in a safe enough place. I could see her rolling this concept over in her head - the very same thing she had been told numerous times before - and she nodded thoughtfully. End of conversation.

Until we were sharing a fruit cup for lunch in the basement of the museum.

"Do you know what they look like?"

I shook my head and she was a little saddened. There was nothing to share with her. Just a police report. End of conversation.

Until were were on the 'L' a little later on our way to meet our Girl Scout comrades for dinner. I had been waiting to ride the L. Any ER freak can tell you that the show is ALL about what happens on the L. I was all about absorbing the sounds and sights of the L.

"Can we go back to Russia to see them....maybe?"

This time I shook my head. I explained that we could go back to Russia someday. I had planned to do that with her. We could see the baby home where she was taken and the orphanage where she was living when we met her for the first time. But we probably would not be able to see her parents. She thought about this a moment and then nodded.

"I wish I had a picture of them." Screw the L. My heart was breaking for my beautifully curious and sensitive daughter.

I wondered where all of this was coming from....at this time. Off guard. But then, I began to realize that we were in the middle of a strange busy city with 17 of her Girl Scout friends and 14 of their Moms. Moms and daughters that looked like each other, walked and shopped like each other, laughed and talked like each other. We shared a room with a mom and daughter that were almost mirror images of one another. And then there was us. As different from one another as night and day. At least when her dad and brother were with us we were joined by the common bond of being female. As I watched her in the midst of her friends, dancing to a 50's tune with our wild and crazy waiters, I pondered her dilemma. Feeling a part of things and yet different from them. It was like a bubblegum bubble in my throat for the rest of the night. Getting bigger and bigger. It didn't get better till much later...when we were snuggled together in the bed we shared in the hotel. I wrapped my arm around her and she laced her fingers in mine.

"I love you, Mom."

Pop...goes the bubblegum. End of conversation.

The Producer......of a wierd little idea

2008-02-27T19:57:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow, February 28, 2008, I shall officially become a television producer. Tomorrow we begin taping the inserts that will become the theme song and classroom field trip for 'Dipsy Doodle's Flower Pot Shop.' It has been a long, exhilarating, creative and somewhat frustrating process that began as a weird little idea last September.

Well, maybe the weird little idea actually began last fall when I was kicked out of my Kindergarten position and dragged kicking and screaming into the Tech Ed position. I begged the district's Tech Trainer to spend a morning with me teaching me how the school's computer lab worked. We spent a delightful few hours checking things out, teaching me the ropes and talking about his own new position as the cable station director. He was interested in producing new programming with a parent education focus. I told them they needed to get something up for preschoolers and their parents to watch. I mulled a few things over and then submitted my 'weird little idea' to him. I waited and waited and waited and then basically forgot about it. We ran into one another at a district meeting in December and he told me that they were very interested in doing it. I met with two 'official' producers a few days later...just before Christmas vacation. I advocated a program idea that would entertain preschoolers and model for parents basic literacy concepts. The program encompasses the very best of shows I watched when I was a child. Milky the Clown, Soupy Sales and Captain Kangaroo were the heros of my little world. It delights me to think that their tricks shall be carried on through my own weird little idea.

Over the past few months I have been actively seeking copyright permission from authors whose works will be the center of our show. I have conscripted teacher friends to be on camera readers, write a theme song and design the 'set' we will use. I have met with a retired friend who clowns for a hobby and absorbed suggestions for my own clown character. I 'auditioned' a recommended high school student to portray the host of our show. She is delirious with excitement. I scoured clown supply web sites for glasses and gloves and paints and wigs. The pattern, material and accessories for a costume are hanging from my bedroom door knob in a Wal-Mart bag....this weekend's project. I have conscripted permission from parents for their children to appear on camera. I have written one script and three more are burbling in my head waiting for a spare minute so they can be transferred to my computer. And tomorrow we start filming.

So it's just a little preschool show and I am doing it for free. This producing stuff is kind of cool.....but I am seriously channeling the spirits of Milky, Soupy, Captain K, Jim Henson and and Mr. Rogers. Weird little ideas can sometimes kick start a change. I am too old to start a new career but this is the right size project for me. Gotta figure out how to get paid for it though. Then it would be a perfect weird little idea. Heh.

Quadruple Whammy

2008-02-21T17:20:00.001-08:00

Oh, I am SO not ready for this. He turned fourteen today and I was gently reminded that it's only eight more months until he is eligible to take driver's education. I was making chocolate chip pancakes at the time and trying to decide which plastic plate should be his - the Ronald McDonald soccer player or the Cat in the Hat mini-plate? Swallowed a huge lump in my throat and chose the Cat in the Hat. After breakfast and before the mad dash to the car for a ride to school, I proof read the rough draft of an English paper that was due today. He'd chosen the common theme of kids growing up too fast from the books 'Across Five Aprils' and 'Soldier's Heart.' He wrote, "Kids want to be adults because they get to do more things and then they forget about following their own dreams." Aww.

Baked a cake today. Chocolate with chocolate frosting and color flaming candles - per his request. Met them at my school and worked on homework in the library before a meeting I needed to attend. I was going over Science vocabulary with his sister when he nonchalantly handed me a large yellow envelope. High School registration forms. HIGH SCHOOL! It's looming just slightly over the horizon. I swallowed the lump in my throat and looked through the catalog as he went on excitedly about which electives he was thinking about taking....and watched him fill out the sports interest form with round, still childish script. Sigh.

We went out to dinner at a restaurant he'd chosen. His sister had an announcement and there was a scuffle of feet under the table. She glanced at him in consternation and then silently sat back in her seat. It took a few wiggles and jabs but we were finally told that he'd asked a girl to dance at the school Valentine celebration last week. The girl had told his sister about it yesterday. A very proud and giggly girl told her about in the hall between classes. She even knows her name.....which I told her to keep a secret. She is a sister after all and I know he'll tell me some day soon. Instant flashback. Black slacks, slate gray shirt AND....behold all wonders....a silver TIE! I would have been giggling too. He was one handsome dude that night.

Then it hit me. Fourteen? Driver's Ed? High School? Girls?

Quadruple whammy.

I am SO not ready for this. Sigh.

WHAT was I thinking????

2008-02-13T20:13:00.000-08:00

A bazillion projects. 'Tom Sawyer' rehearsals three nights this week. Son is off to a Valentine's dance tomorrow and he is wearing a TIE! The cable show is plodding along. The Writers' Strike is OVER. Snow and sniffles.... Two days off school next week so it's a long weekend. One would think that it's a perfect time to cozy up to the remote and a box of popcorn for the weekend. But, nnnoooOOOOooooo. I am headed to Chicago with seventeen 12 year olds and fourteen of their Moms. Money being spent right and left. FOUR days without my computer....my internet buddies.....E-MAIL????? WHAT was I thinking??

SNOW Days....and Erik Smith

2008-02-01T03:50:00.000-08:00

Many years ago when we were applying for American citizenship for our then 2 and a half year old son, I sent letters to famous people requesting a note...something that would explain to my little guy about the importance of being an American. I probably sent out 20-25 requests....some of them pretty far fetched....like Oprah and Steven Spielberg. I received four replies. An autographed photo of Jimmy Carter. A very nice response from actor Jimmy Stewart's secretary explaining that he was ill but would have definitely liked to respond. (He died a short time later.) A very nice letter and religious pamphlets from television minister, Robert Schuller. But the wonderful letter and autographed picture that drew the most profound reaction from my son - even then - came from Erik Smith, a local television newscaster. Why?

Erik Smith was probably the one celebrity who brought the most joy into our lives. He was the announcer of the area's 'Snow Day' report. Those delightful days were the ones we didn't have to stuff ourselves in to snow suits and hurry off to daycare and school. The days when we could stay in our jammies all day and make cookies. The days when we would construct snow forts and then enjoy them while sipping on steaming cups of hot cocoa. Sometimes - if there was a wind - we would drag in a tub full of snow to play with in the bath tub or on the kitchen floor. My husband was horrified the first time we did that. Heh. What's a little melted snow? It mops up. Fun days. Surprise days.

When I was a kid we would gather around a radio to listen to the school closing list. When it came we would suddenly be wide awake and thrilled to death. We could hardly wait to get outside in the snow. My mom would make us wait until at least day light. We never worried about frozen pipes or empty refrigerators. All we cared about was building snow sculptures and throwing snowballs. Rolling in it. Sopping wet mittens. Frozen noses and cheeks. As I got older it was the snowmobile that provided the fun...and the task of going to the neighborhood market for needed groceries. Fun days. Surprise days.

I still enjoy them....and I am the Mom. A Teacher Mom. This morning I was up at four thirty am watching out my window. The television was on and already reporting the massive snowstorm that was edging toward us. At 5:10 am they finally listed my school district on the lengthening list of school closings. I was instantly wide awake. Old habits die hard.

My son is now two weeks away from turning 14. He just stumbled out of the bedroom and stood in front of the local news...still hosted by Erik Smith. He read our school district's name on the lengthening list of school closings running across the screen, smiled and stumbled back to bed. Erik Smith can still bring a smile to my guy's face. My angsty adolescent guy. Heh. Lucky man.

Of Closed Doors and Open Windows.

2008-01-24T02:45:00.000-08:00

Wow. I remember all that personal angst last summer. Hurriedly cleaning out my classroom so others could move their stuff in. Pitching teaching materials into the trash bin behind my school because I had NO place to store it. Trying to whittle 26 years of teaching Kindergarten and first grade into 6 plastic bins. Accepting $100 for 'all the rest' from the teacher taking my place. Crawling online and through book stores all summer long to 'educate' myself about Technology. Begging my oh so tech oriented sister (who lives about 8 states away) for tips. Shaking my 52 year old toes in tennis shoes on that very first day when faced with 28 fourth graders and 32 whirring machines in the school's Computer Lab. Heh. Now I am a living breathing testament to the credo 'When the Lord closes a door, somewhere he opens a window.'

I thought I was going to literally die if they took me out of the classroom. It had been my career for way too long. I had a reputation. I had history in the community. I sincerely expected to flounder and sputter and eventually have enough muster to quit my career.....after 30 years. That first week of school I actually walked out...on time...with this eery feeling that I was supposed to be doing SOMEthing. There was something nagging about walking out without stacks of construction paper or books or laminating to work on at home. But what was I supposed to be doing? I no longer have to run off, copy, cut or count to prepare projects for little ones. I no longer have to search files or teacher magazines for ideas. I no longer have to worry about pencil grasps or CAP scores or which book to read to capture little interests. Now I spend a few hours planning 'projects', contemplating how to teach elementary kiddos to be responsible on the internet and creative with their computers. It's a pretty heady job but not at all as time consuming as Kindergarten was. There is not a lot out there to work with either. I have my name on the list to work with home bound students. I work with a child for an hour on each of my off school days. It's fun and very rewarding. Again, not so time consuming. So what does a part time teacher do with this sudden abundance of free time?

Well, I could clean house. Heh. Yeah right. However things ARE looking a bit neater around the edges. I could write more. I have the actual time now. Sooo, I have two rather lengthy things burbling on my lap top but still find it easier and a tad more rewarding to delve into fan fiction. But I have lost my muse there a bit. Dang writers' strike. Still getting the internet hits on things I have posted though. Still getting messages that I have been added to yet another 'favorite author' or 'favorite story' collection. I could volunteer more at my kids' school. I do that but they have a set routine and it's not likely that I can upset the well oiled machinery of a middle school parent group. No. I have my own irons in the fire.

First there is the return to community theater. I have been itching to get involved in production again. I directed a tremendously sucessful run of 'Annie' twenty years ago and have dabbled in backstage here and there since then. Been itching to direct again. Got the chance a couple of weeks ago and now I am assistant directing 'Tom Sawyer.' Basically just a glorified go-for but it's a start. I finally started creating an internet web site for handpainted sweatshirts. It's something I have done for 16 years off and on. Found my focus there recently. Hoping for some sucess. And lastly, I am putting together a cable program for my school district. "Dipsy Doodle's Flower Pot Shop' is a preschool show geared to teach literacy concepts to little ones and model how to teach them to parents. it's been an education. A HUGE education. We go in front of the studio cameras in late March. I am desperately trying to channel the spirits of Jim Henson....and Captain Kangaroo....and Fred Rogers. I am tracking down copyright permissions, developing a set, selecting someone to portray the clown character (a not as easy as it sounds as he/she has to be able to talk TO kiddos and not down to them), rounding up friends to read on camera to kids and model those literacy teaching skills, and on and on and on. Toss in my 8th grader's social life, my 6th grader's clarinet lessons, Girl Scouts, homework, soccer practices/games/tournaments and you will get a clear picture of my daily merry go round ride. Interestingly enough, I am not as overwhelmed or as stressed as I was teaching Kindergarten.

I guess God had this all planned after all. I have been forced to find new avenues for my time...and my creativity...and I am loving it. Go back to Kindergarten?? Heh. Not on your life.

Heritage Projects

2007-12-04T10:31:00.000-08:00

I am beginning to hate these 'heritage' projects. You know the ones. Family trees. Milestones from every year of your life. Questionnaires with lines to answer questions like 'who was the first one to hold you?', 'what was the weather like on the day you were born?' and 'What did you look like when you were born?' For a child who is adopted, especially if it was an international adoption, those projects can spell doom and gloom as parents scramble to make them fit into the specifics of our children's 'heritage'.

My son has never had any interest at all in his Korean heritage. It's not for lack of our trying. He has a shelf full of books and videos and trinkets that we have collected through out his babyhood and childhood. He is more interested in learning about Israel (because his best friend was taking Hebrew classes to prepare for a Bar Mitzvah) and Germany (because his grandfathers fought there in WWII). He recognizes the South Korean flag however. In fact, I have framed a Mayflower project from first grade. Just a boat - but definitely identified as the 'Mafloer' - with three Popsicle stick flag poles. One holding a white sail, one flying an American flag....and one flying a Korean flag. History re envisioned through my Korean born son's eyes.

My daughter relishes every little thing we learn about Russia. She loves every story that we tell her about our adoption trip to retrieve her from her Russian orphanage. She laughs and demands that I tell the 'bath tub story' again and again. (Her first tub bath in our Moscow hotel and she played and played in the water. I flipped the switch to drain the tub, stepped out to get her towel and pajamas and was confused as to why the water wasn't draining. She'd figured out how to keep all that lovely warm water in the tub by unflipping the knob when my back was turned.) She is proud of her history....of which we know nothing. Her required autobiography begins, "When the police found me at a bus stop in Russia, I was wearing a blue dress and could tell them my name." She was approximately two when they found her and five when we adopted her. She remembers nothing before the Children's Home in Tuva.

As a Teacher, I understand the idea behind a heritage project. It opens a door for exploration of traditions and diversity. It gives a child a sense of 'continuity'.....of belonging to a much wider world. As an adoptive parent it drains my heart a little. I wish I could fill those missing pieces. But it does allow me to explain things like 'grafting' - the process used by tree growers to enhance a tree's make up...to make it better...stronger. My family tree has been grafted twice, with shoots from different corners of the world. Stronger? Of course. Better? Definitely.

Ah...the lowly turkey

2007-10-30T07:59:00.000-07:00

I was meandering through one of my favorite neighborhoods in my car looking for houses that were for sale early this morning when I saw a sight than very nearly made me slam on the brakes. Good thing I didn't because there were two cars behind me in a hurry and I seriously doubt that they saw the same sight that I did. But, there in the middle of a nicely paved driveway that lined a perfectly coifed lawn was the biggest wild male turkey that I have ever seen. In fact, I would even go so far as to say it was the ONLY wild male turkey I have ever seen. It just stood there. Stock still. I wished I had my camera.

Turkeys are, by far, the most interesting work of fowl that I know. When you teach Kindergarten, the turkey plays a huge part of your November curriculum. You graph who likes to eat it and who doesn't for Math. You paint or trace chubby little hands to make turkey keepsake pictures. You sing round after round of turkey songs like "Albequeque Turkey" and 'The Turkey Ran Way.' You create story frames extolling the beauty of the bird that saved the Pilgrims for Social Studies. You make turkeys out of cookie dough, pine cones and paper bags. You copy dictated imaginary turkey recipes from five year olds who stuff it with everything from popcorn to tomato soup. You read expository books with real turkey information for Science and story books with friendly turkey tales for Language Arts. My favorite such story, 'Sometimes It's Turkey' by Lorna Balian, outlines a sweet little old woman fattening up a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner only to have him included as a guest at the end. Happy ending for one and all. But there would be no such happy ending at my house. We love turkey. We eat it all year round.

Turkey, dressing and the works. Hot turkey sandwiches with gravy and 'smashed' potatoes. Cold turkey sandwiches with lettuce and mayo. Ground turkey spread made with pickles, onions and mayo. Turkey chow mein. Grilled turkey and cheese. Turkey noodle soup. Turkey all by itself snuck from the plate in the fridge. Turkey anyway, any shape, any form.

I used to make my Kindy kids giggle with pictures of live turkeys. We would laugh and talk about how very hungry a Pilgrim would have been to see it in the forest and say 'hmm....THAT looks tasty enough to eat!'

But, today I saw a turkey. The biggest wild male turkey I have ever seen. Got me thinking about Thanksgiving and Pilgrims. Got me salivating for turkey again. Dang that big, wild turkey. I am off to the grocery store.

Chinese Eyes....again

2007-10-23T03:47:00.000-07:00

My daughter had to choose a school journal entry to 'clean up and rewrite' on the computer. She asked me to help her edit it. To my surprise she had selected a piece that revealed her own version of the 'Chinese Eyes' situation that I wrote a few pieces back. Still not writing quite like a 'regular 6th grader' but she makes me proud.

Eyes
By Nina

What they don’t tell you about middle school is that some people can be mean.

It was the second day of middle school and I was wanting for our bus at the bus stop. There were two seventh grade boys there and they were saying how Asian people eyes look stupid. I felt like I was 3 years old and I could not hold the tears back. My friend told them to stop but they would not stop. But when school got out I had to get back on the bus. Then the two boys came and they had to sit with me because there were no spots open. Once again they stared making fun of me. I got so mad that I was going to get up and yell at them and tell them to stop. But I couldn’t because I would get in trouble.

When my bus stop came I was crying buckets of water out of my eyes. “Nina,” my mom said. What’s wrong?” She said, “Are those the two boys?” I looked up and sniffled and said “Yes”. I got in the car and I said, “they live right there”. So my mom talked to their mom and then my mom said “Thank you”.

The next day the boys came up and they both apologized to me.

Ode to the Oh So Clean Desk

2007-09-18T14:50:00.000-07:00

I was moved to take a stab at poetry....heh

For many years my desk stood laden
With storybooks and papers
Glue sticks, puppets, tape and scissors
staplers and brads
notes to parents,
notes from parents
confiscated hot wheels
file folders, stray marbles
pencils, crayons and markers
too gluey projects
too painted paintings
(waiting there to dry)
bears, 'babies' and big bumble bees
blankies for safe keeping
stickers, stamps and stamp pads
balloons, strings and paper clips
A computer and a camera.

These were the things I needed
Had to have each day.
I always knew where everything was
Could find most anything there
A shuffle here
A shifting there
A treasure hunt galore!

Now my desk is different
There are no longer any drawers.
The need to hold those projects
those papers, knicks and knacks
No longer things to store
My desk....alas....a wonderment to behold
Each pencil, pen and marker
Standing stright in their own slot.
Paper? Heh. I think not.

So what do I do with this desk?
I keep it nice and neat
I set a good example
For the students that I meet.
And when I pine for that messy desk
The desk with things I need?
I rummage through the big clear box
That sits upon my closet.
The box that holds the paperclips
gluesticks, brads and files
hot wheels cars, stray marbles
stickers, stamps and stamp pads
balloons and strings and.......

Chinese Eyes

2007-09-06T20:43:00.000-07:00

Middle school is a hard world. I sent you off filled with excitement and apprehensions about lockers and combinations and teachers and lunch times and homework. But not the bus. You could hardly wait to ride the bus. Today, just three days into the new school year, you got off that bus, marched to the car and promptly burst into tears. I had to get you inside fast because that big, yellow bus came barreling down that skinny side street right at us. I was brusque and you were crying. My heart was breaking. 'Chinese eyes', you said. Two boys. Teasing. Trying to make you mad. Well, it worked. You were mad....and then your feelings were hurt.

This is a tremendous credit to the teachers of your elementary school. You were one of maybe three Asians, in a kid population that was 700 strong. That population was mostly Caucasians with a sprinkling of Hispanics, Blacks and Biracials. Interestingly enough , there were also handful of Russian adoptees. You are very proud of your heritage as a rule....as mixed up as it is. Russian but Asian. And this is the very first time you have ever had to deal with the 'Chinese eyes' issue. No doubt your middle school will have the same sort of reaction to bullying, intolerance and acceptance. Give them a chance.

But what about those 'Chinese eyes' of yours?

Those eyes have seen the landscapes of a very beautiful Tuva, Russia from hugely tall windows of an orphanage. They have seen the bustling city of Moscow from a taxi cab and an airplane. They have surveyed the sidewalks and wonders from Walt Disney World to Chicago, Illinois. They have camped and tramped through Kentucky, Tennessee and northern Michigan. They have squeezed shut in salty ocean water and opened to bleary focus in chlorine pools. They have blinked away dust in a horse stable and stung with the sweat of soccer practice. They have struggled to make sense of letters and words and numbers and angles. They have danced with the excitement of performing in a school play. They have widened with the thrill of being with your cousins and your aunts and your uncles and Grandparents....that huge family circle that you call your own. They have read signs and maps as we traveled without Dad. They have seen 'Hannah Montana' way too many times in one sitting. They have rolled in embarassment when your Mom insists on a kiss or a hug in your estimation of a 'public place'. We have laughed at those pictures where your eyes are shut in the residue of a huge smile. "Open your eyes, for crying out loud!" I have to say with a laugh as I try for a retake.

And do you know what I like best about those 'Chinese eyes' of yours?

Those eyes never ever fail to see anything but the best in other people. They never ever fail to see a challenge and to set sights on achieving it. They never ever fail to soften when you encounter a puppy....or a horse....or a turtle in the road...or a person in need of comfort or help. They never ever fail to sparkle with life and light when something funny crosses your path. They never, ever fail to thrill me when I look into your beautiful face and realize that you belong to me.

'Chinese eyes' are my very favorites...and don't you ever forget that.
I love you, kiddo...and don't you ever forget that either.

Soccer

2007-08-19T21:36:00.001-07:00

I never intended to be one of those....'soccer moms'. I don't have the van. My kiddos aren't part of any kind of a car pool. I respectfully remained my distance during practices and games. I never try to tell the coach what to do with my child or where to play my child on the team. I generally do not yell at the ref. I just don't really fit all - or any - of this comedic references to 'soccer moms'. I have two kiddos who play soccer however. One has played since he was four and we discovered that he had no interest in baseball - via tee ball. He didn't like the wait time while players took a turn at bat. He was much more interested in finding the honeysuckle flowers in the field around him. Given that his daddy is a sports nut, and wanted him to play something, we tried floor hockey and soccer. Soccer stuck to my son like glue. He loved the game and he was good at it. He had more body cooridination than most of his team mates so he was generally the one that got the goals. He had found his niche.

My daughter came to us from a Russian orphanage at the age of five. Her brother was six and a half. She made him crazy copying his every move and every word. We decided to find her own little world away from his soccer. We tried ballet (too slow), gymnastics (too much time between tricks), ice skating (loved the speed but disliked the instructional times) and horse back riding (fine till she saw a classmate fall against a fence during a horse show). She wanted to play soccer.

During one of her brother's indoor games when she was eight, she was juggling a ball to pass the time and was spotted by a coach from another club. He was surprised that she wasn't committed to a team and invited her to practice with his. And then to play with his team. She has been playing with him for the past two and a half years. Her brother also decided to switch clubs and joined her there. Sigh.

So now I drive an hour each way, three evenings a week for practice. Several other evenings and most weekends throughout the year are devoted to games and/or tournaments. Sometimes my husband heads in one direction with one child and I head in another with the other. We get giddy with excitement about soccer shoe sales. We buy Gatorade by the case. My car stinks of sweaty shin guards and goalie gloves. The back seat floor is covered with empty bottles and smooshed Icee cups.....and an occasional sock. Our dinner table conversation - that is when we are able to have dinner together - is generally spiced with sport words like punt and goal and dribble and score. Out of town tournaments mean gas and hotel fees...and the gratuity to pay for the professional coach's fees as well.

There are lots of times when I long for the days of recreational soccer. These were days when your coach was usually a Mom or a Dad blessed with patience. There were schedules to follow to provide orange slices and juices and snacks after a game. Parents lined up to make a victory arch for all the kids to run through after shaking hands with their opponents. Parents spent more time talking to one another than they did watching the game. The good old days.

This is a Merry go Round that looked like a lot of fun in the beginning. Now that we are on, it's darn tough to get off. Sigh. I guess, maybe, I am one of them after all. Soccer mom. Heh.

Finally happened......sigh

2007-08-14T06:03:00.001-07:00

There is a kind of light that crosses the face of a person when you say you are a Kindergarten Teacher. Their eyes soften and a slight smile teases the corners of their lips. They think about those milk and cookie days of painting and clay, ABCs and crayons, holding hands and nap times. They think of little kids in new shoes, with wide open eyes and hopeful hearts. They think you must have a delightful time 'playing' all day. For twenty years I saw that look when ever people asked me what it is that I 'do'. It's a different kind of look than you get when you say you are a second grade teacher or a fifth grade teacher. It's is definitely different from the look you get when you say you teach high school...or heaven forbid... middle school. Those looks border on the wonder if you are, in fact, absolutely nuts.

Nothing, however, nothing compares with the look I received the other day, when someone at a campground asked what I taught. After twenty years of teaching Kindergarten and first grade, my response about my new position was 'Oh, I am one of the the Informational Technology Teachers in my school.' A mouth dropped open and the eyes sort of glazed over. The question in them could only be described as 'what the h...?' It wasn't until I restated and explained that I would be teaching computer skills in a lab setting to Kindergarten through fifth graders that the glazed look cleared. But the question remained. What the heck does a Computer Lab Teacher do?

I have been pondering that myself all summer long. I am not computer illiterate by any means. When I taught first graders on a year round program, the computer lab was the only air conditioned room in our building. Of COURSE we spent an hour a day in there....keeping cool....and using the computers to research and compile an animal report as a final project for the summer. I did that for six years. I was manupulating the lab in an educational setting long before many of my teaching partners had conquered their fear of those huge humming machines. And now, feeling like the dinosaur that I am, I am surrounded by much younger teaching partners who have never taught without a computer in their classroom. And most of the children that I will be teaching have never spent a day without computer contact of some sort. I'm sure that many of them even have their own computers. I would be crazy not to admit that they probably know more about them than I do.

I have studied the curriculum pages. Compared to what I have gotten for other subjects for other grade levels, it's pretty concise. I have no manual or instructions to follow. I have, however, sorted out a few things sucessfully. We will practice our typing skills. We will explore word processing programs and practices. We will create multi-media power point projects. We will explore web sites for information and graphic sites for pictures. We will learn how to harness the World Wide Web and apply it to our elementary school needs.

I think the most important part of my job in the coming year will not be inspiring enthusiasm for learning as it has been in the past. Heck, flipping on the whirring machine will be enough to do that. No, my most basic responsibility will be teaching my students to be responsible about what they use those computers to do. I will be teaching them to sort and compile appropriate information and put it to use in the way they need it. We will be learning to be responsible with this very huge learning tool that they are being given access to. Have some fun? Of course. It's going to be a learning experience for all of us.

Am I nervous? Darn tootin'. I always am at the beginning of a new school year. Am I excited? Definitely. I always am at the beginning of a new school year. And I am looking forward to the challenge of new information and a new learning process. It's just those darn older kids that are scaring me to death. Haven't had to deal with anyone over three feet tall in a long while. I am wondering if stickers and hand stamps are going to still be enough to keep them in line. But when all else fails, my daughter tells me that candy is a good incentive. Heh. Let the school buses roll! I am on my way for a mega sized sack of Jolly Ranchers.....

Tigers, Tunnels and French Fries

2007-07-28T04:10:00.000-07:00

It was an exhibition soccer game that was to be played in Windsor, Ontario prior to a Border Stars professional soccer game. My son was invited to play. It would be a nice family type Saturday afternoon activity. We dutifully waited in line at the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit with two passports and copies of two sets of adoption papers. It was what we used a month and a half ago with no problem. The Canadian border guard questioned the adoption paperwork but let us through without a problem. Coming back into the US several hours later was stickier. We were told not to have the copies, but to carry the originals...which are safely tucked away in a locked, fire proof box at home. Whew. What 9/11 has wrought! But it isn't the first time we have run afoul at the border...

Seven years ago I happened upon a deal for professional baseball game tickets. It was a low, low price for a Kids' Day game that looked interesting. Lots of perks to bring families tot he stadium. My children were seven and almost six at the time. The almost six year old had only been in our home for seven months and was still learning to speak English. The problem was that you had to buy the tickets at the box office and not at one of the more readily available suburban ticket outlets. Sooo....we made a Saturday morning trip of it. We drove into Detroit, found the new Tiger Stadium, played around at the new front gates for a minutes and bought our tickets for a game to be played in another week. Then I had this brilliant idea to take our kids to Canada for lunch. My husband wasn't too keen on the idea. We didn't have a lot of cash on hand but I told him there was a McDonald's just through the tunnel to Canada. It was just the idea of eating in another country, for pete's sake. How often do we have the opportunity to experience that? Reluctant at first, his enthusiasm grew as we journeyed through the tunnel to Canada and he could see how awed our kids were. We were actually driving under the Detroit River!

On my previous trips to Canada I had been with a friend who knew the ins and outs of Windsor. There was an awesome Italian bakery we liked to visit. We would stop at the border, state our country of birth and our reasons for being in Windsor and travel on through. No big deal. There were similar scenarios occasionally during my childhood when we would plan a day of Canadian shopping. Name, country of birth, reason for being there, travel on. Heh. That was before we needed to state Korea and Russia as orgins of birth.

This time at the border we were asked where we were born and duly stated, Michigan, North Carolina, Korea and Russia. The border guard in the drive through booth's brows puckered. She peeked in our car. Did we have our adoption paperwork? No. Why not? Didn't know we needed to carry it. Over to the side, please. My husband looked at me with a certain degree of dismay. We pulled our car over and were met by another of the border's personnel and were led into an office. My seven year old picked up on his dad's very real fear and clung to his pants so tightly my husband had difficulty walking. I was dealing with the newly arrived almost six year old who was bouncing and skipping, all the time singsonging probably the only English multi word phrase she knew well at that time - which was "I have to go potty!" I was also trying very hard to hold in the giggles. My husband was turning very real shades of green and red. Emabarassment or fear? I tend to go with the latter...and that was why it was so funny at the time.

There we stood in front of the big, bad border guard in Windsor, Ontario. My husband was fumbling with his wallet, asked me for my driver's license, which of course I had left in the car and had to retrieve....all the while trying to rein in the 'I have to go potty' culprit whose curiousity in everything had piqued. The seven year old still clung to his dad's pants and peeked around at the big, bad border guard with eyes as wide as an Asian child's will go. I was giggling. My husband's face had gone from green to red and was now bordering purple. The big bad border guard glared at us. He looked at my bouncing almost six year old, still singsonging 'I have to go potty' and oblivious to everything as she checked out posters and standing ash trays and magazines. Then he glared at my seven year old and barked suddenly, "Who are these people?"

Now a reasonable child have answered 'My Mom and Dad'. My seven year old clinging to the pants of his fear dripping Dad responded with our actual names - people who could have been just about anyone taking them out of the country. I couldn't hold it in any more. The whole situation was so bizarre. I grabbed the sing songing almost six year old by the back of her tee shirt and dragged her closer. My gaze went from my wide eyed seven year old who was very proud to have answered the question correctly to my now absolutely purple husband and I chortled. I laughed out loud and then met the gaze of the big bad border guard who actually had the 'twinkle in his eye' that you always read about. Hee hee. He glared at me again and told me to keep a copy of our adoption paperwork in the glove compartment from now on. I nodded and grabbed the hand of my purple hued husband with the seven year old now happily bouncing along side of him having solved the problem with his answer to the big bad border guard. I dragged the almost six year old - who still had to go potty - and we got in our car.

My husband was all for skedaddling out of Canada immediately and was not happy when I insisted that we continue the half block to McDonalds. He ordered hamburgers and french fries and drinks while I took the almost six year old to the potty....at last. When I came back the seven year old was swinging his legs in the booth and declaring that he liked 'their' fries better and showing off the 'really cool' Canadian money they had gotten as change. We ate and headed back to the tunnel. My husband stopped at the border's tax exempt shop to exchange the Canadian money for American and let the kids buy a small souvenir of Canada...an oversized pencil for him and a little truck for her. We had been in Canada for all of 45 minutes.

Soooo....after this last border encounter, we have finally gotten the message, I think. We are going to apply for passports.

Oh, and we did go to the baseball game a week later where a very happy almost six year old was crushed. She thought she was going to see actual TIGERS play baseball....not a team called 'Tigers'. But that is another story!

The 'Still' Facts Are....

2007-07-19T05:20:00.001-07:00

1. There is still a lot of sand on Daytona Beach.

2. The afore mentioned sand will still find it's way into every available orafice when you are playing in the waves on shore.

3. Some people (namely me) are still afraid of shark attacks.

4. Some people (namely my daughter) are still not afraid of shark attacks...or rip tides...or sunburn.

5. The Daytona Drive In Church is still a pleasant way to enjoy a worship service.

6. Sonic still makes the greatest popcorn chicken and cherry/lime slushes in the world.

7. The Daytona Flea Market is still a great way to spend an hour or two....or three.

8. I still can't find the captioning mode on the television remote that Pop...still...rules with an iron fist.

9. Driving for two days in a car with a mileage obsessed creature who abhors potty stops because they take time that you didn't know you had married is still...not fun.

10. My mother's continued recovery from the health issues of a horrendous last summer is still a miracle!

And the Cycle Continues.....

2007-05-25T16:35:00.000-07:00

Last night I had the delightful honor of being present for my niece's graduation from high school. Given the fact that she lives about five states south of my home, that our school year is still in session and that my state testing scores need to be posted in the very, very near future, it was an honor the I don't share lightly. After the short and very official ceremony, I was ambling about the grassy lawn of Lander University 'people watching' as kids, their friends and families, teachers and acquaintenances enjoyed the dying evening sun as they snapped pictures and just soaked in their in their last moments as a school family. I had taken a couple of minutes to admire a beautiful 10 month old child newly arrived from China...the daughter of my sister's teaching partner. As we were headed back to the car someone else flagged us down from a parked car. A woman approached and asked if I was the 'famous sister she had heard so much about.' She was introduced as one of the high school teachers that had my neice and nephew as students in school. She proceeded to tell me a story that tugged at my heart strings and made my entire day....no week...um...maybe month.

She and her husband were parents of five children and had been going back and forth for a while about the 'wisdom' of initiating an adoption. One day in the last moments of a Science class, students were sharing pictures and my neice approached her to ask if she wanted to see a picture of her cousins and aunt. It was one of those 'teacher moments' she explained, when she had a six inch high stack of papers to go through quickly and would rather have not taken the time to look....but did. My niece handed her a photograph of her adopted Asian American cousins and went in their story...of how wonderful they were and how well their adoption experience had been for our family. And she said it was in that moment that she believed God had given her a sign that they should proceed with an internationl adoption. It has been three years. They are now the parents of seven - including two beautiful three year olds from Guatamala adopted at different times - and one more is on the way home from another South American country in another year. How wonderful that it was our adoption story that tipped this family in the direction of bringing even more into their loving circle. How wonderful for those three children that will grow up cared for and blessed and loved. You just never know when the hand of God is going to reach out and touch someone with your own life story......even if it's five states away.

Meet the Robinsons

2007-05-05T09:35:00.000-07:00

Nina is the one that wanted to see it. She has wanted to see it for months. Daniel didn't. Neither did I. There was really nothing else showing, it was pouring rain and we had an afternoon off school together. I appeased Daniel by paying the extra bucks for a 3-D version. You know...the kind where they give you special glasses to use? Cost me the price of another ticket. Sigh. For a kids' movie. An animated one at that. I hate animated movies. But only because it's difficult to read their lips....something crucial that a hearing impaired viewer needs to be able to do. Actually the only animated feature I have ever been able to enjoy without interpretation was Disney's 'Beauty and the Beast'. Watch it some time and pay close attention to how well the words match the characters' lip movements. It's incredible. Haven't seen one like it since...and with two kids, we have seen them all. And so I resignedly settled into my seat, settled the 3-D glasses over MY glasses and prepared to snooze.

What a nice surprise. The movie was actually entertaining. The subject also - surprisingly enough - was one that is very dear to my heart. Adoption....and more specifically, older child adoptions. I didn't know why I didn't pick up on it sooner.

A little kid named Lewis, a brilliant inventor who was left on the door step of an orphanage as an infant, has entered a 'Memory Scanner' in the school's Science Fair. His reason for creating it is to find his birth mother so they can be a family again. Another character - Wilbur Robinson - whisks him into the future so they can stop another character from stealing the invention and save the future. Along the way Lewis meets and begins to care for the wierd and wonderful Robinson family. He learns that the future is rooted in his own present and affected by his actions. Along the way he has a chance to discover his birth mother and doesn't, finds a family and lives happily ever after.

I have read that adoption advocates do not support this Disney movie. They report that adopted children and their parents came away distressed about the scenes depicting Lewis turned down by 100 prospective parents. Birth parents have come away distressed that Lewis, when given the chance to reunite with his birth mother, chooses not to. I don't know really know how my own adopted sweeties took that aspect of the film. They never really talked about it. We've never really talked about birth parent abandonment at all. They thought it was a really, really good movie however - even Daniel.

I saw it as a story of a kid searching for a family and finding it in his own backyard. A kid who knew his potential, knew he was a genius and liked that about himself. He never blamed his birth mother for abandoning him....never hated her....and in the end, respected her decision to give him away.

We have a smidgen of information about Daniel's birth parents and nothing at all about Nina's. I wonder if they will ever feel the need to search for their biological roots? If that day ever comes we will do everything that we can to help them. But in the end, I hope they will know that their 'real' family is the one that has been in their backyard all along. The one that treasures their uniqueness and loves them....just the way they are.

Drive Ins

2007-04-30T19:06:00.000-07:00

My son recently wrote a paper for his English teacher about the time honored classic novel, 'The Outsiders', by S.E. Hinton. Sheesh. I had to read the very same book for MY 7th grade English class...um....WAY too many years ago....when it was considered 'compelling contemporary literature'. Anyway, in one section of his paper he was to outline ways in which the book mirrors his own life. What did he say? "Pony Boy, Dallas, Soda Pop, Two Bit (etc.) liked to meet at the drive in. My family likes to go to the drive in too." Hee.

I am glad he remembers. It's kind of like passing down a family tradition. Thursdays were pay day for my dad and we always went to the bank to cash his check, paid some bills and went out to dinner somewhere. A lost tradition due to today's convience of direct deposit. Friday nights in the late spring and all summer were devoted to our family fixation with the movies. We would pore over the newspaper listings to see what was on, pick one and be ready to go after dinner at home. We would load the car with pillows and blankets, popcorn or chips, candy, a gallon jug of kool aid and off we would go.

When I was growing up, Waterford and outlying townships used to be a mecca of drive ins to choose from. It was our Friday night tradition in the summer. Two movies for the relatively cheap price of one. Kids under 12 could get in free. My sister was 'under 12' till she turned sixteen and finally put her foot down.

There was the Pontiac Drive In which had a very nice playground with a mini ferris wheel and boat ride for kids. The Waterford Drive In had a little train on a tractor that would wind it's way around the parking lot and another vehicle there would spew out choking mists of bug repellent on some hot summer nights. The Blue Sky and Commerce theaters were miles away from home which meant a longer drive till we finally stumbled from the car to our beds after going to the show. My sister was small enough - for a very long time - to make her bed in the back window of our car. She would cram a pillow under her head, wrap one arm around the dog and squeeze them both under the cool glass of the back window and leave the entire back seat of the car to me. On very rare occasions we were allowed to sit outside the car in folding chairs, huddled under a blanket,,,not to keep warm but to keep the mosquitos at bay. Sound came from a box on a pole that you would hook on the inside of your window - and risk popping out that window if you forgot to replace the box before you drove off. I remember hating the bathrooms.....at any of them.

There was generally a cartoon before the feature. If we were on the playground and the cartoons came on, that was the clue to race back to your car and not miss it. Sometimes the sun hadn't gone down quite enough and the cartoons were washed out, but that didn't matter. It was followed by a feature flick, then a ten minute refreshment time - complete with a generic 'commercial' for the refreshment stand. There were only a couple of different ones but the one that stands out most in my mind is one of two little space guys in flying saucers that zoom in for popcorn and coca-cola and then blast back into space. The screen was then filled with a huge clock marking 15 minutes - and a medley of calliope music that I can still hum today....mega years later. Every minute we would get an update. "Our show will start in 10 minutes....or nine or eight...." I used to hate that freaking clock. In all honesty, however, it probably served a good purpose in helping me learn to tell time!

Following the 15 minute break we would be treated to my favorite part of the night - COMING ATTRACTIONS!! I still love watching the previews at the movies...and so do my kids. The second feature is when we usually fell asleep. It was a rare occasion when we managed to stay awake during two movies. And if we actually did, the drive home would certainly do us in. We would carry pillows and blankets inside and drop onto our beds with our play clothes on.

I still remember some of the movies we saw at the drive in. I remember watching Agnes Moorehead and Debbie Reynolds navigate their way through wild river rapids in 'How the West Was Won' from waaaay back in the make out section. Got there kind of late that night, I guess. I remember watching 'To Kill A Mockingbird" from the back seat of the car with my Mom, her aunt Dort and Dort's daughter, Debbie. I had gotten lemon drops for a candy treat that night and heard the word 'rape' for the very first time in my life. I think I was about nine. Occasionally we would go and park next to a family or friend. I remember seeing 'Soylent Green' with Charlton Heston parked next to my Aunt Cleo. I remember taking peeks over at she and my Uncle Tom as they slept through most of it and left before the second picture. My dad was a war movie fan and we saw plenty of those....'MASH', 'Kelly's Heros'...to name a couple. We saw Elvis movies, Disney movies, Pink Panther, Beach Party movies,etc. I think the only genre that we didn't see were the slasher movies or horror flicks.

Once my sister and I couldn't get in for free any more, drive in visits were fewer and farther between. One summer when I was home from college and my sister was working at McDonalds, we went to the drive in together regularly for kicks. And I almost kicked out the dash board of her little car watching 'Jaws'. I didn't go in the water for the rest of that summer either. We saw every kind of movie possible....including the slasher/horror thing my parents always avoided. That was the movie about some 'fry kids' that developed 'special skills' because their school bus went through a radio active cloud of some kind of chemical. Eeeew. Probably the single reason neither of us can stand black nail polish as that was the clue that you were about to be 'fried'. And one night we took my dad's van, backed it into a spot, opened the doors to get a better view, wrapped up in blankets and promptly fell asleep till the end of the second movie. Kinda scary when you think that anyone could have jumped in there with us. LOL

Every one of the drive in theaters of my memories are closed. I drive by their locations occasionally. The Waterford Drive In is just a big open field. The Pontiac has been sealed off and the Commerce just had their big screen torn down. It had been closed for years and years. But my children have drive in memories. They actually prefer the drive in over the multiplex theaters of their world. We just happened to learn about a semi-local drive in and went for a lark one weekend a while ago. We just keep going back.

Our trips to the drive in involve a 55 minutes drive and a stop at a gas station for jumbo sized Slurpees and candy bars. Sometime we pop popcorn or buy chips but in the interest of supporting this little piece of Americana, we buy our popcorn there. It's expensive.

Going to the drive in is still fun. Ours is a double screen - which means screens are facing each other and one screen shows one set of movies and the other shows another. You get the sound for which ever screen your vehicle is facing. There is still an interesting comraderie with drive in patrons. People still chat, share snacks, walk their dogs, open the back end of bigger cars to get a better view. My kids still occasionally sit outside in folding chairs huddled in a blanket to keep mosquitos at bay. Playgrounds are not there but kids still play in the drive way while they wait. Frisbees, baseballs, soccer balls...you name it. My son made a couple of bucks one night by washing windows of cars while we waited for the show to start. He was doing ours and people on either side asked him to do theirs. He talked about going into business doing that for a while.

Kids are no longer free but the admission price for 'under 12s' is minimal. There is rarely a cartoon before the show. Sometimes the movie starts before the sun goes down and it's hard to see on the screen. They still have a 15 minute refreshment break between features. And they still play the same basic medley of calliope music. They still screen 'Coming Attractions.' One really nice improvement is that movie sound now comes from your radio speakers. And I still hate the bathrooms.

The World That I Teach In

2007-04-17T11:10:00.000-07:00

I am staying away from the television and newspapers today. Everyone else seems glued to the news of another shooting on another college campus. But I prefer not to hear one more thing about violence in a school setting. I am a Teacher.

In one more month I will be marking the 30th year since I graduated with a degree in Elementary Education from Oklahoma Christian College and began my teaching career. Those thirty years have seen a drastic change in Education. Curriculums have changed. Textbooks have changed. Testing measures have changed. Classroom designs have changed. Playgrounds have changed. School lunches have changed. Public attitudes have definitely changed.

Along with correct drinking fountain skills, jump rope rhymes, learning to get along with others, planting seeds in paper cups and an ever broadening spectrum of formal academic skills, I am now required to have my Kindergarten class participate in 'lock down drills' as well as tornado and fire drills. We must teach anti-bullying lessons in our classrooms. Parents need to report to the office for a 'visitor' sticker before coming to a classroom to help. Birthday treats need to be scanned for peanut/chocolate/lactose and gluten allergies. Our office staff will soon need medical degrees for all of the medications they dispense during the day. And we need to ease worries about gun toting citizens storming into schools. Did we really worry about that 30 years ago? I wonder if I would have proceeded down the path of a teaching career had someone given me a look into a crystal ball. Probably.

You see, one thing has not changed in 30 years. The mind of the child. The mind that yearns for stimulation and fun. The mind that very literally soaks up the information that is tossed their way, processes it and then tosses it back out into the world with their own stamp of approval. The mind that looks for a reason behind everything and tries to make it fit in the world they know.

Childhood has certainly changed...just as education has. Our children have seen the very news reports and written pieces that I am avoiding today. Even five year olds know about war in far away places. They know about food kitchens and children who do not have socks to wear and blankets to wrap up in. They know about allergies and illnesses that could take their friends away forever. Try as we might, we simply cannot keep them in their own little bubble of innocence any more. They will see....they will know....and ultimately they will change the world we are handing over to them. It is our job as Teachers...and Parents....to give them the tools for change.

So....we will teach them to read and to write and to measure angles and sort things with common attributes. We will keep them safe with lock down drills.....and teach them to problem solve. We will guard them from peanuts and chocolate and lactose and gluten and bee stings and strangers......and teach them to take care of their bodies. We will toss worms back into the grass after a rainstorm and capture spiders in our classroom to be released to safety outside. We will teach them to guard the gifts of the earth. Guard them very carefully. We will keep singing songs about vowels and bubble gum and monkeys jumping on the bed....and teach them to laugh. We will encourage them to collect cans for food kitchens, blankets for shelters and pennies for the Leukemia Foundation. We will cheer as they jump for the American Heart Association. We will keep the world of gun men and wars and hunger and sick at bay for a while every day.......and give children the innate self esteem to know that they have the power to change things. We are Teachers after all....and that is what we do. Every single day in this crazy world. We teach.

NYC

2007-04-12T05:34:00.000-07:00

When I was eight years old, my parents left my sister and I with Aunt Cleo to spend a week in New York. They were participating in a reunion of my dad's WWII army division, the Golden Acorn 87th. When they came home my mom was full of tales of cab drivers that cursed one another, buildings so tall they blocked the sun from the streets, the Statue, the UN building, the World's Fair, wonderful people, the hustle and bustle and exciting sights. My little head was fairly bursting and filled with a longing to see the city myself. I read everything I could about the city...every fictional kids' book I could get my hands on that was set in old New York and new New York. Anyone ever read 'The Magic Tunnel'? I think mine was tattered to shreds.

As I grew, so did my desire. When I became enamored with play writing and theater as a pre-teenager, it blossomed even more. The fact that Broadway, Off Broadway and Off Off Broadway were in NYC made it even more enticing. Only a short plane hop away, right? But, always, always 'life' stepped in to divert time...and money.... elsewhere. My children have learned to love Chicago, as it is a city closer to us. It's their ultimate vacation spot. My husband rankles at the thought of crowded streets and traffic jams. But my heart still longs for the streets of New York.....just once.

Last week my younger sister , who - ironically - has never wanted to visit there, came home from chaperoning her daughter's high school band trip...to New York. Heh. Pay backs for her childhood 'enlightenment' to the existence of Santa and the Easter Bunny, no doubt. She came home with tales of crowded streets, hustle and bustle, flowers in street stands, buildings so tall they blocked the sun from the sidewalks, tributes to the life changing 9/11, astounding architecture, testy food, tour guides with sass and memories of a life time. Sigh.

And so the pictures are hers....and readily shared with me. But there is still hope for my ultimate vacation after all. My daughter's scout troop is contemplating next year's end of the year event as a 'weekend in New York'. Loose in New York with a gaggle of 12 year olds? I will be SO there as a prospective chaperone. Till then....and I know it's trite but.....give my regards to Broadway!

Update....The troop decided that a weekend in Chicago was the way to go. Still had a great time though. I think that I am a TOTAL city bird!

Pink Elephants & April Fools

2007-04-04T02:46:00.000-07:00

April Fool's Day passed in a relatively quiet manner this year. It was Sunday and the kids were roused with a 'we're late for school!' call. Not funny as they stumbled out of their beds....for about 30 seconds. Then there was the telephone call to Non and Pop in Florida. Snow storm in Michigan and the kids were out playing in it. Foot and a half of snow was dumped over night...easy. Naw, they said. Bantering back and forth for about 10 minutes as the sun flooded in the bedroom window and the kids were stuffing blankets in their mouth to keep from laughing. Finally, just as we were to hang up and I had Non hooked...line and sinker...I said 'April Fool's'. It was a funny, funny scenario in my kids' eyes. One we tried to copy later with Aunt Darcy...but lost it in giggles too soon. Oh well.

This 'holiday' has never been one that I took particular delight in. I don't like being the fool. And unfortunately, being a too trusting and somewhat naive individual, I was usually...the fool. It is a day however, that never passes without thoughts of pink elephants.

When I was growing up, our telephone would ring on April Fool's Day and it would be my Grandmother. "Quick...run to the back door," she would say. "There are pink elephants flying over your house!" And I would do it. Every time. There was a year or two when I would argue and she would insist and I would always check. And then there was the year (I was in college, I think...) when I called her to tell HER to run to the window to see the pink elephants. The tradition continues.

My Grandmother died last summer. She was 97 years old and still living on her own in a nice little house in Florida. She lived for long drives in the car, flea markets and meals eaten at restaurants with the best senior citizen discount. She was fortunate to have her children - a tremendous support system - around her to help her sustain that life style. They drove her here and there, ate with her in restaurants and looked after her daily needs. Even in the end, she was lucky. We were all there. Admirable. Ninety seven years old and taken out by a careless driver in a head on collision. She hung on for several days....surrounded by her children, grandchildren and four of her great-grandchildren. Lucky her.....

My Grandmother and I had a complex kind of relationship. I was never an easy child. Big for my age, cloddy, loud, occasionally obnoxious (okay...maybe more than occasionally), heavy, hearing impaired and introspective, I had been born smack in the middle of my Grandmother's 'favorites'. One was a cousin two and a half years older that she helped raise and the other was my sister, four and a half years younger. Her computer screen name isn't 'litte ray of sunshine' for nothing. It is a childhood nickname that stuck. Sigh.

I never, ever felt like I quite measured up in my Grandmother's estimation. She was a stern task master and demanding individual. When I spent the night at her house I puked on the inside of her brand new van. When I went shopping with her we would always buy my clothes in the fat lady section....no matter how much I argued. I broke a glass figurine that was displayed on her glass table. I consistently fought being seated at a 'kids' table'... especialy when the afore mentioned cousin made the move to the 'big table'. I was always too loud...or too boisterous...or too...whatever. Hungry for attention from someone that didn't have it just for me. So I thought...as I grew up.

Oh, I have great memories because of her as well. My family camped on weekends with my grandparents as I was growing up. We spent many holidays at a special restaurant in Frankenmuth with them....and when we celebrated at home her cole slaw was the best tasting ever. And I never got her recipe. There were birthday cakes with quarters wrapped in plastic and stuffed inside the birthday kid's piece. There were chins dripping with peach juice from the fruit grown in her backyard. There was money that turned up in surprising amounts in surprising places. She took my sister and I to Hawaii the Christmas after my Grandfather had died. An unbelievable and treasured time. I will never forget the look on her face when we hung a filled stocking for her to find on Christmas morning that year...in the hotel shower. We continued that tradition for her for a couple of years after.

I was in my 20's when my Grandfather died. He was the third of her four husbands, the Grandpa we had grown up with and her undeniable soul mate. It was a difficult, difficult time for her. For all of us. As we were filing into a pew for his funeral service, my Grandmother unexpectedly slipped between my sister and I to sit. That was the first - and only - time in my life when I ever felt like I was able to please her. We held her hands that day. I prayed...long and hard and passionately that she would find peace.

That day passed and we moved on with our lives. She moved many states away to Florida. We didn't see much of one another. She loved the fact, however, that I loved to write. It was probably the one thing we had in common...aside from our prickly personalities. A traveler with good memories of trips to China and Korea, she delighted in the fact that my children are Asian.

We forged a relationship of respect....but never one of real friendship. That relationship belonged to the 'little ray of sunshine'. Heh. I am fortunate that I have gotten to know my Grandmother better through my sister and her sharing. And I am fortunate to have been there in the end. My children have several days worth of memories with 'the freaking OLD people' as my Grandmother and her entourage babysat for me while my mother was in the hospital last summer. Those will be memories that stick with them for a long time.

Kind of like pink elephants flying over your house.

Mabel Elizabeth Green
Thayer McLeod Mattoon Hawkins
1909 - 2007

The Evolution of a 'Ryter'

2007-03-30T09:59:00.000-07:00

I have always been a voracious reader. I read everything I can get my hands on. I have also always been a writer. Fortunately I have had parents and teachers that supported this endeavor.

In third grade I wrote my first play. It was a story about a teacher with an unruly class. I wrote it, directed it and starred in it. Unfortunately I had a 'cast' of friends who decided to make up their own dialog as we performed. Not a good experience. In fourth grade I wrote a holiday play about Santa and his elves. This time I was a much sterner task master...er...control freak...um... director. Our play went off without a hitch. We performed it for our class and several younger classes as well. The only thing I remember is that we all fell on top of one another behind the piano (our 'back stage' area) in the Music Room at the end of the performance. Giggling, laughing and SO glad it was over. Fourth grade was also the year that I wrote my first melodramatic fiction story. It was a story about a little girl who had lost the use of her legs and became the poster child for the Easter Seal Society. It was entitled 'Amy's Legs' and Mr. Dieck gave me an unofficial 'A+' for writing it. Again, the thing I remember most about that story was snitching a piece of green yarn from my mother's knitting bag to hold the multitude of loose leaf pages together.

Fifth grade was devoted to book reports of every size, shape and length. Sixth grade was devoted to reading again. My Teacher was a stickler for the classics, Greek mythology and history. Mrs. Schultz was a 70ish traditionalist who was teaching for her very last year. She read aloud every single day. She read only Newberry Award winners (with the exception of 'Boy of the Pyramids' because we were studying Egypt at the time) and I can still name every book she read to us. Seventh grade was totally devoted to survival of the first year of jr. high. I do remember that we were introduced to journaling and that Mr. Pritchard was a little freaked that my entries read like magazine articles and book reviews instead of 'personal recollections'. Always thinking outside of the box. Heh.

Just for 'fun' I was writing scripts for my favorite television shows. My friend, Linda Sue Nutt, was the first one I ever allowed to read those. She read them as fast as I could write them. My younger sister became a fan and favorite critic. She would read things as they were being written...chapters always out of order. It used to make her crazy. Still does. Once, about seven years ago, we decided to pass the time on a mutual family campout by creating a plot and group of characters, going off to our campers to write and then meeting later to compare. She finished her story in several pages. Mine had twice as many and was only the first chapter. Still working on that one!

In tenth grade I was a lonely only sophomore in a Journalism class and wrote copy for the high school year book. It was quite heady to have upperclassmen seek me out for captions for photos or pages of photos. My very first published poem is in that book. My 'scripts' were also circulating amongst the other kids in that class. My Journalism Teacher recommended me as the school reporter for the local newspaper. It was a job I held for the next two and a half years. In fact, my byline was a regular fixture in THREE local newspapers during that time. All for the 'experience', of course. On second thought, I think the Lakeland Tribune paid me a nominal fee for each 'feature' that I wrote. That paper became defunct when I was in college.

As a senior I was taking an 'Exploratory English' class. We basically met with the teacher and determined our own course of study. Since I was reading...alot... during the second marking period and didn't have anything to turn in for a grade, I hastily finished a little ditty I had started writing for fun during the summer. It was a lengthy novel that evolved from an essay I had written for English the year before. The exercise in 11th grade had been to write a theme with a character - as unlike us a possible - in a situation we would never be caught in. I think the purpose of the exercise was for us to come to the realization that no matter what, our fictional characters always carry a bit of us. My essay was entitled 'The Decision' and the follow up novel was entitled 'The Crystal Image'. It was about a girl and her family coming to terms with an illegitemate pregnancy, birth and subsequent return home with a child. A hot topic in the early 70's. It was a smash....much to my dismay. My teacher loved it. My friends read it and loved it. It was entered in a short story contest for an out lying college. It was one of twelve stories selected from high school entries to be part of a short story symposium with invited published authors. The authors would be on campus for a week working with college students prior to our little symposium.

We spent a wonderful day on that Sienna Heights College campus. By we, I mean my mother, my grandmother, my 'Literary Cheerleader'/English Teacher Sue Shipley, the other 'winners' and their various supporters. We met with an author in small groups of four. Our written pieces were critiqued. I was red faced and worried and so stressed by the time mine was picked up to be discussed. It was the last of the four in our group. I remember my head buzzing and my face burning....but this very distinquished, white turtle neck sweater/dark jacketed/stylishly graying/oh so handsome author (I wish I could remember his name!) picked up my submitted manuscript and said that he would absolutely love it if his students walked into a writing class with the kind of material he was holding in his hands. I remember that he began asking ME questions about how I developed my characters, how I decided my plot lines and chose my descriptive phrases. Not at all what he had done with the previous three stories. Yikes! It was a surprise only to me when I was declared the winner of a college scholarship for that story.

Did I mention that I have a hearing loss? Before my graduation I allowed the people that love me talk me out of going to school for a writing degree. "Get something that you can support yourself with" they said. They were my family, my friends, my school counselor. "Be a teacher", they said. "You can still write in the summer time." Did I mention that I had also been involved in available child development avenues for high school; classroom helper at the nearest elementary school, student aide the high school day care/pre school center, vacation Bible school teacher, etc? Elementary Education appealed to me and that is where I directed myself. Writing became lost in the shuffle, except for my own enjoyment or for the professors that read my term papers and exam essay questions. When I graduated from college Elementary Education allowed me to put all of my extracurricular interests into play. I wrote for my students. I wrote for my lessons. I wrote...I wrote...I wrote.

Real life stepped in. Multiple jobs to pay bills while I searched for a full time job in education to 'support' myself. I investigated teaching in the Los Angeles area to be closer to the entertainment world that I longed to write for. Too far from family. I got married and busied myself with my husband, home and two stepdaughters. I busied myself with my classroom. I busied myself with community theater, as a make up person, set designer/painter, costume cooridinator, producer, assistant director and finally director. I wrote copy for programs and press releases. I wrote newsletters for various purposes. I still do that. I wrote plays for school drama clubs to perform. I busied myself with my own son and daughter and their activities and their lives. And still I wrote. Nothing big. Nothing anyone else really wanted to read. Nothing I was really comfortable having outsiders read. Until I discovered fan fictions.

I posted my first chapter of my first fan fiction on line during a school holiday vacation in January 2006. People responded with 'reviews'. Well...that was fun, so I posted another chapter...and another and another. In the past fifteen months I have posted 15 different pieces with multiple chapters. Some are funny. Some are melodramatic. Some are just plain 'fluff'. Some follow the course of the show they were written about. Some are 'back stories' - or histories - for characters that appealed to me...answering questions that I needed answers to. Fifteen pieces have generated 140,890 computer hits at one site alone. Some of the stories have been posted elsewhere and gotten even more 'hits'. I have written several pieces for writing 'challenges' that have won their own little contests with readers' votes. I write a lengthy, detailed recap of a weekly television show for a friend's web site. I submit television reviews for another site and have my own little fan base. I have developed some very good friendships amongst my frequent reviewers. This writing has become a very ego building thing at a time when I really needed it.

This writing has also become an all consuming thing. I will never regret my life or my family. I will never regret what I have accomplished in my career. But given the fact that I am finding my all of my free time being sucked in to the time that I spend in front of my computer key board, I think I am always going to wonder what would have happened if I had followed my own originally charted path. I ran into my Literary Cheerleader/English Teacher, Sue Shipley, once about 12 years ago. We were at the grocery store. In the bread department. I was so proud to show off my husband and my too cute little son. She asked me what I was doing now and I still remember the disappointment in her eyes when I said that I was teaching first grade. She told me - again - that she was still holding out hope. That she knew I would make money as a writer some day. "I have always thought that you are able to write what people like to read," she said. "That's not an easy thing."

Write what people like to read. Apparently I still can. I am working on it. Still trying lots of different kinds of writing. Still trying to find that muse that always seems to elude me. I find that I like manupulating characters that are already defined. I am too old to quit what I am doing for a living. With two soccer stars to support, I am too poor to go back to school. Yet, I am too young to totally belie what I enjoy doing the most. It's a conundrum......but an evolving one.

Pax - on the subject of international adoption

2007-03-27T17:37:00.000-07:00

Angelina and Brad have a new son. People Magazine says she is taking time for Pax to 'gently bond' with their family. For once I know exactly where a celebrity is coming from. We have been there and done that.

After years of fiddling around with infertility issues and tap dancing around the subject of adoption, my husband and I attended an international adoption 'forum' in which seven different adoption agencies took part. Domestic adoption didn't appeal to my husband AT ALL. We had just spent the past year following the Baby Jessica story. Apparently we weren't alone. Once the statement was made that parental rights are irrevocably severed once a child leaves it's country of birth, there was an almost audible sigh from the hundred or so people present. That was fourteen years ago. We filled out the paperwork, did the leg work, signed the checks, talked with social workers, did more paperwork and seven months later, on June 29, 1994, we picked up our son from the international terminal at Detroit Metro Airport. He had flown 14 hours (including a significant layover in Tokyo) from Seoul, Korea. He was four months old, had a gorgeous head of stick straight hair and eyes that totally disappeared when he smiled...and he smiled alot. He was a good baby, a curious toddler, shy Kindergartener, creative elementary student and now an intelligent and kind middle schooler..most of the time.

Six years later we filled out more paperwork, did more leg work, signed more checks, talked with more social workers and traveled to Russia to complete the adoption of a five year old daughter. She was in an orphanage in Kyzyl, Tuva. This meant an overseas flight to Moscow, a five hour plane flight to Abakan and a six hour drive through the Sayan Mountains in a cab with a driver that did not speak English. We spent 17 days in Russia. We 'gently bonded' with her in a hotel in Kyzyl for five days. During that time she screamed in the shower, cried whenever Papa had to leave, ate one piece of fruit after another, learned the ABC song, how to count to 10 and to sing 'Rock A Bye Baby.' In Moscow she laughed in the bathtub, went on her first shopping spree, ate her first McDonald's french fry and charmed the visa guy at the embassy.

The 'gentle bonding' continued at home. She followed her brother around and made him absolutely miserable for a while by copying his every move. Her second week home we took her on a Halloween candy binging trick or treating campout for the weekend with our camping club. Two weeks later we took her to the wedding and reception when my husband's oldest daughter got married. Two weeks later we were on the road to South Carolina to spend Thanksgiving with extended family. Poor kid. Her intial thoughts of America were probably that life was just one party after another!

She picked up verbal language fairly quickly. There was a period of about a week when she was very frustrated that she could understand our English and didn't understand why we couldn't interpret her Russian quickly enough. She finally stopped using Russian all together. That made me sad. She bonded very quickly with her preschool/day care buddies inspite of the language differences. Daycare was probably more familiar than home life to her. That made me sad.

But today she is a bright, funny, happy fifth grader. She is a Girl Scout. SHe likes life in the 'fast lane' - rollerblades, skateboards, sledding, her bike, horses - anything that gives her speed. She reads, struggles with Math, loves to write stories and has every boy in her class wrapped around her little finger. She is their 'bud'...someone to play football with, to kick a soccer ball with, to share a joke with. I would have to say that she has 'gently bonded' very well.

So, here's to Pax....and Angelina and Brad and Maddox and Zahara and Shiloh. May your family be as happy and as 'gently bonded' as mine.

Mr. Kindergarten Husband

2007-03-13T17:27:00.000-07:00

I am a Kindergarten Teacher. When I say that, most people look at me with new eyes. 'Aww. You must have fun every day,' they say. When I was engaged, my husband thought I had the best job in the whole world. All I did was 'play' all day. Heh. Then reality struck. He got out of bed one morning - shortly after our wedding almost 18 years ago - with a huge strip of laminating film stuck to his back as I had been cutting things out while watching television the night before. It was the beginning of the end. He had to deal with a life partner who fielded telephone calls from 'helicopter parents' who would ring at any given time of day or night. He saw school supplies and needed items slipped into our shopping cart on a regular basis. There were trips to the book outlet and a guilt analysis of receipts to tell him 'how much I saved'. There were trips to the pharmacy and the doctor for meds to cover the cold/flu/pink eye that was raging through the school and which I would inevitably catch. There were stacks of oatmeal boxes and shoe boxes and egg cartons and magazines that piled in the dining room waiting to be used for 'something good'. There were highly stressed 'report card marking weekends' that surely became his version of hell on earth. There were the impromptu conversations and 'conferences' that arose whenever we ran into a parent from school at the store or the library or the movies. There were the conscriptions to play Santa/clowns/ Mr. Dressup during school events and Kindergarten special occasions. There were constant rereadings of favorite books as I needed practice to get the reading just right. Heh. I think he had Chicka Chicka Boom Boom memorized before I did! There were trips to the hardware, trips to the lumber yard, trips to the Teacher Store.....never complaining....always repeated until a project was 'just right'. He would cut boat shapes for the transportation project, build a classroom loft, drill holes in popsicle sticks for the Christmas projects, hunt for the perfect candy bars for our end of the year awards ceremony (Snickers for the one with the best laugh, Bit-O-Honeys for the sweet one, etc.), carry things in and out of school, etc. etc. etc. etc.

Sometimes I take it all for granted. Too much. I appreciate it all. But I never appreciated it more than I did last night.

I had one of those school day moments that brought a lump to my throat.... something that hasn't happened often of late. Our bus walkers were late. Four Kindy Kiddos were still waiting to be taken to the very confusing bus dismissal area. I asked if they thought they could make it on their own. It was time for them to try it. They would be doing it alone as first graders next year. Big eyes in hooded jackets with backpacks as big as their five year old bodies, they nodded their heads. Hold hands and stick together, I told them and walked them to the back exit door. I stood and looked out in to the sunny spring afternoon and watched as Jamie and Michael and Melinda and Evan* bounced up the sidewalk in two twosomes, holding hands and chatting amiably as they headed for their buses. Little birds out of the nest and they didn't even know it. The lump started then. How sweet to be privy to the beginnings of independence all wrapped up in security and innocence. Who to tell about this picture? Teachers see this kind of thing every single day. Sometimes it's gets old when it comes from someone else.

The picture stayed in my head and the lump in my throat as I cleaned up my room and put things out for the next school day. It stayed as I drove home and listened to the middle school and fifth grade doings from my own children. It stayed as I made spaghetti for dinner. It stayed until we were in the car and headed for another soccer practice.

In the quiet of the car - a new novelty with two new handheld computer games in tow - we talked about our day. I described the picture of my four little birds and their venture out into the big old 'world' on their own and the lump in my throat threatened to spill over. I looked over at my Mr. Kindergarten Husband and he was smiling the smile of one who absolutely understood. Yes....I do take it for granted sometimes.

*Names were changed to respect the privacy of my students.

And The Little Girls Cried....

2007-03-09T16:12:00.000-08:00

Last weekend my family had the privilege of accompanying our daughter to another city in another state for the National Indoor Soccer Championships. My daughter is eleven years old. They came in second for the regionals that were played in their home facility so this was a much bigger deal. The excitement of the weekend was definitely staying in a hotel for two whole nights and eating in restaurants and swimming in the pool. I thought it was wonderful that they were so very far removed from the whole competition aspect of the event. They were there because they love to play soccer. Twelve little girls with lanky legs and bobbing pony tails. Well...my daughter lacks the lanky legs as yet....and several have hair too short for ponys. One had just gotten back from a cruise vacation so she was tanned and braided and beaded to the max. Fashion aside they were excited to see one another in another city in another state.

In our room there was an argument over who slept in the rollaway and who slept on the little love seat. Mom and Dad got the bed. That was a given. We are the paying customers here. The tv was tuned to something we all wanted to watch - for once - and the snack box filled with apples and bananas and oranges and granola bars and cheese crackers was fair game.

The first game was at nearly noon on Saturday. It was a 5-0 win. The second game was six hours later. It was a 9-1 win. What a delight to see our daughter ecstatically taken out of her usual position as goalie and put in a s a forward. She no sooner hit the field than she was tearing toward the opposite net and scored a goal. Our cheering section roared. Yeah...we are moms and dads and brothers and sisters and we are pretty loud. Heh. VERY loud. Out for a team dinner. A little too expensive and way too late. Back to the hotel. Showers. Another 'who gets the rollaway bed argument'. Once again, Mom and Dad get the big bed. It's a given. Early game on Sunday.

It was early. Too early for soccer but our lanky legged champions were up for it. A little tougher this time. A 5-2 win. We were headed for the finals. Hotel check out is 1 pm. The game is at 3:30. What to do in between? Wal-Mart calls these out of town shoppers.

Division winners. Champions. Pumped and hyped and ready for the finals. Faces painted like warriors of old. WAZA! Skull printed bandanas on their heads. Smiles and grins and determined glares. Forty minutes later.....sunken hearts. A 5-4 loss. Tears on cheeks and plastic smiles. Still we cheered. Heh. We were loud! Moms and dads and brothers and sisters stomped their feet and whistled and yelled and clapped till our palms were red and hurting. And the little girls cried. Tears streaked their faces and their eyes were hurting as they ran to the barrier in front of the bleachers as their coach instructed them to do. Plastic smiles. Medals given. Red ribbons. Finalists.

Quiet ride home from another city in another state. Reassurance that they had done their best and that was all they could do. Reminders that we had still had fun. The hotel...the restaurants... the pool.....the new friends from other teams. And while my non-lanky legged champion slept in the back seat I wondered if this was the right thing to do. Is soccer really worth the red ribbons and the medals and the tears and the plastic smiles? We have logged a lot of miles for practices...for games....for 'perfect shoe' searches. We have paid alot of money for clinics and camps and coaches and 'perfect shoes.' Really, really worth it?

The very next day we were back at the soccer facility. Our champions were scheduled for a regular season's game. One day back. Twenty four hours from that moment of loss. One day and one night away from the tears and the plastic smiles.

They were bouncing. They were giggling. They were running and kicking and dribbling and striking for the pure and simple joy of it. As I watched the smile on my daughter's face.....the steely determination in her eyes as she guarded her goal.....I knew the answer. Yeah. It's worth it.

13

2007-02-19T12:52:00.001-08:00

In two days my son will be 13 years old. We were given a gift when this four month old bundle of dark hair and eyes that totally disappeared when he smiled was carried off that plane from Seoul, Korea. He has taken us down paths we never thought we would travel....and some that we would rather NOT travel. He is bright and funny, a gifted soccer player with a player's determination that belies his off field personality. He has no interest in the girls around him....yet. He thinks chores around the house are a total waste of his time. Reading bores him. He plays the trumpet in the school band only because it got him out of the required chorus or Music class. He is becoming interested in the world around him and asks the kinds of questions that I think are making him a responsible citizen of the world. Questions about why things are the way they are, how they came to be and what could change. He loves a good joke....and an occasional bad one. He is a rock and roll lover wannabe who suffers in a family that prefers country music and show tunes. He dabbles in writing....but not enough to make a statement....yet. He has the kind of quiet leadership qualities that cause people to look up to him more than he knows. He has always been shy....a kid who stops at the precipice of a new challenge to survey the 'lay of the land' before jumping into the fray. His sister makes him absolutely crazy but I really feel that if she needed it, he would be a protective force in her life. A school psychologist (who is a friend) told me she sees him in the halls at the middle school, happy and silly and surrounded by friends.....a nice kid. I am SO glad she was able to give me that visual picture to carry in my head. I refer to it often when we struggle with the preteen angst at home. And there is LOTS of preteen angst.

So he will be 13 in just two more days. I am proud of him. I am proud of the child he was and the teenager he is about to become. I am proud of my son. Happy Birthday.......

This ER Thing

2007-02-06T05:18:00.000-08:00

Thirteen years ago my sister - who lives several states away - was begging me to watch this 'new' television show she was loving. She wanted someone to talk to about it every week. I gave it a watch but didn't like it much. It was too fast paced. The dialog was quick and filled with medical terminology that was difficult to follow. At least for me. I am hearing impaired and am somewhat reliant on lip reading to follow a show. She was very disappointed when I told her that I wasn't interested. VERY disappointed.

The following summer I began watching the reruns. We are both teachers. The pace of our lives changes during the summer months. We began our Fridays with leisurely telephone conversations and she would explain what had been happening in the show the night before. Slowly and surely I was hooked. I enjoyed the characters that drove the show. Mark Greene. Carol. Carter. Doug Ross. Jeanie Boulet. Susan Lewis. David Morenstern. ER became a Thursday night 'habit' that has continued for twelve more years. My sister's interests moved on.

The faces on the show have changed. Sherry Stringfield left, taking 'Susan Lewis' with her. I loved Kellie Martin and her characterization of 'Lucy Knight'. I began to follow her story lines. I was instantly drawn in to Luka Kovac...from his very first appearance. What a hunk. What an accent! I was horrified when I'd read that Maura Tierney had been signed to join the show. She was my favorite character from the comedy "News Radio'. How was she going to fit in to this drama driven ensemble? Ha. Should of known. 'Lucy' was killed off.....knifed by a psych patient during a Valentine's Day episode. A horribly surprising event. I still miss her character. However, Tierney's 'Abby Lockhart' rapidly took her place in my interests.

I discovered that my classroom aide had a similar Thursday night 'addiction'. We would spend the first 15 minutes of our Friday school day - while taking attendance and lunch count and distributing morning work to first graders - quickly rehashing our thoughts from the previous night. Abby and Luka became more than friends and we sighed. We cheered the appearance of a stunningly heart rending Sally Field as 'Abby's' mother. James Cromwell as a dying Bishop blew us away by being the catalyst for several Luka revelations. Abby and Luka broke up and we were both miserable. And life marched on. There have been several job changes and I no longer work with anyone that follows the show.

There have been some stunning performances. Sally Field returned. Susan Lewis returned. Mark Greene died on a beach in Hawaii. Luka went to the Congo. Carter followed him. Guest stars filled the ER. Sherry Stringfield left again . A couple of seasons of not so good story lines. Sometimes I snoozed in front of the television. And then, last year, along came an episode called 'The Human Shield'. Luka and Abby were back together after five freaking years. WHAT could possibly be better? Back together again and having a baby. Back together again and the most incredible television hours ever in '21 Guns' and 'Bloodline'....interrupted by a long summer hiatus. And then Forrest Whitaker as a frightenly creepy ex-patient and an episode called 'Murmurs of the Heart'. It just gets better and better. But for whom? My sister will no longer watch. Says she doesn't know the characters. Friends no longer like the bloodiness of the show. My children are too young. Sigh.

I don't really know why ER still appeals to me. I have gotten older too. I no longer reflect the preferred advertising target. Sniff. I miss Lucy...and Mark....and Romano...and definitely Susan. I am so loving the reemergence of the 'Luby' relationship. And now there is talk of contracts ending and other characters leaving. I think I would be ready to break my 'addiction' if that happens. Who could possibly sustain my interest more than Maura Tierney and Goran Visnjic? Searching the current cast....probably no one. But 'ER' has surprised me before.

Kids

2007-01-27T09:42:00.000-08:00

I have decided that my children are the most courageous people that I have ever known. Every morning I set them off into their world as true minorities at their schools. Both of my children are Asian....one was born in Seoul, Korea and the other in Kyzyl, Tuva. They look enough alike for people to ask if they are 'real' brother and sister. I used to go into the 'two parts of the world' litany. Now I just reply that 'now they are!' Of course they are real brother and sister. They fight with one another constantly. My daughter has a more generous nature than her brother and we have to constantly watch that it's not taken advantage of. They play games together. They share funny things they have found on the computer with one another. But they also have a tremendous amount of courage.
We have tried to raise them with nationality in mind. One is very, very proud of her Russian heritage and loves to hear about it. The other has shown very little interest in anything Korean. He is more interested in China and Israel......and Russia. He doesn't like to be different.....and yet maneuvers in a world where he is very different just by being there. I wish there were more Asians for him to interact with. One summer I took them for skating lessons at a rink closer to a bigger city. It dawned on me, as I sat in the bleachers watching them on the ice, that for the first time in their lives they were actually in the majority. Of the maybe 100 kids on the ice, only 10 of them were non-Asians. The funny thing is, they never even noticed.

Our federal government has decreed that all public school classrooms must do something to acknowledge Martin Luther King's birthday. I think the biggest testament to Dr. King is that it is the adults the worry about this. In my classroom, with 1 Arabic student, 1 Hispanic student and 15 white students of various shades....no one had a clue to what I was trying to say about discrimination. In order to celebrate the abolishment of racial discrimination....we have to TEACH racial discrimination. Go figure.

Fathers and Sons

2007-01-27T09:33:00.000-08:00

I told them months ago that this would be 'their project'. I have been involved in book reports and country projects and regions projects and Science Olympiad projects and Scout projects since the dawn of my parenthood. This 'energy transference' thing for 7th grade Science class was ALL theirs. What a hoot. I keep getting called in for advice. I have dug through sewing stuff for embroidery floss. I donated a part from my sewing machine. I have run interference to maintain calm and order. I have cooled hot tempers. In the end I know it will be worth it. In the meantime, I fear for the white tile that covers my dining table. Wonder how many will be cracked this time?

The Planets are Alligned

2007-01-24T20:42:00.000-08:00

I just want to bottle it. All of her enthusiasm. All of her joy. Everything is so very RIGHT with her world right now. She was chosen Kindergarten Safety helper of the month. She wore a skirt to school for the first time since picture day in first grade and no one laughed. The curlers she sleeps on leave these gorgeous black ringlets cascading down her back. Jamie brought hockey sticks to play with in the morning while they wait for school to start. She has gotten TWO 100% on Spelling tests in the last month. She has a part in the drama club play with THREE WHOLE LINES! Her soccer team is headed for the National Indoor finals in another month. Fractions are killing us but that's okay...as long as she tries her hardest. And best of all, a friend 'complemented' her in the lunch room by telling her that she was popular....and not like the mean popular girls in the movies..."because she is nice and friendly to EVERYone ALL of the time." Like I said before, I would love to bottle this time so I can pour it out on those angsty days that lie ahead of us. All that enthusiasm. All that sheer joy. These are beautiful days for my beautiful daughter.

The Year Begins

2007-01-02T06:29:00.000-08:00

There are many thoughts on my mind as the year 2007 begins. It's January 2nd. 9:33 am. My children are still sleeping in various positions on the couch and in the Lazy Boy. Report cards and mid year Kindergarten testing are looming. Saddam Hussein is dead. The war lingers on....and that bothers me tremendously. 'Super Nanny' was good last night. So glad I don't have twins. The Red Wings are winning. Hope my sister and her family make it home safely from their Disney World vacation. Wish we could have gone with them. Will they be able to get me some more Mr. Potato Head stuff from Down Town Disney. Time to take the dog out. Wonder where Maura Tierney spent the holidays. Is there any money in my checking account. What cereal shall we have for......lunch. Will I be able to get my new DVD recorder working at last. Has anyone reviewed my posted fanfictions today. How many loads of laundry will I have to do. Back to school tomorrow. Sigh. Petty and important stuff from my world to yours. Happy New Year.