Life in Words

My writing muscles are in the same condition the rest of my muscles are: atrophied.

Will be trying to update more in the coming days.

The recent days have consisted of:
-teaching
-Heroes
-avoiding things for class by watching Heroes
-brief sojourn in south Georgia
-having my head exploded by Detective Comics #853
-eating cookies, which led to
-gaining weight
-procrastinating on assignments required for graduation

School is good but exhausting.

Right now I would like to curl up with Vince in a nice bed at a beach house, with the waves crashing nearby and Neil Gaiman reading us bedtime stories.

Exhausted.  School amazing and yet very tiring.  Wanted to post to mention that I have thoroughly enjoyed the movie nights we've been having with Russ and Toivo.  Our first pick was Casblanca, which I had seen before but never really watched.  For this week, I picked the 1938 Errol Flynn movie The Adventures of Robin Hood, which was quite simply made of awesome.  Not sure what to do for next time, though we're thinking maybe something like 1963's Jason and the Argonauts or 1958's The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.

I'm a little tired so I can't finish this analogy correctly, but Flynn's Robin Hood was like... one part Chuck Norris, and two parts campy badass. 

Also, Mr. Empanada is awesome.

-Tired.
-Overwhelmed.
-Annoyed that my gallbladder decided to revolt at such an inopportune time, putting me two weeks behind and so two weeks at a disadvantage..
-Afraid of so-called real life.
-Missing my husband.

Oh yeah -- and hating the Americal literary canon.

Today, one of my classes was watching a portion of the 1968 Romeo and Juliet. Towards the middle of the movie, there is a scene with Romeo and Juliet in bed the morning after their wedding night. Because of school rules, we had to do our best to censor the nudity. Romeo's butt was covered by a piece of paper over the projector, as were Juliet's breasts.
My cooperating teacher thought the nudity was over and started to walk away. Juliet made a sudden move and her breasts flashed the screen for maybe a nanosecond.
Suddenly, I had a room full of adolescent boys screaming and whooping, including a young gentleman who chose to yell "I SAW THEM TITTIES!" over and over again at the top of his lungs.

it would say things to the effect of:

-Having my gallbladder removed tomorrow.  Yuck.
-Had my gallbladder removed just in time before it became necrotic and potentially lethal.  Hooray!
-Recovering after having my gallbladder removed yesterday.  Amused to report that the surgeon said it was the "size of a uterus."
-I was dreaming about beef stroganoff the other day, and now I have been served beef stroganoff and it is probably the last thing in the world I would ever want to eat.
-Have been told to lay off high fat content food such as ice cream for the next month or so.  Nooooo!

in the fashion of the type of writing I used to do in the old days.  The fact of the matter is that I simply don't write that way, anymore.  I am too easily distracted with too fragmented of a mind to sit and write some kind of elegant, insightful piece.  Instead, I leave some bullets.

-Life going into a gentle lockdown as I prepare for internship on Monday.
-Wishing Neil Gaiman's voice followed me around and narrated my life.
-Slowly slowly working on organizing the upstairs loft.
-Very happy with new furniture and additional storage.
-Confused and mystified by the histories of people gone, of which we only have a few fragments of letters, postcards, and photographs.
-Wondering what kind of record I will leave for my children's children.  Surely no child of the future will want to look at archives of Livejournal entries or Facebook status updates?  Whatever happened to leaving behind tangible objects?  (This is what my original entry was about, or at least what it would've been about had I written it.)
-Whatever happened to the art in my life?
-Looking forward to Coraline.
-Reminding myself I need to make time to read for fun instead of wasting it all away repeatedly checking gmail and facebook when nothing can have possible happened in the past 15 minutes anyway.
-Hoping I win the lottery so that I can buy myself the Absolute Sandman, among other things.  I guess this would require playing in the first place.
-Where is Frederic Chopin when you need him?

P.S. Found Chopin.
P.P.S. Happy new year.

Final Grades Fall 2008

Integrating Exceptional Students: A
Teaching Reading - Secondary Education: A+
Methods of Teaching English: Practicum: A
Postcolonial Literature: A

What an awesome way to start the day. 

The semester is over and my days are spent deliciously free.

I go where I want, when I want to.

One of the places I was oddly excited to go to was the dentist's: I went last week and it turned out I had two cavities and no wisdom teeth.  No wisdom teeth.  They didn't even turn up on the x-rays.  They haven't been bothering me now that I've been told they're not there, so maybe it was psychosomatic and maybe it was just the cavities.  I got two fillings done on Tuesday, and now my teeth are sensitive so I wouldn't know if my non-existent wisdom teeth were hurting anyway.

I kinda hate teeth.  Sometimes I have dreams that all of my teeth fall out and I get dentures.  In the dreams, I'm happy about the dentures, and then I wake up and remember that those wouldn't be any more fun than regular teeth.  I also tend to have a lot of dreams were my teeth shatter and I spend days spitting pieces out and trying not to choke on them.  Generally, any dream involving teeth is not a good one.  I probably also grind my teeth at night, which is probably what is causing the toothaches and headaches.

Things to write about at some other time: loneliness, dead relatives, and the upcoming holidays.

Today is a sleepy, rainy day.  I feel like curling up with a book or perhaps with a deck of tarot cards.  Which reminds me that I was supposed to be writing down my dreams in my dream journal, and that hasn't really been happening.

I'm going to the dentist today, for the first time since... I believe my junior year of high school?  I don't really remember what it's like, except for those weird foam trays they used for the brightly colored fluoride stuff.  I hope they don't find any cavities, and I hope they tell me that I need to have my wisdom teeth out.  And then I hope that the money to have my wisdom teeth out falls from the sky so that I can actually get it done.  They've been bothering me more and more, lately, and I find myself waking up with a clenched jaw most mornings of the week.  They are also contributing to the dull headache I've had for the past two or three weeks, though I'm sure a fair bit of that is stress.

We put our tiny little holiday tree up over the weekend and it is probably one of the most adorable we've ever had.  I'll take pictures soon. Our ornament for this year is a small, stamped brass coin that reads "Vince [heart] Mia  Newlyweds 2008".  I got it on Etsy for just a few dollars, and I like it much better than those plasticky ornaments that say "First Christmas Together."  Especially since this is actually our fourth Christmas together.  And I didn't want it to say Christmas, anyway, since I still like to think of it as a Solstice tree.

I made cookies for Toivo, Russ, Bart & Su, and two people at Vince's office, and from what I've heard everyone likes them.  Hooray!  I spent two whole days baking about 50 chocolate peppermint pinwheels, 100 lemon glazed sugar cookies, and a batch of raspberry pinwheels which were an epic failure and I ended up replacing with two batches mazurkas.  Having not made mazurkas in a very, very long time, I kept messing up the dough and the oven times and all in all it was a bitch to get them done.  Over the course of two days, I used three pounds of butter.  And that, my friends, is why my cookies are delicious.

I guess I should quit rambling and go get ready for the dentist.

I've realized that my desire for a wedding do-over essentially boils down to a desire for a life/family/childhood do-over.  You can't really get those without giving up the here and now, as anyone who has ever watched Back to the Future will understand, so I guess I will have to get over it in time.  Also, a wedding do-over is equal in cost to a downpayment on a house or a new vehicle, so unless we win the lottery, the pragmatist in me will never allow one to happen.

My Thanksgiving dinner turned out delicious, thanks to the help of my wonderful husband.  I am happy to report that my table was beautiful and all of the food arrived at the table hot, like it's supposed to.

We'll be heading up to Atlanta for Christmas, and there's a part of me that is sad it won't be back to the house Vince grew up in.  His parents recently got a new house -- that looks gorgeous, from pictures -- and I'm excited to see it, but boy, did I love their old house.  At any rate, the people in the new house are the same people I know and love and I can't wait for the big ol' bearhug I know I'll get as soon as we walk through the door.

I should probably get to work on my PostColonial Lit paper: right now the only barrier between me and sleep.  I had another dream about the Big House on Bayshore, last night, and I'm hoping they come back again, tonight.  If I had an ounce of artistic talent I'd have that whole place sketched by now.  Maybe within my lifetime someone will create a "print to PDF" type function for your brain and I'll be able to show everyone that beautiful place in my head.  Also, someone seriously needs to invent an Apple+F function for handwritten documents because I hate having to look back over notes. 

Every year, at some point during this week, I make a list of everything I've been thankful for so far.

My list this year is very tiny and streamlined.
There are of course, the basics: food on the table, clothing on my back, a roof over my head and Vince by my side.
For everything else, I will let it suffice to say that I am thankful for having the things I need, and for having the opportunity to get the things I want.

I am proud to report that I earned the respect and affection of a bunch of my 10th grade students this semester.
It has been a tough semester and I know next semester will be even more rough, but I really think I can do it.  Perhaps more important, I want to do it.  When I announced today that it was my last day visiting, my students had a flurry of questions along the lines of "Where are you going to teach?" "Are you going to teach here?" "Are you going to come visit us?" My host teacher has also mentioned several times via e-mail that the students liked it when I was in, and asked about me when I was not around.  Hopefully they learned some grammar and stuff while I was around, too, but knowing that I had enough of an influence -- even though they only saw me for an hour a week -- for them to ask about me is a big confident boost.

Hopefully I'll have a chance in the coming days to write a little more about my time interning this semester, but for now: bed.

Long story short: I feel like a rock star.

Today, we elected Barack Obama the 44th president of the United States.

I am all made of joy, hope, and pride.

I am bummed about some of the way some of Florida's amendments went (or are at least projected to go)
but for once I am in a BLUE state and am so happy to have been a part of this election.

Things That Are Awesome:
-My husband
-Little Big Planet
-Actually completing several of the things on my to-do list!
-Delicious Halloween dinner -- roasted chicken with lemon garlic green beans and potatoes
-Yummy apple cake for Halloween dessert
-My dad and brother are coming up for Thanksgiving! YAAAAAAY.  Vince and I actually get to have our first married Thanksgiving at home, and we are planning to cook dinner.  I cannot even begin to describe how excited I am about this.  I know we'll all be thinking of my grandmother, since it will be our first Thanksgiving without her and we had always done Thanksgiving at her house.  Hopefully, this year will allow us to create some new memories and we'll be able to be grateful for the time we had with her instead of focusing on her absence.
-Vince cleaned and did laundry while I was out doing homework, and I am infinitely grateful beyond words.  I'm at the "I've fallen and I can't get up" part of the semester, and every little bit helps to get back on my feet. 
-We washed the cars this morning.  Now my car is super shiny and I got a good upper body workout.

Things That Are Epic Fail
-Grading two classes worth of papers took me THREE HOURS. I think my next professional development book will be Carol Jago's book about managing the paper load because srsly.  I know most of it was because I had no idea what the hell I was doing, but I feel like my hand is going to fall off and I now sympathize with authors who have to sign their names over and over again for hours.
-Homework pile is still epic, but I am chipping away at it like a... like a something that chips at something else very slowly.


Okay!  Back to homework!  I promise I will eventually write a coherent entry one of these days.

SELF

Here is your to-do list

To complete by Thursday 30 October

1. Postcolonial Literature Paper #2 - due @ 1530
2. Somehow read entire novel that you haven't started yet - due @ 1715
3. EEX Unit Plan - due @ 1715

To complete by Friday 31 October

1. Vote.
2. Pay phone bill and car payment.
3. Figure out what you are making for Halloween dinner.
4. Go to Publix and obtain food for Halloween dinner.
5. Prepare and eat Halloween dinner.

To complete by Monday 3 November

1. Grade student papers.
2. Prepare questions for teacher interview.
3. Shadow host teacher all day.

To complete by Wednesday 5 November

1. Complete DAR assessment for Mrs. N
2. Read the next few chapters of Wilhelm's book
3. Complete observation reflections 3-5 - due @ 1158

Things to talk about when I have time/energy/clarity of mind:
-Teaching in general
-Actual classroom teaching
-Why I'm excited about teaching
-What people have been saying that is bumming me the heck out about teaching
-How I still manage to be excited even with people trying their best to bum me out
-How Neil Gaiman has influenced my pedagogy, and how I really wish learning pedagogy did not interfere with time to read more Gaiman
-Little Big Planet
-Cookies and ice cream
-Human sexuality and gender roles and why naked people are so taboo
-Trips that I may or may not be taking
-FCTE Days 2 and 3
-Postcolonial literature and specifically The God of Small Things

There.  Odds are, I'm not really going to come back and talk about this stuff, but at least I can pretend.

Also, I love dry weather and I love cool weather, but when it suddenly drops below 50 in either temperature or humidity my body tends to respond negatively, as in... it cracks up like a dried lake bed and causes lots of pain and discomfort.  I don't know how I will ever leave Florida.

I'm really tired.

Personal mantras for the month of October 2008:
You must be the change you want to see in the world. - Gandhi
It's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. - Atributed to both the ancient Chinese and Eleanor Roosevelt (???)
Don't just dream it: make it so.

I woke up to
this comic
and now
I don't even know
what I'm supposed to be
dreaming about.

I want a week that exists out of time
with enough energy to do
everything that needs to be done
so that I can come back to real life
awake and renewed.

I have so so much to write about, but I have also gone through exhausted and come out the other side. I'll try to make this as coherent as possible. Today has been the longest/best day ever.

First:
I am SO glad I came to this conference. It is just the boost I needed. I am so happy to be here with my peers, and what's more is that all of the teachers are happy to have us! They know that we are a little gaggle of student-teachers and they are very excited for us. These are the teachers we need to surround ourselves with-- not the ones who weigh us down with negativity. These are the teachers who keep up to date with the latest research -- they are not the ones who say "Well, it's worked for 16 years so if it ain't broke don't fix it!" And they are so passionate and compassionate and just really great people! During the conference they have auctions and door prizes for neat stuff like textbooks and random stuff like lily-pad shaped nacho platters (with a spotted frog on it, to boot). My friend Alicia is ALL ABOUT building her classroom library, so when an auction came up for a bucket full of books, Alicia opened the bid with $10 -- knowing she wouldn't be able to go much higher, but, you know, hoping. Now, the money from these auctions goes to funding student scholarships, and at this point everyone in the room knew we were students. Alicia mentioned she wanted the books to go towards building her classroom library. So the auctioneer jokingly ribbed the audience to see if anyone had "the heart" to outbid this poor (and poor) student. One woman did: "Fifty dollars!" she said, "and you may have the books." Well, we all teared up and ended up crying later. This woman just up and paid $50 and then gave Alicia the entire bucket -- with the requirement that she later e-mail and say how she used them.
As is this were not enough, later a door prize came up to win a gift certificate for $100 worth of books from a given publisher. We had little raffle tickets with numbers, and when they called the numbers, my friend Erin was only one number off -- the winning number ended in 4, and I think she had the same one but ending in 3. The gentleman who won the raffle turned right around and GAVE Erin the gift certificate.
I just can't believe the generosity. It's amazing.

Second:
I HAVE OBTAINED SO MUCH LOOT. (My icon? That's me trying to bring home all the stuff I have gotten.) My friends grabbed even MORE stuff. Some of them made TWO TRIPS to their hotel room to carry it all. I was a little more conservative but I still have two tote bags full of materials. It is SO AWESOME.

Third:
I have obtained confidence and knowledge and will be getting more where that came from tomorrow. The workshops so far have been great -- the presenters are knowledgeable, funny, and vibrant. I just feel like I am learning so much and I can't wait for tomorrow!

Fourth:
Our "teaching mom" Christi (who we essentially try to take all of our classes from) is here presenting at the conference tomorrow. She asked if she could use one of my ideas as part of her handout. I am THRILLED. She is presenting on teaching strategies/lesson plans for The House on Mango Street, and apparently my vignette lesson plan will be going on there. AND it'll have my name on it. Heck. Yes. A couple dozen experienced teachers will be going home with a lesson plan that I created from scratch.

Anyway, I'm UBER TIRED.
More on Day 2 tomorrow.

Mom: "So you're... what, twenty-three now?"
Me: "Uhh... you should know this, Mom. You were there."
Mom: "SHHHH. I try not to remind myself. My daughter is twenty-three and married... I'M SOOO OOOOOLD."

One of the pluses of being married is that my parents have stopped their long tradition of calling me and/or running into my bedroom to sing me happy birthday at the time I was born. I was born at 6:15 in the morning, and honestly I'd rather sleep in. Hooray for parents waiting until a reasonable time to call.

I went to the Melting Pot with Vince this weekend for my birthday dinner and it was delicious. Vince ordered some roses that were waiting for us at the table, which was a really nice touch. Very sweet, very romantic, and very tasty (the food, not the roses). Though I'm a little sad we skipped on Food & Wine this year (it would've been fourth birthday in a row at Epcot) I've decided that from now on my birthday celebrations can be all about food, and that is pretty satisfying in and of itself.

This morning, Vince surprised me with a card that says "To my amazing wife." What a great way to start the day. I also played The Beatles - "Birthday" and danced around while I got dressed.

The rest of it has been spent pretty busy, running errands and doing assignments. The rest of the evening will be eaten alive with homework that needs to be turned in tomorrow, but all in all, not a bad birthday.

Part of me keeps wondering when the card from my grandma is going to get here, and the rest of me can't accept that it won't.

Leaving for the conference Thursday morning, will be back Saturday night. Wish me luck, fun, and learning!