Last Friday evening, my husband drove an hour to visit the funeral home and pay his respects to the loved ones of his high school Latin teacher. He hasn't been in her class for 18 years, but he went. She left that sort of impression. It made me think a lot about my impact in the world. How many students that I have this year would visit the funeral home 18 years from now if I died? Moreover, students from much further back in her 41 year career paid their respects. She touched thousands of lives and the evidence was there at the funeral home and at the memorial service the following day. It's amazing.
Am I an 18 year teacher? Would students from 10 years ago come if I live another 30 years? I like to think I've made that kind of impact but I can't be certain. Life is always uncertain. I can always hope though. I've poured a lot of my heart and soul into this job. I hope it's been worth it.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Justin Beaver
L. came into the bedroom last night with her beaver. She says, "His name isn't just Beaver. It's Justin Beaver."
Friday, April 27, 2012
Jeffrey the Rhinoceros Beetle
Two weeks ago, my parents called to let us know they were on the way to my house with a load of dirt. (My husband would call it soil.) The dirt was for the raised garden bed my husband had built and finally finished. As my father and husband were shoveling the dirt into the bed, my father found a rhinoceros beetle. My children were instantly fascinated and wanted to "keep it." I'll admit that it was pretty cool to look at in a scary way so I headed inside to find a jar. We added a little dirt, some clover, and the beetle.
A. took it to school on Monday to share with her class. A. and L. wanted to keep it as a pet. I said it was a wild thing and deserved to go back to the wild. We finally reached the compromise of keeping it a week and I researched what rhinoceros beetles eat. (It's rotting fruit in case you want to know.) I found some strawberries past their prime in the back of the refridgerator.
On Tuesday, I found the beetle a larger (temporary) home. It sat on the kitchen table for a while.
On Wednesday, my husband set the table for dinner and moved the beetle into the extra chair. During dinner, I laughed and said, "Look! The rhinoceros beetle is sitting in Jeffrey's chair (because Jeffrey is the only "family" member that sits in that chair). We should name the beetle Jeffrey." I wasn't expecting their enthusiastic response. So, the beetle became Jeffrey.
On Saturday evening, with the sky streaked pink and orange, we released Jeffrey into the compost heap where we hoped he would enjoy the adequate supply of rotting produce. I felt a twinge of sadness for this beetle, so mysterious and scary, almost 2 inches long, all iridescent and horned, who had shared my home for 8 days. I think M. put it best as we walked away shouting well wishes. She said, "Bye, bye, Jeffdrey. Luck." We checked back about 10 minutes later and Jeffrey the Rhinoceros beetle was gone. I hope he's doing well. He was pretty cool.
A. took it to school on Monday to share with her class. A. and L. wanted to keep it as a pet. I said it was a wild thing and deserved to go back to the wild. We finally reached the compromise of keeping it a week and I researched what rhinoceros beetles eat. (It's rotting fruit in case you want to know.) I found some strawberries past their prime in the back of the refridgerator.
On Tuesday, I found the beetle a larger (temporary) home. It sat on the kitchen table for a while.
On Wednesday, my husband set the table for dinner and moved the beetle into the extra chair. During dinner, I laughed and said, "Look! The rhinoceros beetle is sitting in Jeffrey's chair (because Jeffrey is the only "family" member that sits in that chair). We should name the beetle Jeffrey." I wasn't expecting their enthusiastic response. So, the beetle became Jeffrey.
On Saturday evening, with the sky streaked pink and orange, we released Jeffrey into the compost heap where we hoped he would enjoy the adequate supply of rotting produce. I felt a twinge of sadness for this beetle, so mysterious and scary, almost 2 inches long, all iridescent and horned, who had shared my home for 8 days. I think M. put it best as we walked away shouting well wishes. She said, "Bye, bye, Jeffdrey. Luck." We checked back about 10 minutes later and Jeffrey the Rhinoceros beetle was gone. I hope he's doing well. He was pretty cool.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Sometimes life gives you lemons and it doesn't turn into lemonade
Life is cruel sometimes, cruel in ways we cannot comprehend. For me, a somewhat private person despite the fact of this blog, disappointment is often amplified not by my silence, but by the fact that no one else notices. So often, we go around our worlds, living our daily lives, and flittering on about our business without realizing how much we’re missing. All around us, people are experiencing every emotion possible from exquisite joy to sad defeat and we. don’t. notice. We’re too self-absorbed, too personally needy to stop and think to ourselves, “What is that person really feeling behind their insincere smile and hollow eyes?” Instead, we see the smile, decide it is enough and move on because we don’t want to be bothered. Let’s be honest too. Most of the time, we do notice that the smile is off, that the eyes are sad and we choose not to do anything about it. Justify it all you want but the truth of the matter is we don’t really care about other people. Our society is such a wreck and we’re all charting our individual courses towards disaster. We don’t have the emotional energy to take on anymore. So, we don’t. We see the (fake) smile, decide it will have to be enough and move on.
The unbearable weight of sadness is a heavy, hard thing. Some people focus on events (the logical ones). Some people wax philosophical (that would be me). Some people don’t analyze anything but continue on because what else can you do? Some people cocoon themselves in a nest of their own making to heal. In all of these “solutions” though, we find ourselves alone, alone with our sadness, even if others are present. In Le Petit Prince, when the little prince is crying uncontrollably about something the pilot cannot comprehend, the pilot writes, “C’est tellement mystérieux, le pays des larmes!” How true that is. Tears, sadness, depression, whatever the form may be, no one truly understands that sense of melancholy. Sometimes, not even the one crying understands the real reasons. That’s why we can’t fix ourselves.
I’ve had a hard winter. Only my natural optimism and my resilience of faith have kept me afloat. Even still, I feel worn out, abused, battered, and alone. Our internal reserves are only so large. There’s only so much happiness we can store up to get us through the tough times. Here at what I hoped was the end of my proverbial winter, life has dealt me a sucker punch straight to the gut at a time when I am the weakest. No one has noticed. I’m better than most at making my smile look genuine. Still, it makes me feel a little forgotten, a bit overlooked, and a whole lot tired. I want to build myself a nest to hide in, but I can’t. Unfortunately, life moves on even when we wish it didn’t. M. turns 2 on Saturday. There’s a party to plan. Dance recitals are soon. Mother’s Day is around the corner where I’m sure to feel a bit awkward and paste on my smile. After that, there’s the inevitable march to final exams and the end of school. Summer should be restful but it won’t be. The planner that I am has already made a calendar and it’s a beast of a thing. I’m not sure when I can recover from my sadness. Still, there’s a bit of optimism left in me. Maybe it will be enough…
The unbearable weight of sadness is a heavy, hard thing. Some people focus on events (the logical ones). Some people wax philosophical (that would be me). Some people don’t analyze anything but continue on because what else can you do? Some people cocoon themselves in a nest of their own making to heal. In all of these “solutions” though, we find ourselves alone, alone with our sadness, even if others are present. In Le Petit Prince, when the little prince is crying uncontrollably about something the pilot cannot comprehend, the pilot writes, “C’est tellement mystérieux, le pays des larmes!” How true that is. Tears, sadness, depression, whatever the form may be, no one truly understands that sense of melancholy. Sometimes, not even the one crying understands the real reasons. That’s why we can’t fix ourselves.
I’ve had a hard winter. Only my natural optimism and my resilience of faith have kept me afloat. Even still, I feel worn out, abused, battered, and alone. Our internal reserves are only so large. There’s only so much happiness we can store up to get us through the tough times. Here at what I hoped was the end of my proverbial winter, life has dealt me a sucker punch straight to the gut at a time when I am the weakest. No one has noticed. I’m better than most at making my smile look genuine. Still, it makes me feel a little forgotten, a bit overlooked, and a whole lot tired. I want to build myself a nest to hide in, but I can’t. Unfortunately, life moves on even when we wish it didn’t. M. turns 2 on Saturday. There’s a party to plan. Dance recitals are soon. Mother’s Day is around the corner where I’m sure to feel a bit awkward and paste on my smile. After that, there’s the inevitable march to final exams and the end of school. Summer should be restful but it won’t be. The planner that I am has already made a calendar and it’s a beast of a thing. I’m not sure when I can recover from my sadness. Still, there’s a bit of optimism left in me. Maybe it will be enough…
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Interesting
Samuel Mudd, the doctor who treated the broken ankle of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth and whose name led to the saying 'Your name is mud,' received a presidential pardon in 1869 from Ulysses S. Grant.
- Provided by RandomHistory.com
- Provided by RandomHistory.com
Friday, April 20, 2012
I got a Costco membership
I love stockpiling food and other stuff. It's justifiable pack rat work. If I use a lot of chicken stock then what's wrong with having 24 cans of it? Nothing!
I think I might love Costco an awful lot...
Thursday, April 19, 2012
The Smell of cherry blossoms...
My first year in college, I learned to see magic.
It's all around us if we can open our souls to see it.
I grew up in a world without magic or mystery, without wonder or excitement. It was most definitely a world of my own making I'm certain. My parents were, and are still, good, solid people who work hard and behave properly. I was raised in that fashion, in a world where strange things didn't happen and were not condoned. As a result, I wouldn't describe my childhood as magical in any way. Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and even the Tooth Fairy were somehow prudent and sensible, almost puritanical.
I have an excellent memory but I can remember few instances of unbridled joy as a child. Those that I do remember weren't at my own house either, but that of my cousin and usually outside in the wild woods behind her house that stretched for miles into the untamed mountains. My own childhood home sat on a hill with a large highway on one side and a busy rural road on the other. There was a steep cliff-like drop on another and multiple barbed wire fences in the last direction. With danger on every side, there was no freedom from my worried mother. Freedom extended a few feet beyond the patio, just enough to reach the swing set and trampoline and that was it. I sometimes wonder if my dislike of "outside" stems from the childhood admonitions of danger. Of course, Georgia in July, with its' humid, sticky hotness also played a factor I'm certain.
I think childhood is the time in our lives where we have the best chance of finding magic. Everything in childhood feels so real, even the make believe parts. A lack of childhood magic makes us old before our time. I was a solemn child, studious and polite but almost debilitatingly shy at times. It wasn't "sensible" to be shy though so I forced myself to act like I wasn't. I still suffer from the effects of that forced friendliness.
So, I found myself graduating from high school, older than my years. There was a yearning in my heart though to venture beyond my normal and create a new normal. My parents did not understand my desire to go somewhere other than local community college and they were baffled by my desire to study foreign languages. Their minds were too practical and the world too small and plain in their view.
So, I went away and found a new world. It was not without its' problems and there were plenty of things that seemed trivial and dull. Then, I was assigned a book to read, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It changed my life.
Magical realism was the next step, the evolution of what my life was missing. It was real, but something more. I started looking for the magic in the everyday and I found it more and more. The world seemed to change before my eyes. One day in the fall, I was walking on a flagstone path that meandered between two buildings. The colors of autumn were all around me. The air was crisp and the changing of the seasons, the slow march of forever, was tangible. The path was somewhat deserted, an unusual happenstance. Suddenly, without warning, I was caught in the middle of a whirlwind. Yellow leaves the color of sunshine swirled around me on all sides and even above my head. I stood, transfixed, in the middle of it all, untouched by even the whisper of wind. All I could think was, "This is the most amazing thing that's ever happened to me." I was so normal but I was standing in the middle of magic. It was awe-inspiring and humbling at the same time. I felt immeasurably blessed and somehow, changed forever.
In the spring, I discovered what would become my most beautiful dream yet. I returned from a dull and dreary spring break surrounded by maddening normalcy and discovered that the world outside my dorm room was covered in pink and smelled unearthly. Surely, it was the scent of heaven, but it wasn't. It was cherry trees and it's beauty and scent enveloped me in an otherworldly experience each time I went out the door. I left via those doors closest to the cherry trees even when it made more sense to leave by a different door. I would stand beneath the boughs and look up through the pinkened limbs heavy with blooms to see the possiblities inherent in a clear spring sky peeking through the maze of limbs. I hoped to hold onto the moment forever because spring blossoms are fickle things and a sudden rain shower could divest these trees of their magical blossoms at any time. I enjoyed every moment of those trees that I could. I studied lying on a blanket surrounded by their glory with the spring sun warming my back.
I paused and savored, but they went away. Magic is a promise though. It's everywhere and as long as you keep looking, you'll find it again. Those trees bloomed each spring and the hopefulness in my heart kept me living in the same dorm all four years. The promise of the cherry trees was enough.
I graduated though and I left those trees behind, but guess what? My new house has a cherry tree out front, small and too severely pruned by someone who can't see magic or imagine possibilities. The blooms this spring were a balm to my weary wintered heart and a delight to my soul.
Magic happens all around. You'll see it if you start to look. The proof is in my cherry tree.
It's all around us if we can open our souls to see it.
I grew up in a world without magic or mystery, without wonder or excitement. It was most definitely a world of my own making I'm certain. My parents were, and are still, good, solid people who work hard and behave properly. I was raised in that fashion, in a world where strange things didn't happen and were not condoned. As a result, I wouldn't describe my childhood as magical in any way. Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and even the Tooth Fairy were somehow prudent and sensible, almost puritanical.
I have an excellent memory but I can remember few instances of unbridled joy as a child. Those that I do remember weren't at my own house either, but that of my cousin and usually outside in the wild woods behind her house that stretched for miles into the untamed mountains. My own childhood home sat on a hill with a large highway on one side and a busy rural road on the other. There was a steep cliff-like drop on another and multiple barbed wire fences in the last direction. With danger on every side, there was no freedom from my worried mother. Freedom extended a few feet beyond the patio, just enough to reach the swing set and trampoline and that was it. I sometimes wonder if my dislike of "outside" stems from the childhood admonitions of danger. Of course, Georgia in July, with its' humid, sticky hotness also played a factor I'm certain.
I think childhood is the time in our lives where we have the best chance of finding magic. Everything in childhood feels so real, even the make believe parts. A lack of childhood magic makes us old before our time. I was a solemn child, studious and polite but almost debilitatingly shy at times. It wasn't "sensible" to be shy though so I forced myself to act like I wasn't. I still suffer from the effects of that forced friendliness.
So, I found myself graduating from high school, older than my years. There was a yearning in my heart though to venture beyond my normal and create a new normal. My parents did not understand my desire to go somewhere other than local community college and they were baffled by my desire to study foreign languages. Their minds were too practical and the world too small and plain in their view.
So, I went away and found a new world. It was not without its' problems and there were plenty of things that seemed trivial and dull. Then, I was assigned a book to read, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It changed my life.
Magical realism was the next step, the evolution of what my life was missing. It was real, but something more. I started looking for the magic in the everyday and I found it more and more. The world seemed to change before my eyes. One day in the fall, I was walking on a flagstone path that meandered between two buildings. The colors of autumn were all around me. The air was crisp and the changing of the seasons, the slow march of forever, was tangible. The path was somewhat deserted, an unusual happenstance. Suddenly, without warning, I was caught in the middle of a whirlwind. Yellow leaves the color of sunshine swirled around me on all sides and even above my head. I stood, transfixed, in the middle of it all, untouched by even the whisper of wind. All I could think was, "This is the most amazing thing that's ever happened to me." I was so normal but I was standing in the middle of magic. It was awe-inspiring and humbling at the same time. I felt immeasurably blessed and somehow, changed forever.
In the spring, I discovered what would become my most beautiful dream yet. I returned from a dull and dreary spring break surrounded by maddening normalcy and discovered that the world outside my dorm room was covered in pink and smelled unearthly. Surely, it was the scent of heaven, but it wasn't. It was cherry trees and it's beauty and scent enveloped me in an otherworldly experience each time I went out the door. I left via those doors closest to the cherry trees even when it made more sense to leave by a different door. I would stand beneath the boughs and look up through the pinkened limbs heavy with blooms to see the possiblities inherent in a clear spring sky peeking through the maze of limbs. I hoped to hold onto the moment forever because spring blossoms are fickle things and a sudden rain shower could divest these trees of their magical blossoms at any time. I enjoyed every moment of those trees that I could. I studied lying on a blanket surrounded by their glory with the spring sun warming my back.
I paused and savored, but they went away. Magic is a promise though. It's everywhere and as long as you keep looking, you'll find it again. Those trees bloomed each spring and the hopefulness in my heart kept me living in the same dorm all four years. The promise of the cherry trees was enough.
I graduated though and I left those trees behind, but guess what? My new house has a cherry tree out front, small and too severely pruned by someone who can't see magic or imagine possibilities. The blooms this spring were a balm to my weary wintered heart and a delight to my soul.
Magic happens all around. You'll see it if you start to look. The proof is in my cherry tree.
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