CSA Delights

Ok, since I haven't blogged in almost a year, I decided to at least blog about my CSA (community shared agriculture) which gives me tons of lovely produce every week.

Last week I got lettuce, arugula, carrots, scallions, red cabbage, yellow wax beans, 3 pounds of apples, 2 pounds of peaches and 1 pound of teeny plums. For two people, that's a lot of food.

Well, I ended up making Thai chicken curry with the beans and some cole slaw with the cabbage and carrots and scallions. A whole cabbage is much bigger than it appears. I think we still have a cup of the cole slaw. Amazingly, we seem to have finished the fruit--I gave a few apples to friends, R. made some peach smoothies, and I made an apple pie to take to a barbeque. It was a frozen crust and I didn't realize it wasn't supposed to be thawed so it ended up a little weak but next time I'll make a real crust.

We still have a lot of salad left and today's CSA day but we don't get any more salad this time around so that's good. And I'm feeling a little less inspired this week about cooking. I think the cole slaw wore me out last week.

Creature Weekend

R. and I visited my mom's house in the Berkshires this past weekend and saw lots of creatures--some were where they belonged in nature and some gave me quite the surprise. Somehow, I was the one who kept finding them!

Snakey coming out from behind the fridge!

I first saw him on the rug when I went to get something from the fridge. Then, he got scared away when people tried to grab him. Finally, he reappeared.

Snakey right before R. swept him out of the house.

The frogs that make the really big plop! into the creek.

Frog on the porch in the rain

Dead Meecie

The real reason we were there.

Procrastination

My last post sounds so productive, like I'm hard at work preparing for school to begin. Hah! My books were out on the table all day and I think I thought about opening them all of once. Instead, I read, ate popcorn, etc. I didn't even do any Latin or any Great Books reading. I justify it to myself by saying that I really worked hard at cleaning today, which I did, but it took longer than it needed to since I kept interrupting myself to read for a few minutes. I know it's a bad sign when it's 8 pm and I still need to sweep up the floors. I guess I'm just giving myself more work to do later. Oh well.

Stuart Little

Ok, this is just a random note since I'm working on Stuart Little for my reading groups for the fall. I always liked the story as a kid, partly because it's fun to read things about small creatures trying to live like we do, using our things in strange ways. But I'd forgotten the part about how Stuart tries to have a date with this small girl. It kind of creeps me out. Maybe it's Garth Williams' illustration of the mouse swimming to show off for her. Or the picture where he's waiting for her to arrive, seated jauntily with his hands behind his head. A mouse acting like a guy--it doesn't quite work and it feels weird in a children's book. It also has a very ambivalent ending. What about returning to his family? Will he ever find the bird? I wonder how my students will react. Also, I wonder how many have seen the movie which definitely changes a lot of things.

Hot

These past few days I've felt like a chicken roasting in the oven. The school where I'm working has lousy airconditioning so that doesn't make things any better. The students are whiny because of the heat and I've gotten to the point where I just turn out the light in the room to try and make it cooler. Although I'm not sure how much that helps.

I'm usually not big on airconditioning but it's my new best friend. Even though it makes me sleep like a rock and makes getting up rather difficult.

Daily Grace

Ok, so I'm not going to give a summary of what's been going on this summer, maybe because I haven't written about it much in my paper journal but also because my h. has been over it so many times on the phone or with friends in person that it just seems like a song I can't get out of my head.

Anyway, something I have been learning is that I need daily grace. I'm working at this test prep place where I worked last summer and I'm struggling like last summer not to give into how boring it is and how tough it is on the kids. Basically they spend from 8:30 to 2:30 every day working on multiple choice tests and the like and when I have them (from 11:30-2:30) they're expected to do that and read and write. What kid in their right mind is going to enjoy writing or reading/discussing a book after so much boring multiple choice? Especially when they have homework every night as well? So, that's where the daily grace comes in. I don't so much mind the long train ride out there but it's that moment when I enter the empty church building that smells of bad take out. That's when I remember how annoying some of the kids were yesterday or how much work I have to force them to do for the day. So, I've started praying for grace right then to do my job and to make it as interesting and useful as possible for the kids. I don't like to think that I'm helping them waste their summers. Although I guess they could be doing far worse things with their time. For the most part they're well behaved and they seem to be pretty well-motivated or at least their Asian parents are motivating them.

I can't spend too much time thinking about what I'd rather be doing with my time either. Although I'm not looking forward to answering the "how was your summer?" question from teacher friends and parents once I'm back at GS. Oh well, the Lord will surely give me grace to deal with that as well.

Rediscovering the Brontes

Ok, so I've read Jane Eyre & Wuthering Heights but I'd never read anything by the third Bronte sister, Anne. And the other week I picked up this book called Agnes Grey by Anne B. I loved it--at first it's the story of this young girl who becomes a governess among spoiled bratty children. Her comments about the difficulties of teaching students who won't respect her and parents who won't back her up with discipline sounded like conversations I've had with teacher friends. I also liked her ideals about education.

Later on, it becomes a love story and it's all within a Christian perspective--very refreshing and dear.

This inspired me to reread the other Brontes as well as some things I haven't read such as Anne's second book, and Charlotte's three other novels aside from Jane Eyre. When I've read all of this, including poems by Emily & Anne, I plan to read Elizabeth Gaskell (a friend of Charlotte) on the Bronte sisters. There's also an interesting modern biography/criticism called the Bronte Myth that I want to end up with.

Of course, this reading only increases my desire to visit England. However, I'm not sure I want to go to modern England. I'm not sure it would live up to all the 19th century literature I've read! My sister's pictures of Scotland of course do not help with this Anglophilia of mine.

The alternate me & hubby

My cat can tell time

Since I've had Spring Break from school for the past two weeks, I've been meaning to get back into my blog. And I was finally forced to because I wanted to call my friend and tell her this story but then I realized she was on an airplane so why not blog.

Anyway, Ariel, my cat, can tell time. When I'm sleeping late, she always kind of nudges me to make sure I really want to do that. Also, when it's time to feed her (6:30) she starts yowling at me and every time I make a move from the couch, she goes galloping into the kitchen. Sometimes she'll start around 6, just to let me know it's almost time but she gets really serious when it's 6:30.

Side note: I used to feed her in the mornings after I showered but she was such a royal pain on days when I wanted to sleep in that I stopped that.

So, the funny thing is, recently she's been starting her feed me yowl around 5 or 5:30. I joked to my husband that she's ready for Daylight Savings Time, thinking it was a few weeks off. But then when she did it again today, I checked my calendar and it's this weekend. How does she know??

This bums me out a bit, though, because I have to go back to school on Monday which means I'll be getting up at 5 am rather than 6! And I've been so happy with 7:30-8 or later if I'm really sleepy.

New Year

So, my students caught me--I wrote 2005 on the board on Tuesday, our first day back. Does that ever stop happening to a person? I mean, I've seen enough new years in by now to not get thrown by changing the year. It's not like I forget to write the right month and that changes every 30-31 days. So why is a year so hard?

And, as my friend said, how can it be a new year in the middle of the school year, in the middle of winter. There really doesn't seem to be anything new now. Spring would be a much better time.

On the subject of years, I think I'll need to quit teaching before I have students who were born in this century. It's bad enough that my students now were born after I graduated from college. But I don't think I could handle eight year olds turning nine who were born in 2000. That would make me too much of a fossil. Ten year college reunion this spring is also bad enough.

Roaches!

Three this week, all in different locations. Why me??? My apartment is relatively clean, we don't leave food out and don't they hibernate or something? Ugh. My cat ate two of them. Or one and a half. I find that disgusting but it's better than me squishing them.

Books I've Read Recently

I've been thinking that I can never remember what my favorite book is, perhaps because I don't write down what I read. By favorite book, I probably mean favorite of the month because I have trouble narrowing down an all time favorite. So, why not post them here? I assume I can edit and add to the list as I go. If not, I'll have to come up with another scheme. And I'm going to skip the day and just include month & year.

various books in Gaslight Mystery Series by Victoria Thompson (10 & 11/05)
Eragon by Christopher Paolini (11/05)
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (11/05)
A Slipping-Down Life by Anne Tyler (11/05)
Girls in Pants by Anne Brasheres (11/05)
Katherine by Anya Seton (12/05)
Eldest by Christopher Paolini (12/05)
Green Darkness by Anya Seton (12/05)
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (1/06)

Love/Hate

I love my students--their delight in all the snow we had on Friday, their sheer joy in having snowball fights and making gigantic, slightly dirty snowmen.

At the same time, they drive me crazy. Two boys are being really rough with some of the girls and they excuse it by saying "they always bother us." And then I caught the girls all in a corner "gathering evidence" against the boys so that they could go home and tell their moms. Hello, who's in charge here?? Why did I get cut out of the equation?

And then I watched them all work together so well this morning decorating the classroom for Christmas. (The student council always has this contest and the kids get to spend the first 20 minutes of one day in the week before vacation decorating). They all shared the materials, even though some people had forgotten to bring any in and they helped each other with the tape and no one made fun of anyone else's ideas and one boy who often gets antsy when he's done with things and no one else is, said, "We also should do some cleaning up to get the room ready," and then started doing it himself.

But then I've had to threaten to send pink slips home because they keep forgetting to turn in their reading logs which is a regular part of their homework! UGH! And then I caught one boy kicking another and then he yelled at me for sitting him out of recess. He wanted me to punish the other boy for something he wouldn't admit to and I'm supposed to just go by the word of the one I saw kicking??

Anyway, I do love them--I went to a doctor's appointment for the first half of the day and then when I come back they all called my name and were so happy to see me--like I had been gone for days!

We're dressing up in "tacky Christmas wear" on Wednesday (another student council idea) and I have to remember to take pictures and add them to my poor blog!

States I visited

This was really fun. I got it from my sister's blog--I liked comparing where her boyfriend from the West Coast had been with me from the East Coast. Wish I had all 50 but haven't been everywhere yet.



create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

Super Hero Status!

The other day I was writing down my students' oral answers to history questions for them to copy. A few of them started to complain that they couldn't see and I started to get frustrated. Where was their patience?? (Where was mine?).

But then one of my boys said, "I wish you had really long stretchy arms so you could write on the board and be out of the way at the same time." (So they do realize the impossibility of me writing on the board and not being "in the way").

I replied, "Unfortunately I'm not one of the Incredibles."

And then another boy said, "Yes you are!" and clapped his hand over his mouth.

I thanked him and laughed. Does he have a crush on me?? Oh well, now I'm a Super!

lost in the details

Ok so I know this blog is supposed to help prevent this, but I've been lost in the details for the past few weeks. Or at least that's my excuse for not blogging for so long.

Anyway, I've been doing fall things, like cooking hearty dishes, switching my closet to reflect the weather, sitting and sipping warm beveridges.

One of these hearty dishes made me feel like a pioneer woman or a farmer or something. I made pumpkin soup from the pumpkin I got on our trip to the "farm". And the stock was stuff I'd made myself from chicken bones saved from chickens roasted weeks ago. I think the only ingredient I purchased was an onion! So, why a farmer/pioneer woman? Well, the whole idea of making something from nothing and using all the parts of something to create food. See, the chicken bones were used as were the pumpkin seeds (for a nice alternative to croutons).

On another fall topic, why is it that every year when I go through my closet and drawers, I get rid of 1-2 bags of clothing that I don't wear anymore or that I shouldn't wear anymore because it's stained or holey? And then I always feel like I have nothing to wear. I don't get it. Do the junky clothes multiply when I'm not looking? Or do the nice ones magically transform into junk after they enter my drawers? One of life's mysteries.