For Myself (more than anyone else)

In two minutes I am officially done with summer vacation. For some reason, I feel more hesitant than usual about this fact. I am not ready to go back. I'm not ready to have the students return to my classroom. I keep having nightmares about unruly classes and a voice that cannot be heard. I think it is fear of the unknown sinking in--unknown students, unknown material. I'm teaching an entirely new to me subject this year, which is much like being a new teacher again when it comes to developing curriculum.

But somewhere in my mind I keep thinking, knowing that this will all be fine. My nightmares are merely nightmares. I have a teaching voice--the same one that inadvertently turns heads in public places. I've been down this road many times. And yet, once again, I feel a sense of dread.

And so, for me at this exact moment in time, a reminder:

"Ultimately, we know deeply that

the other side of every fear is freedom."

~ Marilyn Ferguson

And away we go!

Yes, please.

"Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air."

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

*Photo found here.

Monday Comes After (or "I Clean Off My Point & Shoot")

This weekend, there may have been hiking:

I might have wasted my time stalking a few of these fellas with the point and shoot

(resulting in what is, perhaps, the world's worst wildlife photography):

(I might've laughed at myself later for it.)

*

I could've attended a bridal shower that I chose not to record with any images.

(But I might tell you all about it later.)

*

I probably taught Sunday School.

And maybe I flirted with someone at church.

(I'll likely never fess up.)

*

The bestie and I possibly made a last minute decision after church

to make the commute north for the fireworks at my/our alma mater.

There was probably some game-playing:

(We are, in truth, far over 21)

And maybe we goofed off with the camera waiting for the show to begin:

(Until I realized the camera was zoomed...)

(ahhh, that's much better!)

I probably cropped the above photo so that you can't see

the spectacle of the painfully hormonal adolescent pair behind and to the left of me.

(And let it be known that my future children are never attending the fireworks unchaperoned.) (Period.)

I certainly appreciated this spectacle while waiting for the fireworks:

And maybe I took the following picture last night, or maybe on the 4th of July...2007.

You'll never know.

*

Perhaps one day I'll get around to posting

about my excursions in the red rock a couple of weeks ago:

And how it was miserably hot in Grand Wash (that smile is only because I'm in the shade)

Or how I probably snap too many photos of sunsets:

Or how I made roasted tomato & eggplant pizza on a whole wheat crust from scratch.

I'll let you read that again: from scratch. And it worked!

But if I were you, I wouldn't hold my breath.

I dig...

What about you?

...and I feel fine

The iTunes are on random--an anthem of summer--reminding me of songs I forget about.

I'm loading photos on facebook in an album I'm calling "and the livin' is easy" in celebration of summertime bliss.

Tomorrow I am done with this 2 week conference (that I won't--will NOT, I say--participate in next year--I refuse--and am making this promise to myself now so I stick to it!).

Tomorrow is also Alice's birthday.

Saturday I head for Capitol Reef National Park for some red rock-blue sky action, hiking, swimming, reading, laughing and relaxation to celebrate her day? our friendship? Summer.

I slipped on shoes that clash to go get the mail and laughed the whole time.

I'm debating between a movie and a hike tonight. Either will make me unutterably happy.

And everything is green, lovely, worth celebrating.

* image found here.

Rookie Reviews: The Poisonwood Bible

"One has only a life of one's own."

Most I talk to tackled Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible long, long ago, but for those who haven't, and for my own need to process a novel I want only to discuss, a review:

I give Poisonwood an 8.5/10. As with most well-written novels, there are excerpts that reside within me still. Sentences that have woven themselves into the tapestry of my mind. Orleanna's narration at the onset of the section "Exodus" has a profound and moving insight into grief:

As long as I kept moving, my grief streamed out behind me like a swimmer's long hair in water. I knew the weight was there but it didn't touch me. Only when I stopped did the slick, dark stuff of it come floating around my face, catching my arms and throat till I began to drown. So I just didn't stop.

The substance of grief is not imaginary. it's as real as rope or the absence of air, and like both those things it can kill. My body understood there was no safe place for me to be.

As the last child my mother carried, the baby of the family delayed behind the others by four years, I found myself so tied to Orleanna's final lines about her own youngest daughter:

A mother's body remembers her babies--the folds of soft flesh, the softly furred scalp against her nose. Each child has its own entreaties to body and soul. It's the last one, though, that overtakes you. I can't dare say I loved the others less... She continues on to express the difficulties and frustrations of the first three, the mothering of them all simultaneously and the difference in mothering that last child:

But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after--oh, that's love by a different name. She is the babe you hold in your arms for an hour after she's gone to sleep. If you put her down in the crib, she might wake up changed and fly away. So instead you rock by the window, drinking the light from her skin, breathing her exhaled dreams. Your heart bays to the double crescent moons of closed lashes on her cheeks. She's the one you can't put down.

But there were a few things that didn't work as well for me. For instance, I felt the book to be unbalanced in its pacing. The first year and a half of the narrative is covered in detail, the plot thorough and developed. In the latter half of the book covers a span of 30 plus years in a third of the prose space. It told the story, but I didn't love that aspect of the organization. I found something deeply satisfying in elements of Kinsolver's structuring of the book (i.e. a separation into sections/books--Genesis, Revelation, Exodus; the various narrators and their sequencing and so forth), but again I felt the pacing detracted from the experience.

I think where Kingsolver went wrong in pacing, and in the book, is in her blatant focus on agenda as opposed to the story, the characters in the last third of the book. Kingsolver was quoted in the New York Times as saying,

"If I were to write a nonfiction book about the brief blossoming and destruction of the independence of the Congo, and what the CIA had to do with it, then probably all 85 people who are interested in the subject would read it. Instead I can write a novel that's ostensibly about family and culture and an exotic locale. And it's entertaining, I hope."

Entertaining, it is. Mostly. But the agenda sucks something from the vividness of the book. The lack of subtlety detracts from those moments that really do change minds and educate in the novel. It fails to allow readers to come to their own conclusions. While the prose in the latter half has some of the most elegant of moments--lyrical, poetic loveliness--the agenda/education Kingsolver wants to provide acts to pale what is aesthetic and artistic. Imagine a great boulder in the middle of a canyon: Kingsolver had times when she allowed the flow of her prose to slowly erode that boulder as a stream of water and at others she plowed through it with dynamite. Her boulder is not what offended me. It was the abrupt nature of the explosions.

I still say read The Poisonwood Bible. It will change you. Upon finishing, I downloaded another book set in the Congo (for my heavenly new Kindle--which I'll also review ever so soon): Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

Up next:

Some good pool-side reads:
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
The Postmistress by Sarah Blake
Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

Some Russians:
Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky
Anna Karenina by Tolstoy

Some more of Africa:
Heart of Darkness by Conrad

And something for next school year:
Jane Eyre (again!) by Charlotte Bronte

Summer gives the gift of good books!

Rookie Reads

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who sneak ahead to the last page of a book before finishing, and those who do not. 

I'm of the latter and my greatest pet peeve are those of the former.

And now, a few summer reading reviews.



This one, An Abundance of Katherines by John Greene, you need to read it. Seriously, if you want/need to laugh. If you share my appreciation for young adult lit. Read it. Seriously, read it. The characters do pay homage to Norman Mailer with excessive use of the word "fugging" and I literally mean "fugging" and not what Mailer replaced with "fug". I enjoyed it thoroughly, the clever footnotes especially. It was one of the option for our department's summer reading and I'm ever so happy it was on the list.



Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie was quick and lovely. It reaches into the human quest, desire, need for creativity and imagination. I loved it. I only wonder, as with anything translated, what was lost in translation. This was also on our school's summer reading list.


The great surprise of the summer:

Whirligig by Paul Fleischman. I can't say much about it without giving it away, but the chapters that veer from our protagonist were my favorite. Quick, adolescent loveliness. Also got this one from the school's list.


Now, I feel divided about this one:

Niffeneger is a talented story teller. Much of the prose was exquisite. The concept itself was intriguing and how it played out in the texture of the story itself was quite brilliant and seamless. But the sex was, well, excessive in my opinion. I believe a marriage should have that kind of passion, absolutely. But it seemed like we just kept going back there.



Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is now in a box somewhere. It just didn't catch me and keep me soon enough. It spent the summer living at my bedside beneath other books. I hope to return to it eventually and give it another go-round when I'm not distracted by all the other reading to be done.



And this little piggy (Edgar Mint) has been interrupted by packing and purging. I'll come back to it later.

I've My Work Cut Out for Me

Only three weeks left of summer and I haven't cleared time for lazing about and watching some of my favorites. Am I missing anything?

Cleaning ADD

1. Avoid breaking neck on unpacked (but not necessarily put away) messes of shoes on bedroom floor.



2. Start cleaning up shoe mess.

3. Give up.

4. Fold towels.

5. Spot camera.

6. Forget cleaning altogether.

7. Go outside.

8. Take picture of "front porch"


Note to self: sweep stairwell.
Addendum to note-to-self: on mission. stairwell sweeping must wait.

9. Take pictures of stuff you've meant to take pictures of in backyard.



10. Melt in sun.

11. Go inside.

12. Stare at towel towers.

13. Take "raw" self-portrait sans makeup/good lighting.

14. See picture, consider showering.

15. Decide against showering.

16. Back to shoe mess.


17. Stare aimlessly at shoe mess.

18. Create good will pile.

19. Color coordinate 1/2 closet.

20. Give up closet.

21. Blog.

22. Shower.

23. Finish closet.


24. Stare aimlessly at shoe mess.

25. Find shoe solution at Wal-mart.

26. Create safe walkway in bedroom.

27. Organize shoes.




The end.

Later Gator

I'm taking off on The Big Summer Vacation. I'll be back the night of the 5th.

I'm going on a history tour of my particular religion of choice and then on to Chicago. I'm a desert girl who is dreading the humidity coming my way. My naturally curly hair is going to meet its ultimate volume potential, I'm sure.

Until then, enjoy the blogosphere. Pictures of my colossally frizzed head to come. Eventually. A few sites I'll be visiting to get you by until then:

Are You Ready to Rock?

Back when Barbie was my vicarious-living-experience of choice so many, many years ago, she had herself a Rock & Roll band (one of her many multi-faceted career choices). "Barbie and the Rockers" was a strategically launched mixture of MTV culture and the every-so-cool toy industry and I, along with several other friends on the block, had multiple members of this metallic-clad, glam-rock-haired, neon-sock-wearing musicians in my Barbie collection. This, ladies and gentlemen, was the closest I ever got to being a Rock Goddess (excluding my friggen' awesome solos whilst driving in the car, naturally).

That is until now...

Alice's dear Papa received this little baby for his Wii recently and I must say that I never knew I had such tendencies for video game addiction in me. I play a pretty mean drum set and I'm honing my guitar skills (set on EASY mode, of course--no reason to get too far ahead of myself).

I am still uncertain whether I am exponentially cooler holding a guitar or not. (Does it count if said guitar happens to be a fake?)

Further Proof that Summer Turns Me Lazy

and add "Absent Minded" to that title. This (late) morning I worked out before hopping in the shower. While raising my arms with my free-weights to tone whatever arm-muscle that little action tones (or never does in my case), I caught wind of a strange odor I'm just not accustomed to smelling on a regular basis. Upon further inspection I discovered, much to my dismay, that I had horrible B.O. in only one armpit. What the!?! How'd that happen? Do I sweat more under that arm? Did I touch something gross? My most accurate theory: I'm thinking that perhaps only one armpit received the deodorant treatment. Oopsy!

On a positive note, I didn't procrastinate showering today. And I applied deodorant liberally to both armpits, thank you very much.

Why I'm Not Blogging Much Lately

I blame summer. Summer is busy and chaotic with travel, family in town, conferences, holidays and birthdays and things to do outside...its also that special time of year when my schedule is completely shot to hell I waste a lot of time doing not much of anything in my spare time. And I've enjoyed every minute of it.

Here are a few favorite highlights and photos from my sister's visit (along with her most adorable cuties).

Firstly, I love that these two girlies asked me to sing them a goodnight song. My sister has a tradition of this with her kids, but whenever I am nearby my sangin' skills are requested. So, of course, we had a jammies shot:


Then there is this girl, my bookworm of a niece who spent the majority of the time enjoying my library. Her mother, of course, wasn't too happy to discover I'd not only supplied her with her fix of books, but also a book light late one night (hey, a girl's gotta support her own kind)...ain't she a know-it-all:


And this little bugga-boo is addicted to his mother. He was too funny and his cheeser face for the camera cracks me up:


And, of course, we can't leave out "Theo," my pain-in-the-behind bro-in-law (whom I love dearly--don't tell him). He finally decided to show his stanky keester a week into their visit...p'shaw, like Boise is cool!


This girlie cracks me up and I miss her like you wouldn't believe. This is evidence of her newest funny face stage:


And there must be something about kids this age and posing for the camera...she loved every minute of it...toothless cutie-pants:


And, finally, another of my smarty-pants 13-year-old niece, because I just love this photo of her:


It was so much fun having them all here. I miss them and hate that they always live far, far away (I blame the pesky brother-in-law). However, I find myself thanking my lucky stars that I'm still single and childless...because those kiddos wear a girl out! :)

Since they've been gone I've spent a lot of time sitting right here:

(Don't you just love those sheets...THANK YOU Target). I put a fan in front of me and read...but mostly I sleep. I can't seem to get enough sleep these days, perhaps I am hoping my body is storing it somewhere for the sleep famine that is teaching.

And, I've discovered a new love/hate relationship this week:


So, that's just a small look into what I've been up to instead of posting blogs.