The Best Part Was the Reading

Yesterday was the Gallery Crawl. I mentioned it 2 posts ago (so I’m not going to link to it – just scroll down, silly!). Brief reminder, I spent February turning 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders into published poets. Yesterday was the Big Event at the school, where we showcased our project. It was inspiring to be there and see the young poets lead their parents and friends to our table, search the display for their own poem and their favorites written by their friends, and then watch their families react to their work. It was evident that they were proud of what they’d done, which made me feel proud. One of the parents said that her daughter had been talking about the project and calling herself a poet all month. I didn’t stop smiling for 90 minutes (more really, but that’s how long the Crawl was). And as wonderful as that was, that wasn’t even the best part of the day. Of the whole experience, really!

That happened earlier, during the school day. I spent an hour with this fantastic group of kids, doing a POETRY READING! It was wonderful to hear the poems read by the authors (or the authors’ friends, in some cases). It made the whole experience, all the time and work and feelings of inadequacy on my part, that much more worth it.

Someone needs to remind me more often how rewarding volunteering is…

Sooo? Whatcha Been Doin’?

Well, I’ll tell ya…

I got a job and I love my job, but it keeps me busy and so I haven’t been blogging. Or writing much, really, except for journaling when I think of it.

I’ve been reading. Currently I’m reading Runaway, a collection of short stories by Alice Munro, which I am loving. I had veered off my preferred sunlit and wildflower-lined path of short-story writing to spend some time in the murky swampland of poetry and am hopeful that reading stories will start the story cogs running again. So far, so good. I have this idea…

I did get a couple of worthwhile poems out of my detour. I’ve never been able to say that before!

Oh, and this:

The girls’ school has a sort of “gallery crawl” every spring. Guest artists spend the month of February working with a class on some sort of project to be showcased in March at the crawl (in the rooms and halls of the school). I spent February turning a classroom full of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders into published poets. It was a lot of fun (I am REALLY glad it’s almost over). This could be what inspired my longing for prose again…

If I can stay off Facebook – well, cut back on my FB time (can’t abandon my WWF friends and everyone needs to see photos of Pete and Lulu doing awesome Pete and Lulu stuff), maybe I can trade it for blogging again. I’ve missed it.

How about you? What have you been up to?

Now to go get my readers back…

Back to Writing! In a minute… After I do these other things…

School started, you know, 2 weeks ago. I was sooo looking forward to it for several reasons. First, I’m not an Automated Entertainment Machine with Super Fun Activities in my back pocket, just waiting for 5 or 9 year-olds to get bored; I’m sorry, but I’m not. Second, I do not enjoy refereeing the fistfights that ensue when 5 and 9 year-olds (girls!) are bored. That didn’t happen often, fortunately, but once is too many times.

And third, and this is the big one, with everyone gone to school and work, the house is quiet and nobody needs me and I can write! Also, edit. Or so I thought…

Turns out, now that everyone else is elsewhere, I’m also needed elsewhere. In the last 2 weeks, I’ve spent… Well, let’s just do the math.

14 days in 2 weeks minus 5 weekend/holiday days = 9 days for writing, right? Wrong. 9 writing days minus 5 days of volunteering at the school = 4 writing days (already down 10 days here…). But then, and this is all on me, I know, I spent 2 days doing churchy things. One day I had an interview for that job, and even though the actual interview, including driving time, was only an hour, the day was pretty much lost to anxiety and getting ready. The other day, yesterday, I spent volunteering at the church, doing work that would have been done by the person who left and made a job available. That was just the morning and early afternoon, but then I needed to go grocery shopping so my girls would have milk to drink and wouldn’t have to buy school lunch (ick!).

So: 14-5-5-2=2. Two days. I think I’ve been busier since school started than I was before.

And yet, now that I think about it, I’ve written and revised a poem, edited a chunk of the first chapter of my Tallulah MS, Googled picture book agents (anyone have any recommendations?), and journal-ed almost every day.

Never mind. Being busy is good for my writing, apparently.

(Quick addendum: I got the job. I start Sunday. It’s only part time and so will leave plenty of time for writing.)

So Bel, How's the New Career Going?

Right? That's what you're wondering, right? Well, I'll tell you...

Last week was the girls' first full week of school and the week I had intended to start really writing every day. I did manage to squeeze in a little writing a couple of the days, and I read every day (a celebrated new addition to my daily schedule that involves being 30 minutes early for car-pool), but with volunteering and doctor appointments and procrastination, I didn't have time energy initiative to really start. [insert your very own random but valid excuse here - it'll be just as good as mine would be]

But guess what! Today, after I got home from the grocery store (crazy Real Life!) I finished the short story I've been working on for months. Go me! Now, when I say "finished" I mean that I got to the end of it, of the first draft. I do not mean that anyone will be allowed (or want) to read it. It's a mess. It's a confuddlement. It's terrible. YAY! Yay for very first, very rough, very finished drafts. And tomorrow I think I'll transfer it from my composition book, where it lives now because I knew I'd be more likely to finish it and not just editeditedit, to the computer so I can edit, edit, edit. Then maybe someone can read it... By January... We'll see...

Have you started any new big projects/chapters in your life recently?

Please Don't Get MS... Or Vertigo...

Last night I woke myself up a few times simply rolling onto my back. Or maybe more accurately, the sensation of the world tilting dramatically on its axis woke me up. Have you ever experienced vertigo? How about while you're sleeping? It's unpleasant. I'm understating a tad.

I have BPPV, and several years ago, I think before Pete, it was really bad. So bad that if I looked at an airplane flying overhead or laid on my back on the bed, the room would turn on its side and a clammy wave of nausea would overtake me and I'd be useless until it passed. It had lessened for a long time, but apparently it's back. It is bad enough that I couldn't sleep on my back even with a pillow last night or tilt my head back to put drops on my contacts this morning. I hate BPPV. I'm understating a tad.

So since I already felt like crap this morning and don't have anything big scheduled until late Friday (Husbandguy said he will drive to Pete's swimming lesson and the thing on Friday - I checked), I decided to go ahead and take my monthly steroids today. I'd been putting it off because... well look here - that'll explain it some. It's just hard to find a time when I don't have something to do that would be difficult to put off or miss because I can't drive myself there. Like church. Or Pete's school. Or my life. Anyway, I was hoping the steroids would help with the vertigo - not because they're supposed to - I was just hoping. Instead they made me feel worse. HG had to come home to drive me and Pete to her check-up. He's really good about that kind of stuff. I thanked him. Several times.

Steroids are supposed to give you energy, right? Make you kind of high or hyped-up or even aggressive. Right? I get hyped usually, but the hyped-up feeling in my day today happened just after Pete's check up, when I apparently had a little extra adrenaline or something and felt actually normal for the first time since sometime after midnight.

Maybe I could learn something from this about how to feel better after I've taken my steroids. Exercise? Performing? Lecture circuit? But right now I can't think about that. I'm going to take my shot (yep, still have to do that) and take ½ a Xanax and fade away until morning, when I bet I'll be abnormally peaceful and tolerant until about 10 AM when the Xanax fully wears off.

Backward Was World My, Moment a For

This morning I had some stuff to do at Pete's school in the parent center, volunteer-y stuff, and I took Lulu along with me like I always do have. When we started doing this, Lulu was 3 months old. I just plopped her car seat carrier into her stroller and rolled her all around the school with me. People would stop and say how sweet she was and blah blah blah. It was what was normal. And she was the littlest of all the sibling children at Pete's school. Eventually (and obviously) she got bigger - too big to be restrained in a stroller. But she was always still the littlest or at least among the little ones. Today, though? Today she was the biggest little kid. The BIGGEST. You know, the oldest. She was sharing her book with another little one, who is not yet 2, and I looked down at my baby and realized that she wasn't there! There was a kid there who looked just like her, who is just as sweet and just as dramatic and just as smart as my baby, but my baby wasn't there. It felt surreal for a moment. Then my vision shifted and this, this big girl helping out, "reading" to and directing the play of the other kids, wearing underpants, this became normal.

You're probably getting tired of all the my-kids-are-growing-up posts (those of you who don't have a grandparental relationship, I mean - maybe you too), but I can't help it. See, in 2 weeks I'm going to graduate to the next demographic. When I check my age range on surveys or whatever, I won't be lumped in with the 20-somethings anymore, and I think it's making me all nostalgic and whatever. And having big kids of my own isn't helping.

Heat

I don't like heat. I just spent 4 hour outside in 90º temps helping out at Pete's school's spring festival. I loved it. Now I'm going to go lie down until HG and the girls get home.

Pete's Tooth

Okay. This is the first time I've had a child who is getting grown-up teeth so forgive me if you think I overreacted, but listen to this!

On Monday, Pete came home and said, "Mom! My grown-up teeth are coming in! I can feel two of them!" Okay, but Pete, you've only lost one of your baby teeth. What are you talking about? Pete showed me, then. Her empty space was indeed getting a tooth, and also the tooth next to it was coming in, too, right behind her baby tooth!! Nuh-uh! That's not right! So I called the dentist, and the lady who answered the phone (using the dentist's new name and momentarily confusing me) didn't know what to tell me so we made an appointment for Wednesday. It meant that I would have to take Pete out of school in the middle of the day and cut short my reading buddy time, but if it would help us to avoid embarrassment and braces for Pete, it was totally worth it. My fear was that the dentist was going to say that the baby tooth would have to be extracted. My hope was that he had some special trick he would do to pluck the baby tooth out of Pete's mouth without her noticing so the tooth fairy could come. What happened was that he said, "She's normal. Don't worry," and didn't charge us for taking up his time (one advantage of marrying/being born into Husbandguy's family dentist of 30+ years). Also, Pete didn't think it was funny when I suggested that maybe she's turning into a shark...

But how proud of me am I! I didn't mention once to Pete until after the appointment that the dentist might have to cut out her tooth so she wasn't scared or worried at all when we went for her appointment. Yay me for not scaring my daughter!!

Oh, and the class didn't get shortchanged on the reading buddy thing because someone else's mom showed up and took over when I had to leave. It was convenient!

I'm One of the Cool Kids Now! (and you can be too...)

This morning I was part of a meeting with the principal at Pete's school about the difficulties Pete's class is having this year with Normalization. That's the Montessori term for coming together as a Peaceful Classroom Community. It's been rough so far. And to add to her teacher's troubles, the assistant teacher quit late fall and so Pete's teacher has kind of been on her own for a couple of months. She is a highly capable veteran Montessori teacher, but to have a difficult class and then to lose your assistant? Come on! Poor Teacher!

So some of the other cool kids (kids=moms) and I sat down with the principal today to talk about the difficulties and the way it's impacting our children and what the school is doing and, most importantly, how we can help. And it was very productive. I got questions answered that I didn't even know I wanted to ask! And I might have figured out what's contributing to Pete's sleepwalking, which has been almost nightly for the last month or more and which happened at Moomie's on Saturday (sorry we didn't prepare you, Moomie). And I think I've signed up to help out in Pete's classroom during the next few weeks until they finalize the new assistant. I'm a little worried about how I'll do at that, but as one of the cool kids, I feel like I'm supposed to do it. And I want to. And if I just do it, I'll do fine.

See? I wasn't cool before because I was afraid I'd be bad at something and so I never did anything and never had the chance to be part of the cool stuff and have people say thank you to me for things like organizing a meeting with the principal that wasn't even my idea in the first place but was really needed.

You want to be cool with me? Just get involved! It's not actually that hard. And you might be surprised (I was) at how easy it is to do something you can feel good about and that makes other people feel good and then you feel even better because those people thank you. (That's my PSA for the week.)

Very Rewarding Things

Sorry I'm late again. I was at Pete's school doing a Very Rewarding Thing. It was cool.

Also, I got a BUNCH of responses to the PTA survey I sent out, kind of unexpected. Now I have to figure out what to do with them. I think I'll start with a spreadsheet. Spreadsheets are cool. After that? Dunno. I'm going to try to implement ONE THING I found out from this survey.