Monthly Archives: June 2008

>Random thoughts on watching Senator Clinton’s announcment

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>I couldn’t stand Wolf Blitzer’s condescension any longer, so I left CNN for Fox News.
Is it silly that I set my Hillary campaign purse in a prominent place? I’m proud of it, proud of her. She is and will remain an amazing woman, an idol of mine. I can only dream of having her strength, resiliency, and intelligence.
My Hillary ’08 campaign button is a keeper. The “novelty items”? I gave those away to a young liberal I call La Petite.
I found this op-ed piece while waiting restlessly for the rally to begin. New York Times columnist Gail Collins really gets it. She talks about how today’s feminists became accustomed to ridicule as a tool to put them down. She describes Hillary’s campaign as historic and wonders if Clinton’s exit will be treated with the respect it deserves, as Obama’s certainly would if he were in her shoes.
Collins’ conclusion resounded with me.

“For all her vaunting ambition, she was never a candidate who ran for president just because it’s the presidency. She thought about winning in terms of the things she could accomplish, and she never forgot the women’s issues she had championed all her life — repair of the social safety net, children’s rights, support for working mothers.”

I will always admire Hillary Clinton — not for her titles of First Lady or Senator or Presidential Candidate, but for all she’s accomplished. I truly believe she’s not finished accomplishing yet.

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>Shoulds are, as always, bogus.

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>I should have washed the windows when I filled the minivan with gas.
Reality: I didn’t have much time.
End result: I bought coffee instead, left the windshield-washing for later.

“Crop dusting” at neighborhood park should have been done on a weekend or outside school hours.
Reality: DNR had only a finite window of time, did it during the school day.
End result: My minivan got coated with the sticky film of an organic insecticide.

Car wash should have taken care of it.
Reality: Car wash track broke down as my minivan entered.
End result: Minivan front end covered with soap, washing code noted (in soap) on side window. Sticky coating of organic insecticide still present.

I should get a free car wash!
Reality: I had already paid. No refund available.
End result: Credit issued, I can go back to get the wash done when they’re fixed again.

Update: I went back to the car wash on a cool and cloudy day. The line was non-existent, and the service was great. the minivan is finally clean.
Now there’s rain in the forecast, but that’s fine with me.

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>"Can he cook?"

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>When my college sweetheart proposed and we began to plan our life together, my mother asked, “Can he cook?” I shrugged. Who cares about such mundane matters when in love? “He can cook about as well as I can,” I answered. Her reply? “You’re doomed.” She predicted starvation, at least.

Over the past 24 years (as of mid-June!), Husband and I have developed our own cooking styles. I’m the basic throw-something-on-the-table each night person because I get home from work first. He is the fancier cook, the one who will take a piece of steak or chicken and make a Food Network style recipe out of it. I’ll combine basic stew ingredients with garden vegetables in the crockpot; he’ll start up the grill and whip up a marinade. I’ll bake muffins or banana bread or rhubarb upside down cake; he’ll scoop up a dish of ice cream.

There’s room for both of us in the kitchen.

Both of us have our disaster stories, too. When we moved to our current home, it was a rather drawn out process. I was teaching full time, he was working full time, and both kids were in school. I would load up the car, teach all day, drop off the boxes at the house, pick up more empty boxes, and go home. Eventually we had most of what we needed, and we picked up the furniture and drove it down the highway to the new home.

Okay, we rented a truck.

But we didn’t move everything right away. A lot of the foodstuffs, including the spices, were still at the old duplex waiting for another day and another empty box. One day I attempted to make chili in the crockpot and found myself without chili powder. Always resourceful, I picked up a pack or two of the cracked red pepper that had come with a Pizza Hut pizza a few days earlier. This would work, I thought.

It worked, all right. It nearly burned every tongue in the family. Mom, the Bland Chili Queen, had cooked up a legend.

I’m not the worst cook. Not even close, I dare say. But every cook who experiments will have a disaster now and then, and I must admit I’m one of them. Blog them? Not likely! But you can find more stories at the American Egg Board’s Worst Cook contest. Eat ’em, er, read ’em and weep — hopefully with laughter.

This post was written for Parent Bloggers Network as part of a contest sponsored by the American Egg Board. Go ahead, check them out. PBN always has more stories to share!

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>Of two great minds

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>I am of two minds today. Call it cognitive dissonance, call it life in American politics, but I am torn. Part of my heart is singing; part is crying.
I’m thrilled to see the first African-American presidential candidate secure his nomination.
I’m crushed to watch the first viable female presidential candidate prepare to concede.
I was excited to have two good, no, great choices in the Democratic primary.
I had a terrible time making my decision at the polls.
My children are old enough to understand that they’re watching history in the making. My daughter will be able to tell her children and grandchildren about her first opportunity to vote in a presidential election. It’ll be even more historic when race is no longer an issue for the highest office of the land.
I’ve savored watching Senator Clinton go higher and higher, showing that America could accept her and support her as a front-runner — for a while.
I’ve felt a great let-down as I realized that there are few other women of her stature willing to take on this race.
It’s fulfilling to finally see a strong, intelligent woman stepping out of the shadows and taking the well-deserved spotlight.
It’s downright depressing that America isn’t quite ready for her to go all the way.

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>Roots and stems, nuts and twigs

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>We’ve gotten creative with our menus since Amigo has been ordered off all dairy and onto a bland, somewhat low fat diet. We pulled out a holiday standard the other day: rootmash. It’s one of Husband’s specialties. He saw it on Food Network, made it, liked it, and now we offer it as an alternative to mashed potatoes every Thanksgiving. I made it the other day as an alternative to the ever-bland pastas and potatoes we’d been foisting on the teen, and it was easy enough to handle.

4-6 potatoes
2 large carrots
1 small turnip
1 small parsnip
1 rutabaga

Boil vegetables. Drain. Add a small amount of water or milk. Mash. Season to taste. Voila!
There may be other tricks to it, but I’m a low-maintenance cook. I like to keep it simple. The only hint I can offer is this: start with the hardest veggies, gradually adding those with shorter boiling times.

I’ve suggested adding chives or green onions to the mix. Sour cream on top would be good (but not for the non-dairy Amigo). Husband will not, will not add any ingredients that are not roots!! I tease him a little, but I’ll respect his wishes. It is, after all, one of his specialty dishes.

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One Child a year

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Beginning teachers want to change the world, put their hearts into their work, matter to someone, somehow. I’ve realized that there are limits, big limits, to the good I do through my teaching. And when it comes down to changing a life, having an impact on a child’s future, a wise co-worker told me to expect to make a difference once a year. One child a year.
At first it sounds callous, minimizing. Realize, however, that we’re not talking about everyday teaching. I teach the entire class to read, to write, to handle long division. But a life-changing impact? A difference that changes the route students will take, puts them on a path to success — or not — doesn’t happen nearly as often as idealists think.
Now, in my thirteenth year of teaching, I wonder who those children are and were. I may never know. A few may touch base with me again. Most won’t or can’t. Many don’t even realize that a teacher, any teacher, turned them around and set them in the right direction.
The victim of bullying who learned to take control might join the list. Then there’s the slacker with a high IQ who earned his first D or F and finally learned study skills. The late bloomer who discovered her favorite book ever on my shelves and realized she loved to read may feel that link as well. But those are the easy ones.
The child whose family was evicted from their apartment, the family I helped find services for the homeless, won’t ever know that I made a difference. Her parents are too busy keeping a roof over their heads and feeding the kids to think about teachers, and that’s exactly where their priorities belong. The depressed adolescents that I referred for help? The counselor made a bigger difference than I did, and again that’s just as it should be. The student who struggled with math and finally, finally “got” fractions under my watch, may be the one child for that year. Or not. It might have been the quiet student, the one who sat in the back and listened intently, absorbing everything he heard, but never saying a word.
So I keep on plugging, planning for the class, differentiating for those who need it, and hoping. I hope as well that maybe, just maybe, I made a difference for someone, somehow, each year that I’ve taught.

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>Stock up on drawers

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>Some days I think the world revolves around underwear.

When we started planning an actual vacation, I made a deal with my husband. “You take care of the big things, like reservations, and I’ll take care of the little things. I’ll make sure everyone has enough underwear.” Yes, that’s a little thing, but it’s a little thing that matters.

Summer is approaching, and I’m making good on my part of the deal. I stocked up on underwear for the menfolk: Amigo’s Fruit of the Loom and Husband’s Hanes. La Petite has plenty; I stock her up every August before she goes away to school. So what’s left? Socks and underwear for yours truly.

Taking care of ourselves isn’t as easy as it sounds some days. I’ve been making packing lists, looking into gas cards that pay back in discounts or cash back, picking up and packing up the daughter and bringing her home from college, and working on progress reports for my students. Where is the time to buy anything for me? I think I need to force-fit it in.

The garden is in and fenced. It survived a late frost, and should start growing like a weed (oops, poor choice of words!) any minute now. I completed a large part of my progress reports today. The only subject left to grade is Social Studies.

For now, maybe I’ll “force” myself to take a few minutes for me. Coffee, Sunday paper, pet the bunnies, sounds good.

But I’ll keep the minivan keys nearby so I can head out to buy underwear as soon as the discount stores open for business today. Drawers in everyone’s drawers, that’s the key.

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