Monthly Archives: August 2008

>Does my coffee addiction count?

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>I’ve been tagged twice for this meme, so I’d better get to it. I was tagged by Autism Family Adventures and Lynn the Piggy Bank Painter. Here are the basic rules:

1. Link the person who tagged you.
2. Mention the rules on your blog.
3. Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks you possess.
4. Tag 6 following bloggers by linking them.
5. Leave a comment on each of the tagged blogger’s blogs letting them know they’ve been tagged.

Six Unspectacular Quirks:

1. I like to hang out in my pajamas on weekends. In fact, I was in my PJs when I started the rough draft of this post.
2. Now that I’ve figured out which plant it is, I’ve discovered that I like spinach. I’m cooking it in a lot of meals this season.
3. Creative spelling of names drives me buggy. Jym? Madysin? Gorj? Whynonah? Really, parents.
4. I need a lot of sleep. I’m cranky if I don’t get enough.
5. My snacky weakness (aside from chocolate) is Fritos corn chips. The original, that is. I don’t like the chili flavor.
6. Cooking appliances take up much too much space in my kitchen, but I use them regularly. Bread machine, mini-rotisserie oven, steamer, crockpot, I need them.

Who to tag? I don’t know. If you’d like to do this meme (and it’s easy, trust me), leave a comment leading us to read your post! The hardest part is choosing which unremarkable quirks are worth mentioning, since unremarkable quirks are, well, unremarkable.

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>"Are you watching the convention in Denver?"

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>”I’m still getting over Hillary.”

Spoken by a teaching colleague, one with whom I’m so alike that I’m not sure we weren’t twins in a previous life, this statement started my afternoon on the first day back to school.

Political talk is an under the table kind of thing in schools. We shouldn’t use email for anything election-related, actively campaign, visibly support candidates while on school property, or even discuss politics if we might be overheard by parents or community members.

You know how I feel about the word “should.” Should, of course, is a bogus concept.

The reality: we quietly discuss politics among ourselves. We teachers often become politically active outside the classroom, put up signs at home and bumper stickers on our cars. We attend meetings, make donations, interview candidates in the name of our professional association, and we write letters. We write blogs!!

So when I saw our congressional representative outside the building shaking hands as more than 1,500 teachers and other school staff walked into our opening day meeting, I smiled. No, I more than smiled. I walked up to him, shook his hand, and thanked him for running for re-election. I wished him good luck in November because we need him in office.

In another hushed hallway conversation, a union rep and I talked about the need to have pro-education people in office at the local, the state, and the federal level. Like it or not, teaching is political. Decisions in Madison, decisions in Washington, and decisions made at City Hall affect the what we teach and how we teach it.

I could go on for a long, long time with a list of examples, but I have desk tags to make and a charter school board meeting tonight. So in closing, here’s a Should to summarize.

Teachers should be able to teach without politics.

Reality: Education is political. It is often driven by public perception. Government decisions affect everything we teach.

End result: Teachers need to be politically active. In order to be effective advocates for children, teachers need to vote for pro-education candidates. And in order to elect pro-education candidates, well, teachers need to step out of their classrooms and …. well, you know the rest.

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>Football Season already?

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>You might live in Green Bay Packers country if your local sporting goods store has an entire section marked “Cheese.”


I bought the coaster. It looks so good with my Vince Lombardi mug!

Is that Super Bowl I or the Ice Bowl? I’ll let you decide.

In my part of the country, football season and Back to School go together. Click over to MidCentury Modern Moms for Back to School Week. Don’t look for adorable kindergarteners there; we’re dealing with teens, college kids, IEPs, ACTs, SATs, GPAs, and more!

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>The Black Clock of Death

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>I woke to hear Husband’s exclamation of panic. I didn’t have my hearing aids in, so I didn’t hear his exact words, but it was probably something like “%*$^##!”

Imagine the feeling of oversleeping, waking up with that sudden “Oh, no!” reaction. Adrenaline hits hard, and you’re awake with your heart racing. That was the feeling we had upon waking and seeing this.

The dreaded Black Clock of Death was present on our nightstand. The culprits? The small, adorable, cute, furry ones with Big Gnawing Teeth!


Peanut and Sadie had wedged themselves into a space much smaller than their tiny dwarf rabbit bodies and chewed through our radio cord, then followed up with the lamp for dessert. *burp*

Back to the story. Clad in the armor of the morning (a.k.a. pajamas), Husband dove out of bed and grabbed the travel clock out of the nightstand drawer. He then sprinted through his morning routine and was dressed before I came back upstairs with bunny food (not that they needed breakfast after their evening feast). That’s when I looked at the travel clock: 8:27.

“Honey, I think this is wrong. I think it’s still on Atlantic time.”
Husband freezes in place, zipping jeans. “What?”
“I said, I think this clock is still set to Atlantic time from our vacation. It’s two hours ahead.”
Husband sits down on bed, head in hands.
“I’ll check to make sure.” I went back downstairs, checked with three different clocks, and reset the travel clock for Six Twenty Seven. That’s 6:27, Central Daylight Time. Not, I repeat, not 8:27 Atlantic time.

Later, much later, after a full day of work in Central Daylight Time, Husband used his engineering expertise to fix the clock radio. The rabbits? They’re hanging out in the backyard for a while to give us time to hide any other bunny bait so they can’t get “wired” again.


And if you’ve had enough of bunny talk, check out MidCentury Modern Moms and their Back to School theme. No new little preschoolers or kindergarteners there; we’re dealing with teens, college kids, IEPs, ACTs, SATs, GPAs, and more! My post is up today.

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>Back to school, back to crockpot with chicken, spinach, and tomato casserole

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>During the school year I use my crockpot at least once a week. It gives me a chance to cook from scratch, avoid preprocessed garbage, and add a few vegetables into our diets — all without struggling through a complicated process after teaching all day. I’ve added to my collection over the summer with help from Stephanie at A Year of Crockpotting and other crockpot aficionados in the blogosphere. The original version of this recipe came from Chris at Ordering Disorder, her blog at Work it! Mom. I’ve added a few twists to it, of course. (FYI: I don’t teach straight from the textbook, either.)

Chicken, Spinach, and Tomatoes Served with Spaghetti

2 chicken breasts
2 tsp Dijon mustard
2 packages (8 ounces each) baby spinach, or 1 pound washed and dried fresh spinach leaves
2 cans diced tomatoes, drain liquid
small onion, thinly sliced
1/4 cup diced green pepper
herbs as desired (I used a little fresh basil and thyme)
a splash balsamic vinegar
1 lb spaghetti, or preferred pasta

Thoroughly wash spinach.
Toss chicken breasts into the crockpot. (I diced the chicken first)
Drop the mustard on top of the chicken.
Put all the spinach on top of the chicken. Squash it down to make it fit. The spinach will shrink in the cooking process.
Let cook for about 5-6 hours.
About 20 minutes before serving, fill spaghetti pot with water and set to boil.
Open up and drain the cans of diced tomatoes. Dump them into a skillet. Add the balsamic vinegar and onion.
Saute it for a few minutes, until most of the excess liquid is gone.
Scoop out the chicken and spinach from the crockpot and add to the tomatoes. Mix it all up and allow to simmer on low while the pasta cooks. Stir often.
Add some freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano on top. La Petite suggested feta cheese; that sound delicious to me. Next time, feta cheese it is!

Notes:
My spinach came from the garden. It was quite fresh, and the aroma from the crockpot was very strong. The end product, however, was delicious.
Consider rice or couscous instead of spaghetti or pasta.
MidCentury Modern Moms has also been posting on the Back to School theme. No new little preschoolers or kindergarteners there; we’re dealing with teens, college kids, IEPs, ACTs, SATs, GPAs, and more!

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>Frustrating day with random blatherings

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>I want to be at school working in my room. Instead, I’m stuck here.

Phone tag! I left messages for local pediatrician and for specialist in Milwaukee. Now I need to wait for their callbacks. My cell phone is nowhere to be found – I think I left in in Husband’s car when we came home from Miller Park last night. That puts out the trip to school and any other errands because I can’t. miss. these. calls.

So I wait. And wait. And get more and more restless.

I scavenged enough late summer rhubarb for rhubarb upside down cake, which led to adding lots of goodies to the compost bin. Upside down cake is delicious; compost now has a layer of eggshells (crushed), banana peels from lunch, and rhubarb leaves on top of half a dozen corn husks.

I cleaned the kitchen (again, still, again) and ran the dishwasher.

I want to weed the garden and pick beans, but I can’t leave the house for too long because the doctors’ offices might call. If I miss either call, it’ll take hours to get back in touch.

Errands that remain undone: post office, mail books for paperbackswap.com. Walgreens, to buy strapping tape because I used the last of it to mail the paperbacks.

Outdoor chores that remain undone: Pick beans. Pick tomatoes. cut off spotted leaves on tomato plants before blight spreads. Water hollyhocks and rhubarb and anything else that needs it. Weed south side of the house; clover is taking over. Harvest spinach. Clean spinach. Prepare spinach for crockpot or for freezer.

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>Olympic Conversations

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>While watching swimming:

Me: Who’s that?
La Petite: Michael Phelps.
Me: I didn’t recognize him. He looks like an ordinary guy.
La Petite: I recognized his torso.
Me: chokes on coffee

Amigo: It’s road racing now. I think it’s motorcycles.
Me: It’s actually bicycles.
(Remember, he’s visuallly impaired, can’t see the tv well)
Amigo: It sure sounds like a motorcycle.
Me: Oh, now they’re showing a different angle. The camera following the bikes is on a motorcycle. That’s the motorcycle you’re hearing.
Amigo: Okay, I knew there was a motorcycle.

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>Small Steps

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>Getting kids ready for school requires a lot of errands, a lot of preparation. Getting a teacher ready for school requires a lot of errands and even more preparation.

So far, I’ve talked on the phone with the principal and my partner teacher in fourth grade. We can’t get into the rooms yet because the cleaning service hasn’t moved the furniture in after the Big Summer Clean. I’m moving into a new room, so it’ll take them a little longer to move mine. For the time being, I’m stuck working on things I can do at home.

I renewed my professional membership to the state reading association so I can continue to receive (and contribute to) their journal.
I bought the materials for my reading grant aimed at motivating less able readers (J. P., eat your heart out. This is the real world of motivating readers).
I organized a collection of materials for cut-outs and collages.
On a trip to Party America store, La Petite helped me pick out a few additions to my classroom decor. The theme is Treasure Your Learning, with an emphasis on treasure maps.
Tested vocabulary words are difficult for a lot of my students, so I created puzzles to help them practice and review these terms.
While watching Packer preseason football and Olympic swimming, I punched out a collection of bulletin board letters. I’ve owned these for years, and they’re still useful, even in this day and age of computer generated banners and Microsoft Publisher.

And when the cleaning staff is done and the furniture is back in the rooms, I’ll get my real “first day of school.” I hope it’s soon; there isn’t much time left before the kiddos show up!

The topic “The First Day of School” is a suggestion by Parent Bloggers Network in conjunction with Hanes.
And don’t forget to check out MidCentury Modern Moms; we’re posting on the Back to School theme as well, and our kiddos aren’t little cuties in ruffle socks and buckle shoes; they’re more likely to wear Old Navy jeans and Converse All-Star Sneakers. Well, at least mine is.

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>Am I the PB or the J?

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>We are the sandwich generation. I mistyped that the first time, and it came up on the screen as “sand wish.” Maybe that was a Freudian slip; I wish this “new normal” would settle down some.

Husband’s father, my father in law, has been in steadily declining health. He is now on a pump for painkillers, uses a wheelchair when he can and a walker when he can’t, but needs essentially 24/7 assistance. That assistance, of course, falls to his wife, my mother in law.

Husband and his brother are working together to help their parents handle the move to a senior living place, a set-up where both can live and FIL can get more of the help he needs. We really want them living closer to us so we can help out in an emergency; they now live two hours away. They seem willing but they’re stalled, so Da Boys and their wives (me and sister in law) are diving in feet first to get the move, well, moving.

On the other side of the sandwich is school starting. Amigo needs to get ready for the start of his school year. His new backpack sits in its unopened package while the old one with the broken zipper sits in the hallway waiting to be shipped for repair. La Petite, on the other hand, needs to pack and move to her apartment before her semester starts. We anticipate this will take two trips: one with the majority of her belongings, and one final move with her rabbits.

Making the whole thing stickier (PBJs are always sticky) are our workloads. Our jobs, remember those? The occupations that bring in paychecks, pay the bills, keep us from becoming another statistic in this recession of ours. Yes, those jobs. Husband’s job gets crazier with the onset of football season, mine with school starting.

In conclusion, the timing is awful.

Add to that Amigo’s health and basic living chores such as laundry, cooking, cleaning, and maybe sleeping now and then….

We’re the sandwich generation, and sticky or not, we need to get used to this situation as our New Normal.

This post is my entry in MamaBlogga’s Group Writing Project for August. If you’d like to enter, the entry form is here. Her theme this month is “The New Normal.”
And don’t forget that Thursday is my regular post at MidCentury Modern Moms. This week is Back to School Week with posts about our not-so-little darlings and their often atypical needs.

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