>Sing it with me: Saturday at the O.K. Chorale

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>On the to-do list:

Remind Amigo to do his laundry. Why can’t the kid do it himself? He can. He needs the reminder to actually throw the clothes in the washer and deal with it.
Plant seeds and hope they’ll grow. Most of these seeds are a year old; I haven’t bought new ones yet. We’ll see if they’re any good. Still. Yet. If they grow, it’ll look like salsa again in the O.K. home; I planted lots of tomato and pepper plants.
Stir the compost. Shh: don’t tell Chuck I played in the compost. He’s convinced that anything resembling garden work will cue Mother Nature to send in a storm.
Make ice cream – hopefully with Amigo. It’s easy and fun and he’ll love the results.
Set aside a Care Package for La Petite. She’ll be back for appointments on Monday and Tuesday, so I’ll send her a bag of food to fill her pantry. I can’t help her find a second job, but I can feed her.
Draft a letter of support for a local candidate. If this is really the year of the progressive woman, she’s perfect.
Check out the latest news on the local private school that lost two thirds of their teachers due to conflicts over paychecks – namely, the lack of them.
Look for ways to streamline the family budget. Headlines today noted what we’d all expected, but dreaded: my colleagues and I in the local public school district will face another wage freeze along with a higher deductible in our health care coverage.
Keep cleaning the house and purging it of useless items. Sell or donate; make space for what’s important instead of storing junk. At the most, we may get a few bucks for some of the stuff. At the least, we’ll have less to clean.
In a related category, reorganize the canning supplies. At this time of year I have more empty jars than full. How to store them until I need them – that’s one dilemma. How to make more room next fall for the full jars – that’s another. It feels like every year I make a little bit more. Well, if my pay is frozen, at least I can still feed the family.
I guess all this means I should get offline and do something. Here goes!

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>Whether the Weather

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Sing it with me! It’s a round.

Whether the weather be cool or

Whether the weather be hot
Whether the weather be fair or
Whether the weather be not.
Whatever the weather,
We’ll weather the weather –
Whether we like it or not!
Then again, planning ahead seems to guarantee that Mother Nature will throw a wrench into the works, or at least a storm our way. No? Chuck thinks so, in this actual email exchange with his loving wife. Yes, me.

Me: We’re supposed to get unseasonably warm temps this weekend. Maybe I’ll spread compost. When we get the van back, I’d really like a Big Bucket of leaf compost from the brush dump. I plan to spread it in the far back, where the berm will go. It’ll cover the barriers I set up last fall and the layer of very-fertile bunny litter and, um, waste.
Chuck: You must stop this kind of talk or else you will be THE cause of a late blizzard. Remember what just happened? All because Pete took the sandbags out of the back of his pickup.

Me: But… but… it’s supposed to be in the 50s this weekend. On top of that, one of my coworkers is selling seeds and flats of plants for her daughter’s fundraiser. I’ll show you when I get home.
Well, people, Chuck isn’t one to give up or let anyone else have the last Email word. Here’s his response:
We’ll be run out of town. The headline will read:

St. Patrick’s Day Cancelled

wisconsin Woman’s Garden Plans Upset Weather Patterns



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>Germphobia, Virtual School style

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>I’ve used only 1 1/2 sick days this year: one for cataract surgery and one half for an appointment. That’s a new record for me. March? No influenza? No sinus infections or even colds or coughs? I used to get almost paranoid about germs. Illness for a classroom teacher can be overwhelming: sub plans, catching up, staying in touch, hoping that all goes well for the substitute.

A few neighboring districts have cut their teachers’ sick days to the bone. My district still maintains 10 days per year. One neighboring district even told their teachers they couldn’t schedule non-essential surgery during the school year, no matter how many sick days they’d accrued. I planned my cataract surgery so that I’d only miss one day; all worked out well.
In a classroom full of children, I kept my own pencils and pens and even scissors. There was a stock of extras for students to borrow; they never touched mine, and I never touched theirs. I kept hand sanitizer in my desk and rarely touched the germ-collecting doorknobs. Still, I got sick. Cough drops and Airborne had a drawer in my desk along with Tylenol and my own, yes my own never-to-be-shared box of soft, name brand tissues. Teachers attempt to stay hydrated, but within reason because we can only use the rest room when we’re not with students.
Teaching online is different. Earlier this year, I offered ten tongue-in-cheek reasons to enjoy teaching online. Now, in the final days of winter, I offer ten reasons that teaching virtual school has been good for my health.
  • I still have my own tissue box – with a Green Bay Packers dispenser.
  • No one borrows my pencils and pens. We all have our own.
  • We don’t get substitutes, eliminating the need to come in and spread germs while leaving sub plans.
  • No one else uses my computer or my phone.
  • I have my own phone, too.
  • My coworkers and I are meticulous about cleaning the lunch table before and after eating.
  • Hydration is easier; there’s a water cooler in our supply closet, and (drum roll) I can use the rest room when I need to without waiting for a recess bell!
  • I still take vitamin C and eat oranges with my lunch.
  • The box of Airborne in my desk is the kind that gets added to a bottle of water.

And finally, a major reason that teaching virtual school is good for my health:

  • I sincerely enjoy my job. I go to school eager to get started every day – even on Mondays.

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>Life as we Knew It – are we prepared?

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>Not so long ago, after the World Trade Centers fell, U.S. residents were coping with a new reality. At one point, Homeland Security advised folks to stock up on duct tape and plastic, supplies to seal the house off from potential chemical or dirty bomb attacks.

At my home? We didn’t buy into the fear. We bought wine and cheese instead.
Years later, I trained as a volunteer with our local public health department for the potential, much-feared pandemic flu. After the training, we went home with a stock-the-pantry list in case commerce as we know it shut down. We picked up a few things, but didn’t go wild then, either.
Remember the Y2K scare? People picked up generators, oil lamps, and stockpiles of bottled water. I think we had a gallon or two of water. Maybe.
Now I’ve picked up the book Life as we Knew it by Susan Beth Pfeffer. It’s the first in a trilogy aimed at young adults. The story begins in an average high school in an average spring. Exam preparation, summer plans, prom, crushes, and changing friendships all go on as usual. Then a big event captures everyone’s attention, and I do mean everyone. An asteroid is headed toward the moon, and it’s expected to be visible with the naked eye. Families gather outside on a spring night to observe the phenomenon – and then all hell breaks lose.
As the title suggests, life changes dramatically when the asteroid hits its target. Without too many spoiling details, I can tell you that prom and final exams take a backseat to survival. The struggle for food, heat, light, and water pits family against family, individual against individual, and threatens to destroy an entire way of life.
The panic to stock the pantries reminded me of times in the past when pantry-stocking was a hot topic, even a trend. In Life as We Knew It, pantry-stocking may initially look like a panic reaction, but it turns out to be necessary. Typical sources of food are just not available. Starvation is a very real possibility.
Life as We Knew It sets up an apocalyptic world in which every individual and family group must cope together – or risk the worst. This story caught my attention; I looked up the rest of the trilogy and put the titles on my wish list on PaperbackSwap. If you’re looking for an easy and entrancing read, or if your young adult reader needs something dramatic to hold his or her attention, consider Life as We Knew It. Stocking the pantry may never feel the same again.
I found my copy of Life as We Knew It through my favorite book swap site, Paperbackswap.com. This review was spontaneous and in no way compensated. I’m looking forward to the next two when they become available.

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Writing is therapeutic. Email? Maybe.

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Blogging is therapeutic. Email can be therapeutic as well – sometimes. Within reason. Occasionally. With very little editing, just enough to protect the innocent and not-so-much, here’s an example, courtesy of Chuck’s challenging day at work.

Me: Northern Wisconsin has 16 inches of snow. Madison and Milwaukee have sunshine.

Chuck: I’m being snowed under sorting out the incompetence from the non-functional.

Me: There must be a Dilbert-style quote or post in there somewhere.

Chuck: Department motto – Our perfection has to overcome their incompetence.

Me: I still like “Engineering: We put the fun in dysfunctional.”

Chuck: Now we’re applying soothing unction to the dysfunction.
Then we both got busy and went back to work.
On another topic: blogging has been therapeutic, too. A coworker asked how I keep up with everything. She was referring to the fact that I helped out in high school English for a few days, submitted a blog post and wrote a new profile for our national office’s PR department, while still somehow managing to do my own job and do it well, too. I stopped in my tracks. This is such a huge dramatic change. It’s a change back to normal, whatever that is.
One year ago, I was blogging my way through the worst depression of my life. This illness had me knocked out, incapable of working, and barely functioning. Thanks to many professionals and family and friends, I’m now back in the land of the working and the happy and the energetic. Wow, I thought, maybe this is what healthy feels like.
Then a dangerous thought crossed my mind. Would a collection of my posts be of interest to other people suffering the same way I did? Knowing I wasn’t alone was such a comforting feeling. Battling the depression demon was long and difficult, but possible. The long and winding road (uphill both ways, of course) can lead to health and success.
Well, readers, with a little revision to protect myself and others, could the Compostermom Chronicles become a journal of healing? Share your thoughts, readers, and I’ll start giving it some thought myself.

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>Road trip: California Dreamin’ again

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>

Amigo got an audio book for Christmas: Bill Geist’s Way off the Road: Discovering the Peculiar Culture of Small town America. He would laugh out loud while listening to the stories. As he finished, he recommended that I look for a print copy and read it myself.
He was right. I found a copy on Paperbackswap.com, thanked the swapper who sent it, and got a note telling me that the book might make me want to take a road trip. Sure enough, reading got me thinking about a long road trip on my bucket list: getting our kicks on Route 66.
I’ve realized that the Route 66 trip will happen at the earliest in summer of 2013, perhaps a year later. With that in mind, I can plan and dream and seek sponsors for the potential adventure.

Ideally, we’d rent or lease a vehicle to drive from our Wisconsin home to the end destination. At the West end of our journey, we’d turn in the vehicle and take Amtrak back to the Midwest. From Chicago we’d ride the Hiawatha to Milwaukee, and either pick up our own car or have family/friends get us to take us back to our own house and our own beds.

In a perfect world, that vehicle would be a roomy sedan or a minivan. If we all go (essentially, four adults), the minivan would be better. It would have to have good air conditioning: a minivan type would have the passenger climate control vents to make it easy. Given the long stretches of desert on the trip, that’s a necessity.

Taking into considerating the length of the trip, good gas mileage is important. A hybrid, perhaps? A sizable gas tank, too, so we don’t have to stop too often to fill up. Maybe a gas company will sponsor us; discounted gas or a gas gift card for the road? It could be done. It’s not a glamorous sponsorship, but it would certainly be one of the most valuable.

Cupholders! I request at least one cupholder per person, accommodating my coffee and the other folks’ Mountain Dew. Perhaps Starbucks would sponsor me; free or discounted coffee for the trip in exchange for blogging it? I’m in!

I know that I’m simply dreaming at this point. Driving Route 66 is definitely on my bucket list. Since Amigo enjoys road trips in general and we like road tripping together, we’d like to do it before I get too old or he gets too busy to enjoy the adventure.

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>Glee predictions: where will they go from here?

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Friends, music teachers, and swing choir graduates: Glee left us hanging. Big time. We could sense the big events coming, sense them enough to shout “No! Don’t go there!” at the television. The last episode before the break set up several plot twists that couldn’t be resolved. This one episode, all by itself, brought up so many social issues that it should be required viewing for anyone who works with teenagers. Cyber-bullying, teen suicide, religion and teen social lives, texting while driving, and then again, the show choir competition.
The next new episode will be here in the beginning of April. April! Through the entire month of March we’ll wonder how our favorite characters and the ones we love to hate will fare. Frankly, the writers and producers have set us up for just about anything. Here are my own predictions.

Rachel: Will she or won’t she marry Finn? Will Finn follow her to New York as she pursues a career in the arts? She’s talented, but is she talented enough? It’ll be interesting to see if her star power is power enough to light up her life.

Finn: He’s really at lose ends. No football scholarship, a bombshell destroying his image of his hero father, and no plans after high school. His only plan is to marry Rachel, and he hasn’t thought beyond the ceremony. This doesn’t bode well for their future. I wonder if he will stay behind in Lima, run the garage for his stepfather Burt while Burt is in Congress, and settle in for some serious introspection.
Quinn: a screech of brakes and squeal of tires as she texted a message to Rachel – I’ll leave it right there.
McKinley High School staff: When Principal Figgins claimed that it wasn’t their job to reach out to someone like David Karofsky, it wasn’t their job to prevent his near suicide, school counselor Emma said it best: “If it’s not our job, then whose job is it?” Someone had to be there for David, to listen and to really hear his pain. That “someone” could have been a teacher. I predict the McKinley High School staff to get much firmer in their zero tolerance for bullying. They’ll start a chapter of PFLAG and reach out to students like Kurt and David and Blaine. Weak-kneed Figgins might be nervous about the social implications and the public reaction, but those teachers who truly understand their students will stand firm.
Puck will graduate, but not yet. He’s bound to be credit deficient in some way, and that will give Glee another year of his singing and guitar-playing talent. If they need a fundraiser, he can bake his grandmother’s addicting brownies.
Never mind.
Mercedes and Santana will take on the leadership and solo roles. Writers and producers have been building them up for a while. We’ll have some good music next season, folks, even without Rachel Berry.
I hope the Warblers from Dalton Academy will continue to compete with McKinley’s New Directions. They provide complex characters, an interesting competitor, and above all, good music.
Coach Sue Sylvester will have her baby and find motherhood to be to her liking. This should be a fascinating character development.
Kurt: Finn’s stepbrother is in for the biggest challenges. He’s headed to a fine arts school, or so he hopes. He and Rachel will be classmates if all goes well. He’s out and has a gay boyfriend, another talented singer and actor. Not all young men feel as confident as Kurt, however. And Kurt, despite his flamboyant nature and outgoing personality, still feels the inner conflicts of any teen. He’s blamed himself for not returning David Karofsky’s phone calls, thinking if only he’d called, David might not have tied the rope around his neck. Kurt walked into a God Squad club meeting looking for moral support and instead ended up blowing up. He told Quinn that no matter what she’d gone through in high school, with a teen pregnancy and a time with the outlaw goth gang, she had no idea what he or Karofsky faced every day. Kurt was straightforward in his criticism of poor little rich girl Quinn. Then Quinn was texting while driving on a collision course for – well, we still don’t know. The show ended with a screech of brakes and no resolution.
Kurt is the most complex of the Glee characters. I predict that he will feel guilt for not preventing Karofsky’s suicide attempt and will again feel terrible that his last conversation with Quinn was a verbal slap in the face. After facing these internal conflicts, I predict that Kurt will abandon his quest for a performance career and instead enter a counseling program. He has the experience, the intelligence, and the compassion to make a difference.
Good music, entertaining plots, and a few valuable lessons besides – what else could we ask of a television series? I still have Glee set to record. I won’t miss a single episode.

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>Whipped, not Beaten – cooking up fun with a good book

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>Is a picture worth a thousand words, or is a good book worth a thousand — whatever? I’d go with the second, really. Pour me a cup of coffee, and let’s relax with a good book.

Whipped, not Beaten by Melissa Westemeier is a great read. It’s smooth, it’s quick, and it’s quality. Melissa manages to hit all the right buttons for an enjoyable piece of pleasure reading.
The characters ring true. They dress casually, their friendship groups are realistic, and the dialogue is natural. This dialogue sets up characters and even directs the plot at times. The diverse group realistically could live in Madison, Wisconsin, the central location in Whipped, not Beaten. The studio apartments, the close-knit young people meeting at the corner coffeehouse or bar, the staff at Public Radio – all are based in reality. A reader could meet them on the street, or at least meet people just like them.
On the same note, the descriptions of Madison and the tiny town of Neillsville (a stop in the road late in the book) are spot on. College towns and university cities in Wisconsin often sport a small town atmosphere where everyone knows someone who knows someone else who knows you or your best friend. That tendency is comforting, but can get in the way, too. When Sadie needs a date for a party, she’s a bit stuck because all those she knows are either inappropriate or already invited. She gets lucky by running into a handsome neighbor at (of course) the corner coffeehouse. No spoilers, but when he spills cappuccino down her front, it brews up a new adventure for our heroine.
The author has obviously attended a fair share of product parties and heard the recruitment pitches. She knows the structure and the lingo well enough to place Sadie in an entry-level sales position at Coddled Cuisine, a cookware line sold at home parties, and to grant Sophie a small but significant amount of success.
Sadie joins the Coddled Cuisine crew to supplement her income at Wisconsin Public Radio. I loved this placement. Amigo and I (and Chuck, too) are Public Radio junkies. We just had stuffed chicken for dinner, in fact, a heart-healthy recipe we heard on Zorba’s show this morning. Amigo and I have trekked to Bayfield, Wisconsin, with other Public Radio junkies and some WPR staff members and interns. I understood the workload Sophie faced each day, her research requirements, and the fast-paced atmosphere. Her need for a second income is realistic, too, which led to the adventure of Coddled Cuisine. WPR’s fundraising has slipped with the recent recession, and salaries probably resemble those of others employed in the public sector in our fair state. Okay, enough politics. Back to the story.
Too much detail would spoil the fun of reading this book. I wonder if Sadie’s job changes and successful — never mind — will lead to a sequel? Melissa, if you write it, I’ll read it.
I hope many of my blog readers will pick up Whipped, not Beaten, and read it, too.
Disclaimer: I bought this book; it was not donated. The review is honest and not compensated in any way. But maybe, just maybe, the author will let me pick raspberries at her homestead again next summer…?

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Your homework is late because….

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Sorry, student. We might feel your pain, but the cat making your homework late is just another variation on an old theme.

In fact, your Social Studies teacher has a cat that helps grade essays and research projects. She pronounced this one “delicious.”

In my home, projects are at risk of being eaten, but not by a dog. Note to self; do not store student projects under the piano. In addition, feed bunny frequently.
Now if only we could train the animals to make coffee while we’re busy grading, progress reports would go so much faster!

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>Dear Scottie; it’s just not working.

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>I didn’t write this. I wish I had; it’s brilliant. The original source is the Wisconsin Democratic Party leadership.


By the way, how do you break up with a guy on a tractor? I’ll tell you when we’re done breaking up with Scottie.
Dear Scott,

There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to come right out and say it. This isn’t working. It’s time for us to see other people.

I wish I could say that it was me, not you, but we both know that isn’t true. It’s you. When we first got together, part of me really had reservations, but the other part was so hopeful about what we could become together. But then you did it – you know what you did.

When you dropped that bomb on me a year ago, it changed the way I thought of you. You never told me that’s what you were planning. We never talked about that. Ever. If you had told me the truth, I doubt we ever would have gotten together in the first place. It made me wonder if I could ever trust you again.
And when I told you how I was hurting, and how your betrayal rocked me to the core, what did you do? You kept lying. You said it was my fault. That what I wanted – a great education for my kids, affordable healthcare for the people I care about, and to see my friends and neighbors work family-sustaining jobs where they are treated with respect and dignity — was too much. An “entitlement.” Well maybe you just think I’m high-maintenance, but I don’t think those things are too much to ask for.

So… I think it’s best that we cut our losses and both move on. I don’t know exactly what my future holds, but I know I just don’t see you in it any more. You might be a disgrace in my eyes, but you’ll land on your feet. You have plenty of rich friends for whom you’ve done a TON of favors. Someone will take care of you.
And speaking of your friends, that’s another thing I just can’t handle. How could you think I’d be okay with inviting people who steal from the families of veterans, commit sex crimes against children, and criminally misuse public office into my home?

But really, all of this just brings me back to your terrible judgment and dishonesty. I need someone who listens to me, is honest with me and wants to see me be the best I can be. Someone who will cherish the values and institutions I hold so dear. Because you clearly aren’t that person.
Love,
Wisconsin
Okay, readers. In the good Wisconsin farmland tradition, the punch line. How do you break up with a guy on a tractor? Send him a John Deere letter, of course.

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