Space Monkey

L requests Patti Smith. And then we all rock out.

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How many kids in Pittsburgh...

...can say they get to school by sled?

Stop SOPA

Freedom of speech and free access to information is vitally important to keep our families safe, to promote real education, to address injustice, and to maintain our democracy.

Click here for a good website that explains the SOPA and PIPA acts, and what you can do to send a message to congress and the White House today.

This never happens....

....but it probably should. Weekly, at least, if not daily.

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A list of Happiness

These things make me happy....

1. Questions that stump me. For instance, today in Algebra 1 we pondered what happens when you try to apply the distributive property to absolute value symbols. And Laurel asked me what that thing is called that you put the money into on the PAT bus.

2. Having photos around. I just ordered some random prints from Snapfish of things like me climbing on mountains and Laurel splashing in a fountain in Chicago.

3. Getting mail. I have two friends that regularly write to me. Coming home and seeing a colorful envelope with a familiar return address lifts my spirits before I even open the letter.

4. Cutting things out of construction paper. I don't know why, but I'm really into this right now. My classroom is starting to look mildly kindergarten-ish.

5. Quiet spaces in my day. Ninth period prep. Driving to school at 6:00am - no traffic, no radio, still dark outside, except on occasion when a full moon lingers in the sky. But these are relative quiet spaces...still quite noisy. I think a silent retreat would do wonders for me. True quiet and stillness for days and days.

Walking

I remembered the mountains today in 8th period. We're studying personal finance right now. Calculating interest rates on car payments and imagining up all kinds of wild and crazy scenarios for employment. Today we were trying to balance the budget of an imaginary classmate who worked at Kennywood and lived in Etna. One girl claimed it was possible to take the PAT bus...she had done it. I believed her. She's one of several children of infamous parents in our district. They run wild, and I could totally hear her mother's gravely voice telling her to go on, get out, while shoving a twenty into her palm.

Others suggested walking since even a monthly bus pass was stretching our budget. A car payment had already been ruled out, with cell phones with a data plan taking priority.

Maybe a bike, someone guessed.

Have you ever ridden on route 837, I asked them? Let's add in a better medical insurance plan.

You couldn't walk there, they said. Too far. Not possible.

Oh, it's possible, I told them, I once walked from Georgia to Maine. And for a moment I went there, to the place where my legs are strong and the weight of my pack makes me feel comfortably grounded to the earth. I saw the mountains stretching out a thousand miles in front of me, and a thousand miles behind.

I remembered what it was like to have all the time in the world.

I just bought Laurel a pair of boots. I'm the kind of parent that doesn't plan ahead too well. For instance, I waited until the day it actually snowed, with temperatures plunging into the teens before I actually went out and shopped for winter clothes for Laurel. Pickings were slim at the Target, since they already had a display of bathing suits in the children's section. I don't know what's wrong with me. I mean, this is Pittsburgh. It's obviously going to snow and be very cold for months and months. And she walks almost a mile to daycare every day!

Anyway, I bought her some snow boots, which she absolutely loves. Yesterday we walked home from daycare. Wandered would be a better word for it, I suppose. With our boots on, we could happily slosh through the muddy melting snow in the park. We took a detour down one of the trails and watched a squirrel gather dried leaves and then stuff them into his little hole in a tree. Laurel talked to him. Hello, squirrel, she said, what are you doing? We saw the moon rise, and watched a lone bird fly towards the sunset. We stopped to admire some snowmen.

Walking is my meditation. I know who I am and what I care about when I'm on foot. I see and hear more. I feel good when I've done a lot of it. I wonder if Laurel will grow up with that idea firmly planted in her head, or if she will be like my students- like I was, and believe that 2 miles is a very far distance, 10 nearly impossible. Two thousand...unimaginable.

2011

It's the last day of the year and I'm speechless. But here's a picture round up of the year.

I spent some time here staring at tufts of miniature green leaves, trying to determine if they were carrots or some unwanted intruder to be removed.


I spent a lot of time chasing after this girl. She never stops moving.

I thought a lot about justice and equality. I pondered my role in perpetuating social problems. I thought about the kind of teacher I want to be, and what I want my students to learn about the world.


I fell in love with this guy again. Can you believe it's been 15 years of M & K?


We ate a lot of bread.


Our family changed a lot.


We bought this. Still trying to figure out what to do with it.


I spent some good times with these women.

Merry Christmas to You...

I'm sitting here tonight, the night after Christmas, in a dim living room. It's not quiet, because I have Sufjan Stevens cranked up on the record player. Mark is working in the other room, doing a little coding. Laurel is upstairs, presumably falling asleep. Our Christmas tree is still lit by strings of multi-colored lights that seem to burn out and then come back spontaneously...a different section each time I plug in the tree. Must be a loose wire. Christmas this year was/is magical and chaotic, the way everything is when one of you is two.

I wish I had some photos to share. We tried to take some, and now I don't know where the camera is, and there's no way I'm coming out from my Santa Snuggie to hunt for it. (Especially since I cannot guarantee the quality of the images, when the parents were battling colds and the daughter was moving a hundred miles a minute.)

So, you'll have to rely on my words. Just picture the back of a thirty-some inch tall girl in red polka-dot tights, and bouncing blonde pig-tails, disappearing around the corner. Because she really didn't stop moving the whole weekend.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day we visited with family. We're entering another phase where there seem to be more and more little ones running around each year. Mark's sister's daughter is just old enough to grab at wrapping paper and stare at Christmas lights. She has this way of making eye contact, bursting into a wide grin and then hiding her face in whoever's sleeve she happens to be sitting with. Also, she's little enough that she stays put. I love that age! (It's fleeting.)

The time with my family was characterized by good food, good drink and chasing Laurel all over whatever house we happened to be in. We did the traditional Christmas poppers, albeit in a very rushed way.

Christmas morning, we spent at home. Laurel definitely started to understand the concept of presents sometime around her birthday, so now she unwraps gifts with anticipation, and makes a lot of cute "oh, wow!" noises, regardless of what is inside. She likes to keep the bags and put other things in them, sometimes old toys or little scraps of paper. Later she'll pretend to go through the whole motion of openings gifts again, making equally cute and excited noises, even if what she's "opening" is a dirty sock.

M bought her (us?) a djembe. We also stocked up on art supplies, including a packet of googly eyes. Christmas carried over into today when we sat down together and did some spontaneous crafting. M surprised me with his early-childhood-educator skills (where did those come from??!!), as he designed a snow-man cut and paste art project on the fly.

The memories I will hold are mostly about things that just happened. Driving around late at night (well, late for us anyway) and looking at the Christmas lights. Listening to Laurel's jumbled Santa-Jesus-Birthday narrative. Secretly looking for mistletoe so I could kiss the guy who reminds me to Keep Calm and Carry On. Looking up at a sky full of stars - a rare event on our well-lit block - on Christmas Eve. Sitting here next to my Christmas tree, getting through the longest night of the year. Remembering that the dark nights are a necessary part of the cyclical nature of our existence.

Merry Christmas. I'm looking forward to spending the next week in reflection and preparation for 2012, and anticipating a happy new year.

Oh, December

December sucked and I've had about enough of it. But one good thing that happened was that this album arrived on our doorstop. Other good things included some incredibly well-timed play dates and moms-nights-out. They just happened, just when I needed them to...fitting perfectly into the fabric of an up-and-down life.

Anyway, I don't have any answers or wisdom. I just know that some days it makes sense to turn the record player up really loud.


Vesuvius
I am here
You are all I have
Fire of fire
I'm insecure
For it is all
Been made to plan
Though I know
I will fail
I cannot
Be made to laugh
For in life
As in death
I'd rather be burned
Than be living in debt...

Smile

This is Laurel at 2 years 1 month. She smiles a lot. A big, toothy grin. She talks to us about everything, asks questions about how things work, and reminds us of things that happened in the past. Her favorite thing to talk about right now is this car accident that happened the weekend my Aunt Mary's neighbor Stephen stayed with us. The other day while we were driving she told me to go faster and I pointed out a speed limit sign and said, I want to follow the rule that is on that sign, and now she points out speed limit signs everywhere. When we decorated the tree she could find all the ornaments that had her name on them. "Oh my gosh," she says in a hushed voice, "Look at that orDAHment."

Her current favorite book is We're Going on a Bear Hunt, and her favorite activity is walking to school with M in the morning. I know this because on Friday we drove her to school and she completely flipped out because she wanted to walk. Also, people in the neighborhood sometimes approach me and say "I saw your husband walking with Laurel. They look like they're having such a fun time every day!"

We had a really hard week, but closed it out by getting a Christmas tree, and now the house smells good and the colored lights cast a warm glow in our living room.