It is so hot!

We've been experiencing some record-threatening days of heat in the Valley, lately. With my family living on the second and third floor of a condo not equipped with air conditioning, it will come as no surprise that we've been avoiding our house as much as possible. I've compiled a list of ways *I* know it's been hot.

1. I actually refill the water filter pitcher every time I use it.


2. My husband is concerned about the ice production rate of our freezer.


3. It takes 5-7 minutes for the water to cool off enough in the shower.


4. I've been taking at least one cold bath and one cold shower daily for a week.


5. You can't buy a fan anywhere.


6. I haven't felt like cooking.


7. Ice cream is back in the freezer, although I'd banished it last week because of my on-going weight loss goals.


8. A bowl of ice cream melts in the time it takes to fill up my bathtub.


9. I've been going to bed with a wet washcloth each night.


10. My wet washcloth is dry by 3am, and my pillow is soaked with sweat by 4.


11. The carseat has burned my daughter.


12. My clean bras air dry fresh from the hand wash cycle in less than 12 hours.


13. Wearing a wet bra straight from the washer sounds appealing.


14. My husband gets a reading of 99 degrees when he turns on the oral thermometer.... before he puts it in his mouth.


and the funniest reason...


15. My daughter's rubber duckies that change color in hot water are the secondary color in the drawer, and change back to the primary color when going into the cold bathwater.

Princess of modifiers

My daughter's very verbally gifted. I tell people it's because Mommy and Daddy are big talkers and we don't ever dumb down our speech for her.

Consequently, at 2 years and 7 months, Claire has been experimenting with the use of words like "eventually," "seriously," "generally," "obviously," "hopefully," "in order to," "because of," "therefore," and "sometimes." She uses them correctly about 75% of the time. Actual examples:

- "When the mooon comes down, I eventually go to bed."

- "Generally, I want strawberries for breakfast, but I want baby tomatoes this day."

- "Hopefully we go to the little zoo today, Daddy."

- "I have dry underwear today. Seriously!"

- "Sometimes I poop in my underwear, but obviously it's stinky."

(* I edited this post from the original one because people reminded me of other adult phrases she uses.)

... and mystery for all.

There are mysteries for:

• mommies (who work as part time PI's)


• candlemakers


• card-makers


• scrapbookers


• soapmakers


• floral arrangers


• candy-makers


• several food-related mysteries


• coffee house regulars


• tea drinkers (so as not to be outdone)


• Louisa May Alcott fans who think she's as good as a detective


• fans of Jane Austen who think she's as good as a detective


• fly-fishers in Yellowstone


• National Park enthusiasts

and


• Martha's Vineyard vacationers

When did mystery-reading (or mystery-writing) become so egalitarian? When did it become necessary to have a mystery about every single kind of hobby and locale there is? (I admit, I stopped searching for fear of finding something truly worrisome like, I don't know, the competitive hula-hooping mysteries series.) Isn't it enough to live through the detectives' eyes and enjoy a book, rather than need to further identify by recognizing your own hobby? Or learning a new one? Who was the first writer to delve into this wave of specialized mysteries?

The only mystery writers I know are the classics - Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Carol Higgins Clark, Raymond Chandler, Edgar Allen Poe, Carolyn Keene (heheh). Contemporary ones that I know about would be Tony Hillerman, Sue Grafton, Ed McBain, and Ellis Peters... hunh.

I wonder is this is Ellis Peters's fault. That specialized information about being a monk and the time period and all... I think it might be a stretch to blame scrapbooking mysteries on him, though.

Absolutely none

I mentioned in an earlier post that I would describe my experiences with working out to FitTv's episodes. Goaded on by my advisor's post about Scottish dancing, I think it's time I admit my weaknesses here.

So, some background: I have loved dancing since I was little. It was a treat to see The Nutcracker at the Cleveland Ballet with my mom. I poured over the Girl Scout camp programs and community dance classes every semester to find some classes that could fit into my schedule. I always longed to take hip-hop dance (er, or the equivalent in the 80's and early 90's), and I practiced freestyle dancing in my basement for hours at a time to singers like Hall & Oates, Queen, ELO, and Casey Kasem's Top 40, which I taped on audio tape every Sunday morning. (I used those songs to practice dancing AND to make my primary crush at the time, Peter, a "message tape," which I will also write about one day.)

Eventually, I figured I was too old to take the classes offered at the community center, but I needed some kind of education. My friend Keri was somewhat helpful, but not enough. So, I watched the Janet Jackson and Paula Abdul videos enough to mimic them pretty authentically. That doesn't mean I watched MTV a lot (although I did, at the time), it means that I taped 6-hour stretches of the channel at a time in the hopes of catching one of the videos. My favorite was the video for "Rhythm Nation" by Janet Jackson, and I can still remember some of the moves, over 15 years later: left shoulder, right shoulder, right hip; right shoulder, left shoulder, left hip twice, etc.

Even now, at 30 years old, most types of music can make me move. I like getting up and dancing, although I'm aware that my sense of rhythm (my daughter calls it "ribbon") is slightly off. My only big outlet right now is Music Together class, though, which is another entry for another day.

So imagine my surprise when I realized this week that I am not a dancer! I mean, I am in a conventional, all-inclusive sort of way. But, not in a real, natural-born natural-learner sort of way. Frankly, it's difficult to accept.

I've been working out pretty steadily this summer, especially this month. I'm doing every weekday, and sometimes on the weekend, and mixing it up with different types of workout activities. I was realy pleased to notice that FitTV's new episodes of All-Star Work-Outs is all about dancing: bellydancing, Latin Afro-Beat, Bhangra Masala, Hip Hop Dance, etc. I thought, "Excellent. I'll get a good cardio workout, I'll maybe strengthen some muscles, and I'll learn some dance moves in time for Baby Loves Disco next month. This exercise thing is great!"

Hunh. How disappointing.

I mean, the moves are good, and the cardio challenge is pretty average. But I can't keep up with the instructors! They breakdown the steps so well, and they repeat them three or four times before adding something else, and I just know that I should get it. I pride myself on being able to pick things up pretty well; Janet Jackson wasn't a big challenge in 1990.

I'm beginning to think that I've been learning things in a sedimentary way for so long (reading, listening to lectures, taking notes, writing) that I can't pick up kinesthetic "knowledge" quickly anymore, and it's really frustrating. I've now tried all of the above dance workouts, a Tae Bo beginner's video, a step aerobics class at my gym... they were all utter failures. In most of the instances, I was doing the "neutral" step or marching in place at least a third of the time for lack of foot-brain coordination. I haven't tried anymore of the high energy All-Star Workout episodes and I'm not really interested in seeing Billy again for Tae-Bo embarrassment. I missed the step class last Tuesday, and I had an ankle/knee injury Wednesday evening which prevented me from going Thursday morning.

But Jonathan and my husband have reminded me that having fun is the key to mastering this kind of thing. I need to relax and enjoy it. Plus, mastery of the routines shouldn't come to me right away, and I'm going to need to practice over and over again. I'm not interested in practicing - instant success is so much more encouraging according to my lazy-ass brain - but I know I should if I am going to feel like I'm challenging myself and accomplishing something. I'm going to try the step class again, I'll get the Tae-Bo video again, and I may even catch reruns of the dance routines on FitTV and keep them around to try over and over again.

It seems silly that I should have to relearn the "practice makes perfect" adage in my life at 30, and in every single aspect of my life, but it's a good mantra to have, even when I'm lagging behind in the Power Yoga sessions.

IBList

I'm sorry, I've been busy lately. Mostly, when I'm online, I've been either replying to email or browsing this guy. I'm loving getting lost in it.

Fifth Business

When I was in college, my husband and I were big fans of a non-defunct band called Moxy Fruvous. They have a song called "My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors." Since I was an English major at the time, it seemed like a cute song for my then-boyfriend to adopt as "my song," and I didn't refute it much, although I didn't know the work of most of the authors mentioned in the original version. (There was an alternate live version.)

For my birthday one year, my husband got me a book from one of each of the authors mentioned in the original version of the song, and wrapped the books with theme-appropriate wrapping paper. His best friend helped him scour the used bookstores in Ann Arbor for weeks, reportedly, and I thought the results was simply adorable and romantic and spoke of great loving effort on his part.

Although it was a totally cool gift, it was a bit illogical for me at the time. I had a ton of reading for my classes, and I had no time to read them. Once I did try to read some, I had mixed success with them. I couldn't get into William S. Burroughs and Pierre Burton, I didn't think much of poet bell hooks, and I'd already read the Gabriel Garcia Marquez book he'd given me. Although I own three of her books, I've never read anything from Doris Lessing (I think donnagirl is ashamed of that in a friend). I couldn't get into the movie The English Patient, so I've been loathe to try to book, although history has taught me repeatedly that the book is so much better.

On the other hand, I enjoyed reading The Godfather, the original book, and learned to love baseball and its emotion by reading W. P. Kinsella's Shoeless Joe, much better than the movie it was based on. I've since gone on to read several other Kinsella books and greatly enjoyed them. And Margaret Atwood was already a friend of mine by this time (The Handmaid's Tale was on my AP World Lit summer reading list, and I searched out more of her books the summer before college started).

Today, I finished the last of the authors - Robertson Davies. Joe bought me a book of his called The Fifth Business. It began slow, I was willing to give up on it around page 35, I was willing to finish it by page 50, and I was hooked by 100 or so. It's the first in a trilogy, and even when I was hooked, I didn't think I'd want to continue the series, especially since reviews of it say it stands alone just fine, but I've finished the book now, and I want to find the other ones. The basic idea of this one: a cripple from World War 1 is strapped with absurd responsibilities and ultimitely gets involved in a magic show of an unusual kind. Some quotes that made me think:

• "This is one of the cruelties of the theater of life; we all think of ourselves as stars and rarely recognize it when we are indeed mere supporting characters or even supernumeraries."


• "I was afraid and did not know what I feared, which is the worst kind of fear."


• "If a boy can't have a good teacher, give him a psychological cripple or an exotic failure to cope with; don't just give him a bad, dull teacher. This is where the private schools score over state-run schools; they can accommodate a few cultured madmen on the staff without having to offer explanations."


• "'My own idea is that when He comes again it will be to continue his ministry as an old man. I am an old man and my life has been spent as a soldier of Christ, and I tell you that the older I grow the less Christ's teaching says to me. I am sometimes very conscious that I am following the path of a leader who died when He was less than half as old as I am now. I see and feel things He never saw and felt. I know things He seems never to have known. Everybody wants a Christ for himself and those who think like him. Very well, am I at fault for wanting a Christ who will show me how to be an old man? All Christ's teaching is put forward with the dogmatism, the certainty, and the strength of youth: I need something that takes account of the accretion of experience, the sense of paradox, and the ambiguity that comes with years! I think after forty we sould recognize Christ polityly but turn for our comfort and guidance to God the Father, who knows the good and evil of life, and to the Holy Ghost, who possesses wisdom beyond that of the incarnated Christ.'"


• "'Who are you? Where do you fit into poetry and myth? Do you know who I think you are, Ramsay? I think you are Fifth Business. You don't know what that is? Well, in opera in a permanent company... you must have a prima donna - always a soprano, always the heroine, often a fool; and a tenor who always plays the lover to her; and then you must have a contralto, who is rival to the soprano, or a sorceress or something; and a basso, who is the villian or the rival or whatever threatens the tenor. So far, so good. But you cannot make a plot work without another man, and he is usually a baritone, and he is called in the profession Fifth Business, because he is the odd man out, the person who has no opposite of the other sex. And you must have Fifth Business because he is the one who knows the secret of the hero's birth, or comes to the assistance of the heroine when she thinks all is lost, or keeps the hermitess in her cell, or may even be the cause of somebody's death if that is part of the plot. The prima donna and the tenor, the contralto and the basso, get all the best music and do all the spectacular things, but you cannot manage a plot without Fifth Business! It is not spectacular, but it is a good line of work, I can tell you, and those who play it sometimes have a career that outlasts the golden voices. Are you Fifth Business? You had better find out.'"

Too bad my book club voted on a series of "beach reads" this month and I have to read this one right now...

Movies

I know, it's an uninspired title. So what?

My husband and I have been quite good lately about watching our Netflix movies. I got a subscription for 3 at a time in 2002 or so, and then allowed him to have one of those 3 at a time about 6 months ago. He's been particularly good about getting his back in a timely fashion, assuming I don't also want to watch the movie. But I've been terrible in the past, going as long as 4 months with the same movie un-watched and un-returned.

But in the last few weeks, with more vacation time than usual, less plans than usual, and less new television on to watch... well, we've been more attentive. We've seen some good stuff, too: Capote, Grave of the Fireflies, The Rat Pack, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Duma.

Over the holiday weekend, we had no movies, since we'd watched them all and sent them back. Which was fine.

It was kind of cool to get three movies in the mail today, too.

After bedtime tonight, I sat down to watch one of mine: Storytelling. Let me begin by saying that the description made it seem, well, promising.

Maybe it was that I watched the "unrated" version instead of the R-rated one, but, really, there was no promise. The "fiction" storyline was offensive, disgusting, awkward, and sadly predictable. The novelty of having a cerebral-palsy character was nice and unexpected, but seemed to have little to do with the storyline, if I understood it correctly. I feel like I could watch it again and maybe get something more meaningful from it, but I don't want to watch it again ever. The "nonfiction" storyline was okay at first, but it just got more absurd the more we got into the movie, and - spoiler here - the housekeeper blowing up the house and its occupants was way, way out there. Hell, even I was annoyed by the 5th grader, and I was totally bored by the main character, "Scooby." I'd have to take a toke or two in order to watch him again, much like he had to in order to let the guy that had a crush on him go down on him. While I know that description was very American Pie sounding, this part of the movie is not, so don't bother rushing out there.

Joe watched the first 5 minutes of the movie, grabbed his movie, and went upstairs with his laptop and headphones to watch it. His movie was Doom. When he first learned of the existance of such a movie, he was ecstatic, because he found out from his college hallmate, also the writer of the script, Dave Callaham. (I once proof-read Dave's English essays. Heehee.) But then Dave continued to email Joe about issues with his original script, which Joe said was quite good, and how the Hollywood people cut the best-written parts, wanted to put in a love interest, changed things from the idea of the game, etc. Joe didn't have high hopes for the movie, based on Dave's comments and what we saw on Ebert & Roper.

After my movie, which was thankfully shorter, I came upstairs to use the computer and rate it on Netflix. Joe asked, "How was the movie?"

My reply: "The worst movie I've seen in years."

Joe laughed. "You haven't seen Doom yet."

Poor Dave, poor Joe and I... we'll need to be careful with our queues in the future.

The worst part about this is that my queue has 368 movies in it. And I'm looking at all of them, wondering if they're going to be as big a waste of time as Storytelling was. I don't trust any of them. And after some of the heavy movies I've been watching, I'm looking for an intellectual but entertaining comedy. Is there such a thing that I haven't seen?

Btw, the third movie that arrived today? An oldie but a goodie. I'm hoping to torture Joe with it. I imagine it'll be going back soon, too; it's only 45 minutes' worth of torture at best.

Avoidance tactics

My daughter has a deal with us that, if she stays dry and clean in underwear all day, she can pick a prize out of the laundry basket o' prizes. At the beginning of this agreement, we went to several stores and picked out things to put there - pretty underwear, toys, crafty things, books. If she has an accident, she immediately gets changed into diapers and we try again tomorrow.

My daughter understands this process well, since we've been doing it for about 4 weeks now. Today, I picked her up from preschool before naptime so she could nap at home. They didn't know we were changing that for July, so they put her in diapers for naptime (which I'm okay with) with underwear over them (which I don't understand, but will go along with).

After her naptime, I put her on the potty to get her to pee and to get her out of her diaper and into her underwear again. Upon pulling down her underwear, it looks like she'd pooped a very small amount in there. I questioned her about it.

Me: Claire, did you poop in your underwear at school?

Claire: No.

Me: Why is there poop in your underwear then?

Claire: It happened at school with Ms. Selena.

Me: What happened at school?

Claire: (tilts head to one side and the other, as if thinking.) I'll tell you later.

Me: (with mouth falling open) No, tell me now.

Claire: At school, somethin' happened, and I went poop in the potty! Yay! I got a sticker, but I wiped myself with three, two paper towels and pulled up my underwear. Ms. Selena helped me clean it up, so I didn't poop in my underwear, I pooped in the potty. Can I have a prize now?


Isn't she a hoot?

Prodigal daughter

So, after a few weeks off from blogging - in which I was constantly thinking of ideas away from the computer and then not remembering next to the computer - I'm back for a while.

Hopefully, this will be more consistent throughout the summer, but that all depends on the "geniuses" at the Apple Store who fixed my laptop's problem but gave me a new one. Now, my Mac laptop crashes two to three times daily (I haven't had that problem since I was on a Windows box!), and it's pissing me off! The server is conntected to a slow DSL connection, so it can't download the updates, and appears to be slightly less reliable, too. Since my hubby takes his laptop to and from work, I have little work on during the day. Pbbt.

So, I set a few goals at the beginning of the summer of what I was going to do with all my "free time." I didn't expect to accomplish all of them but, like NCLB, it's good to have something to shoot for. Let's see how I'm doing:

1) Workout/exercise more. True. During the weekdays when hubby and daughter are gone in the mornings, I have been working out. I rode my bike one day, went to the gym a few times, tried out the workouts on Fit TV (more on that in another entry). I'm doing okay, and it's way more exercise than I get during the school year. I'm hoping to make it a habit, and then keep up the habit coming September. We'll see.

2) Watch my diet. Both true and false. I've been eating healthier planned meals and snacks, still getting an early breakfast and a decent lunch. However, I'm still eating big meals at night instead of the morning. I also have a ton of crap in the house, and I tend to hunt that out around 2pm an 9 or 10pm daily. I need to stop doing that.

3) Get rid of the clutter around the house. Developing. I spent three solid days going through old magazines and filing/organizing the stuff I wanted to keep. I ultimately turned out recycling 3 years of Cooking Light, 4-5 years of Memory Makers and similar scrapbooking magazines, and 2 years of California Educator and the NEA one I always forget. I still have some English Journal and Educational Leadership to go through, but there's a light at the end of that tunnel. I did go through my hanging clothes and jackets and identified things I wanted to get rid of. However, the clothes are hanging over my sink now, not in a bag on their way to Goodwill or the like. I went through some of the kid's toys and pitched some, but I have a lot to go through still. (And, ironically, she's expressed an interest in getting rid of some "so I don't have to clean up so much every day." Clever kid.)

4) Put my extensive Alice's Adventures in Wonderland collection on eBay or otherwise get rid of most of it. Not even attempted yet.

5) Read educational texts in preparation for next year. Developing. I just finished Classroom Management That Works and I believe I'm going to make a flip book for myself of key ideas when I'm feeling uncool in class. I also need to begin to make plans for starting off the school year, but those ideas are already floating around in my head.

6) Lesson plan the entire year. Nixed. After talking to friends and colleagues, I decided that was ludicrous. Without meeting my children, I don't know what I need to cover (the basics) in order to address the standards. However, thanks to the McDougal-Littel workshop I went to, I at least know of some tools to use to do that once I pre-assess my students. I also want to establish some goals per semester (i.e. which standards will I majorly focus on 1st semester? what steps do I have to take to get there? which learning strategies will I use most 1st semester?), but that's still floating around in my head, too.

7) Tackle the concept of literature circles. Nada. I need to get to that, but the more I think of all of the above, the less I think it's likely, at least in July. One of my department chairs says she'll be able to help if I set up some time, so that's on me to do in the next week or two.

8) Get home to the Midwest for a trip. In the future. We've booked the tickets, and we might even see Joe's best friend's family, which is an extra bonus.

9) Scrapbook my wedding photos from 6 years ago. Not much. Honestly, I've barely touched them. My wedding photographer refuses to allow me to touch the negatives, and she doesn't appear to be willing to turn them over to a developer friend to scan, even for a price. However, she has given me permission to scan the photos and doctor and reprint them, so I guess that's what I have to do. With the beautiful "I Do" collection from Jolee's out right now, and a local scrapbooking store fully stocked with the entire line, I want it to happen this summer, but I have only taken the typical one night per week to do any scrapbooking, and that is not yielding a wedding scrapbook any time soon.

10) Take a family photo. Done. We took some with Susan at Castle Rock, and they're beautiful. I couldn't be more pleased.

11) Spend more time with my daughter. On-going. She and I have been having fun making food in the kitchen, playing in the park, taking field trips, and generally discovering each other. It's nice to know that I just have her to "deal with," (and not meetings and lesson plans and errant students and the like) because it calms me down. I can't believe how busy a SAHM can be, though, with chores and appointments and organizing AND taking care of the kiddie. Man!