A brand-new set of colored pens makes grading papers a little less painful. 😉
18/365: Tools of My Trade
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16/365: New Perspective
We celebrated my dad’s 70th birthday today with lunch at The Mayflower, birthday cake, and an afternoon (into evening) of conversation. His birthday was on the 13th, but we couldn’t all get together earlier in the week.
When they went to pick up the cake, my dad requested that they add that “70” to it, although, my mom said, he hasn’t been feeling that great about turning 70. I guess he decided to embrace it in a physical way. I’m all for that!
Notice that the cake in the picture is upside down. Kevin saw it this way on the counter and asked about the “OL,” thinking for a second somebody’d already eaten the “D.” But it’s actually the “70,” upside down.
It got me thinking about how just a little change of perspective can make a huge change in the way we interpret things. Sometimes all it takes is a tiny change of scenery to bring new life to the same-old.
Next time you’re in the midst of something you really don’t know how to handle, or something you’re really bored with, or something you’re totally resenting having to do, take a second to breathe and tilt your head a bit. Try to find a different angle to come at it from.
I think you’ll be surprised at the results.
15/365: Super Reader
Woohoo! That kid can really read!
14/365: Crystal Prison
We’d just picked the kids up from the sitter’s house this afternoon.
“This is not the way to home,” Atticus warned us, as Kevin turned the car west, down a state road that would wind a bit through the woods.
“We’re going a different way home,” we said.
As we came upon the still-iced-over pond, I asked Kevin to stop the car for a minute, so I could take some pictures from the open window. The boys both gaped over the frozen pond.
“Is the water stuck, Mommy?” Atticus wanted to know. “Aww.”
Kevin explained how water is more likely to freeze in a pond than a river because it’s not moving as much.
Then, he asked Lucas if he would walk out on the ice.
Lucas said he’d walk out on the edge first to see if it would hold him, and then move out to the center if it did.
“That wouldn’t be a good idea,” Kevin said.
I explained that we can’t be sure from one solid area that the rest is necessarily solid, as well. Just because you step once or twice or ten times without crashing through to the freezing water beneath doesn’t mean your very next step won’t buckle under your weight.
(This is especially true around here in southern Virginia. My dad has old tin-type photographs of early 19th-century people skating on the rivers around here, but it’s not a normal wintertime activity. I don’t think I know anyone who’s ice-skated outside a rink, actually.)
We talked about what would happen if you were to fall in, too, how the thick ice that held your weight would become your crystal prison from underneath, fighting for air and muscle-shocked, searching for the hole that granted you access to the frigid water. What an awful feeling that must be!
And we talked about George Bailey and his friends sledding onto the frozen pond in It’s a Wonderful Life and how his brother would have drowned if not for George, who ended up with a deaf ear. (They both want to watch the movie now. Yay!)
So Kevin hammered in the lesson (“So don’t ever walk across the water”), to which I threw in a clause (“Unless Jesus tells you to walk across the water”), which he cautioned against (“You better make sure it’s Jesus”).
And then we were off to the house from the back way, through our favorite tunnel and on down the highway.
Cheap Dreams? Nope.
It was getting late, pouring down rain, and we still had quite a few blocks to go. Ducking in and around awnings, we got a very different view of New York than our usual.
At one stop, with no next shelter in sight, the store sign hit me as strangely funny: “99¢ Dreams.”
Cheap dreams, small ones: a little ole hat or umbrella: just a bit o’ shelter; that’s all.
Nope. All closed. Gate down. None for you.
Tonight’s your night to get soaked.
(Taken July 2010)
11/365: Nature’s Snow Cones
This wasn’t taken from yesterday’s snow; we only got an inch. This was from the week of Christmas.
Thanks to Lucas for pointing these out in our backyard. 🙂 I have no idea what kind of tree it is.
10/365: Hi, I’m Jo, and I’m an editing fool
I can’t help but edit the books I read. If only my own mistakes jumped off the page at me the way others’ do.
9/365: Redundant Street
There must be a story behind this redundant street name.
The main road of a small housing development called Lumpkins Forest (no apostrophe), its sign reads, “FORESTRD DR.” Maps label it, “Forestroad Drive.”
I didn’t really pay attention to the name until we moved into our current house and now drive past the street to and from the city almost every day. When I noticed it, I thought it must be a typo. Or something. It aggravated me.
A little while later, my mom, who worked as a rural mail carrier until her retirement just over a year ago, told me that her coworkers at the post office used to joke about the street name.
Signs plus maps plus mail equals not a typo. Weird.
The neighborhood isn’t run-down and boarded-up like the house on the other side of the highway that’s shown here. It’s full of really nice houses that are well taken care of, from what I can see.
I wonder if I could live on a redundant street. I wonder if I would roll my eyes or sigh every time I had to type or write my address if I did. I wonder if I could resist the urge to complain and organize a protest.
I know for sure I’d at least get to the bottom of the backstory.
8/365: RIF (Reading IS Fun)
I used to have a bookmark from way back in elementary school, probably, that said “RIF: Reading is fun!”
I probably got it from a Bookmobile (Remember those?!) or a book fair in the library or something. I thought it was a little weird that anyone would have to promote reading: DUH! Of course, reading is fun; tell me something I don’t know. I loved to read mysteries, especially, back then. (I read every Nancy Drew book in the Brosville Middle School library.) Today, I prefer the classics.
Since then, I’ve known a LOT of people (mostly students) who do not believe that reading is fun. On the contrary, some of them considered (I’m using the past tense in hopes that they’ve by now seen the light 😉 the act of reading tantamount to serious torture. No whimsically decorated bookmark could convince them otherwise. And neither could an English teacher (namely moi).
When I met Kevin, he wasn’t that into reading either. He didn’t dread it, I don’t guess, but he didn’t think it was fun either. Now, he reads a lot. I don’t think he’d call it fun now, even. When I just asked him if he thinks reading is fun, he said, “Yes, if it’s something I want to read.” A convert!!
I don’t find time to read for fun much anymore (although I did sign up for a reading challenge this year), but I’m reading pretty much all the time.
A lot of my reading is on the Internet: Twitter and Facebook posts, blog posts, news articles. And a lot of it is for my job: tons and tons of essays (Multiply my 124 students by the 10 or so essays they have to write for their portfolios).
Today, I juggled comic books and narrative essays, and although neither is the kind of reading I exactly prefer, I could do much worse on a Saturday.
7/365: Basil and Cecilia
These little guys call our van their home. We found Basil, the frog, at Walmart several years ago. Kevin’s always loved the name, and it reminds of The Great Mouse Detective. (I don’t know why that fits here, but it does somehow.) We adopted Cecilia, the seal, at the Virginia Beach Aquarium last summer. She’s named for the Simon and Garfunkel song. 🙂
I took three shots of Basil and Cecilia this afternoon from an almost identical angle with Urbian’s Retro Camera app for Droid. You can see the difference in color, film, and case, not to mention kilter. From left: the Xolaroid 2000, made in San Francisco; the .1976 USSR’s Little Orange Box (also shown at top); and the ’50s-era German Bärbl.