Holiday fun

Zoe and I made this gingerbread Christmas village the other day...  it didn't turn out looking like the picture on the box at all...

and Zoe said, "We can call it pop art and say it's a statement about the decay of society or something."  She is definitely my child!  We laughed a lot.

New York, Lynda Barry, and buttons

I didn't blog about my fantastic trip to New York last week yet -- now that Hannukah and Asher's birthday are over, I feel a little less frantic. 

Lynda Barry was amazing.  She is so inspiring because she is so much herself, acknowledging all the amazing and terrible things that make up our lives.  And finding humor in it all. 
I had a nice vegan dinner at a Korean teahouse near my hotel:

and went to one of my new favorite stores, Tender Buttons!

It's a tiny little place on the upper east side and it's just full of these brown paper boxes with hand-written labels... all they sell is buttons.  I spent about an hour there picking out buttons for the cowl I made for my friend Barbara's birthday. 
Being in the city by myself for 24 hours was rejuvenating.  Not having the responsibility of even talking to anyone else made me feel so much more relaxed.  I was glad to come home, too, and Lenny said it felt like I'd been gone for about a week and a half.

Knitting monsters

I finished two monsters and can't decide which one to give to Lloyd...

Bad bad dog

Here is my little bookhouse after Deedee got done with it.

Art every day

The other night (while the boys were playing Madden) Zoe and I sat at opposite ends of the table in my room and made art.  It was so much fun.  Here's Zoe's painting:

And here's a little house I made out of recycled book pages:

We love making stuff!

It's been a while.

I promised myself that I would post at least once every two weeks, but not worry about it beyond that.  So I'm trying not to feel guilty if some time passes by.  Things have been more hectic than usual around here, but the important stuff is still good -- teaching, knitting, being with my family -- and I'm getting really excited about several upcoming things:

• Seeing Lynda Barry at the 92nd Street Y in NYC on December 3 
• The writing retreat I am going to in February.  http://www.bepresentretreats.com/pen-and-paper/

Lenny and I also had a wonderful anniversary dinner/overnight to celebrate 15 years being married.  I am so lucky to have someone who supports me in everything I do and puts up with my weirdnesses.  We had dinner at Gramercy Tavern and it was amazing.

Halloween

This isn't the greatest picture, but I love how they look in it.

Being eleven is hard.

On Sunday I read an essay by Hope Edelman in the New York Times.  It was about her daughter having to do a "flour sack baby" project for school.  Her daughter is the same age as Zoe, and this quote was a good reminder for me:
"Eleven-year-old girls occupy a notoriously wobbly zone between childhood and adolescence.  A mother who's an embarrassment in the morning can be someone to adore at dinner and a pariah again by bedtime.  Yet beneath this ambivalence, girls are desperate for reminders that we love them and always will, even as they're abruptly banishing us from their rooms."

41.

I had a really great birthday.  I'm happy to be 41.  Thank you, world.

Books

I just finished this book, Listening Below the Noise: The Transformative Power of Silence, by Anne D. LeClaire.  I was especially wanting to like it because I bought it on the Cape last weekend with my girlfriends.  And I did like it.  In the book, she describes her practice of keeping silent for two days each month.  She writes about feeling selfish for wanting to have solitude and silence, wondering if it hurts her family and friends, which resonates for me.  I just love being alone so much.  I also wonder what would come up to the surface if I went on a silent retreat, or just tried to set aside a certain time to be in silence.  It's really intriguing to me.  I also love that the epigraph is from May Sarton, whose journals I've been reading lately too, and that throughout the book she referred back to The Secret Garden, one of my childhood favorites.

Things I Like.

This room.

These shoes

This poster.

passiveagressivenotes.com

Day off.

So, I called in sick today.  And yes, I do think I have gotten Zoe's cold, but mostly I'm just tired and needed some downtime.  I've been letting things at school get to me instead of focusing on the good parts -- teaching, and being with the great women (yes, they are mostly women) who I work with.  So, I stayed home today and knitted (birthday surprise for Lloyd), watched Flight of the Conchords (I have a crush on Bret), and read Whittington, our mother-daughter book club book.  And also did laundry, of course.  It was a good day and I feel ready to jump back into the fray tomorrow.

Open-house-athon

I have had three open houses in the last two weeks.  Last week I went to Asher's (third grade) and had my own at the high school.  Tonight I'm going to Zoe's (sixth grade).  I'm pretty sick of open houses.  I like meeting teachers and parents, but it's too much of a good thing.  It's also weird to be on both sides of the equation, because I understand the nervousness on everyone's parts.  As a teacher, I feel totally on stage and stared at, which I react to by talking too quickly and trying to be funny (luckily most of the parents at my school are nice and give me courtesy laughs).  As a parent, I want the teacher to know who I am and acknowledge the greatness of my child, but without seeming pushy.  Both roles are just about impossible to pull off with grace.  As I'm getting older, though, I'm definitely more comfortable just being myself.  I guess that's one good thing about my forties.

A website I really like is called kindovermatter.com -- it encourages people to do more random acts of kindness in daily life, like leaving encouraging cards in public places for other people to find.  Here was my card drop today:

 

I don't know why but it makes me happy to do this. 

Journal page, my desk, and new watch

This is one of the first journal pages I've made, on my favorite topic, reading.  I don't really have the hang of taking pictures yet, but I'm trying...

Also, a quick view of my desk this morning -- the light was so nice...

And this new Casio watch I ordered from Amazon.  I love it.  It's just the right combination of cool and geeky.

I'm trying different settings on the iphone camera to see how it comes out.

Dogs.

I've always been a cat person, so I'm as surprised as everyone else that I have completely fallen in love with this 8-year-old, stinky, stubborn, drooly basset hound that we adopted in July.  I have no explanation for why this has happened, but I do think that becoming a dog owner has made me a better person.  I'm spending more quiet time outdoors, walking in the field across the street.  Just sitting with her on the couch and petting her feels like meditation, which I've always been too hyper to do.  She loves me even when I'm feeling and/or acting horribly.  Here she is on the kitchen table!

 

 I had to help her get down.  But can you see how her tail is wagging furiously?  She just kills me.

Books I'm Reading

I've been devouring Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, even though I didn't want to like it.  I remember reading The Corrections and also liking it in spite of myself.  Something about the way he writes feels too smart (I think I stole that from the NYT Book Review) but there is also something so real, especially in the Minnesotan setting of Freedom.  I'm reading it on the iPad so I'll include some good quotes as soon as I figure out how.  The other book I'm reading is The Self-Healing Cookbook by Kristina Turner.  I didn't realize it was about macrobiotic cooking when I ordered it from Amazon, but I love the homey, self-published feel of it and the way it's so gentle with its suggestions about changing your diet.  It's so encouraging, all "just by reading this you're doing so well..."  I guess I feel so frayed right now that although I'm eating terribly, I'm still comforted by the tone of it.  And maybe I will be able to put some of it into use.
Great teaching moment today with my freshmen -- I was doing this worksheet with them that I hadn't previewed, and totally fumbling around with it, and I said, "You know, I didn't really look at this before now," and one of my students said, "No offense, but that's pretty obvious."  I mean it was a great teaching moment for ME, not them... whenever I use canned, premade materials that I don't have ownership of, it just doesn't work out that well.  When I finally decided to give up on the worksheet and just start talking about chapter three of Lord of the Flies, I think we all breathed a sigh of relief.  And we had a great discussion, worksheet-free.

Just begin.

I've been waiting for the perfect time, platform, words to start but I know, really, that will never come. So here I am, a mom, teacher, wife, crafty writer girl who needs to just begin.