Small_Inklings_

Wrapping it up.

This blog is going into retirement.  It may, like many athletes who pretend to "retire", pop up again full strength, but right now I'm done.  Like every other blogger on planet blogosphere, I've often considered quitting, but there was always a niggling little reason to keep it up--keep in touch with cousins, for example, or feel connected to strangers when I was feeling especially disconnected from those around me.  But those are sidenotes to my original purpose in blogging, which was to keep myself writing, keep the flow of thoughts, well, fluid.  But in the last few months things have changed;  I've begun to write with purpose, albeit slowly, and I feel much less disconnected from the people around me than in the past. If I want to connect with my cousins, well, I'm going to call or write or visit.  If I want to show off my children, I will send out pictures.  And if I want to say something, I'm going to say it with my name and/or face behind it.  That's the plan, anyway.  I had an inkling;  I think it's becoming a fully formed thought.  Seem to have outgrown this place.  Love and luck to those I've met here.  I will still be in to visit.

Love him, do.

The fifth grade puts on a Wax Museum every year.  Mr. Q. is very excited about his assignment.  All he needed was love, and a trip to Goodwill.  (Double click for the big picture.)

  

In Cognito

 

Is the pumpkin necessary?

 

My blogging enthusiasm has obviously waned once again.  I seem to lack commitment here, but I am determined not to give up entirely, not yet.  After all, my mom likes it.  Hi Mom.  Thanks for the delicious dinner tonight, and for my new red knitted scarf.  I wore it home and was cozy all the way.  Now I'm using my blog as a vehicle for conveying what should be said in a nice, personal e-mail.  I guess I'm feeling a little anti-technology lately.  Could be all the computers that have taken over the room that was supposed to be my library.  My husband wanted to buy my a Kindle, so I would turn out the bedroom light at night.  I'm going to go snuggle with some paper.  'Night.

A Birthday Surprise

When asked what he wanted for his brithday, his answer of "Oh, whatever" probably did NOT include a giant heron swooping down and slurping up half the fish from his pond.  Advice:  Be more specific, dear.

 

Frisbeetarianism

is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.  --George Carlin

Take Notice

My husband says I don't notice things, like funny noises the car is making, whether the tires are balanced, where I put my keys, that the neighbor's house has been for sale for six months, that my son is stashing his dirty socks behind the couch, that someone shaved, or didn't shave, that the garage door has been washed, a new fern has been planted, this child is chewing with his mouth open, that child has his elbows on the table, and that other one has just thrown his ball across the living room for the seventeenth zillionth time.  I have been known not to notice stop signs, to overlook the freeway exit for work, and the next one, which made me twenty minutes late on two occasions.  Yesterday while I was travelling I added an hour and a half to my drive time by missing three different exits.  Yes, three.  Well, I had a lot on my mind.  When we were first married, he thought I would not notice when he threw away my boxes of letters, drawings, or books.  Wrong there, but it's true that I was a little too slow on the uptake to save some of them.  I cannot find things unless they are in sight, which is why my desk at school is covered with (usually neat) piles of important things. A filed paper is too often a paper sacrificed to the void.  I do not always take notice of pertinent issues, either, such as hurricanes in other states, economic crises, scandals, and lawsuits.  Furthermore, I have trouble noticing dates, the amount of money in my bank account, time passing, and social cues. 

When I started writing this post a few minutes ago (I didn't notice how many) I had a vague intent to use a compare/contrast format.  At this point, I should now be listing, defiantly, all the things I do notice, like the expressions on people's faces, details of the landscape, extended metaphors, missing commas, slants of light, lint on the carpet, and how often people repeat themselves.  But really, the first list is a little too long, don't you think?  I guess he's more right than I noticed.  I would make a terrible, terrible spy.

Autumn's first rain

It probably isn't Autumn's first rain;  after all, this is Oregon, land of damp, and I have these same feelings every time it rains after a few days of sun.  The people who move here, they come with dread, because they have heard it will be dark for something like 342 days of the year, and on the other days, there will be clouds.  They come braced for depression and cabin fever and other more specific disorders that will cling to their skin like mold on a wet, wet leaf.  It's true that depression and I have a long and wary knowledge of each other, like that person you knew at fourteen who witnessed your most embarrassing moments and is therefore always suspect, no matter her proximity.  But because I have known rain longer, I trust her more, and the darkness she brings is the darkness of a cave beneath the sheets, or the spaces between friends around a campfire, or the heady smoke from a pile of burning leaves.  With the rain comes permission to retreat:  I no longer need an excuse to curl around a book (as if I ever did, but I still try to justify it when the sun shines).  My mind settles into rhythms of rocking, flames flickering, soft sounds of pencils on paper and the rain falling with formidable mercy on the eager tongues of grass, as if the whole world is suddenly become the yawning mouth of a baby bird, and heaven feeds us from its own lips.

The hat

 

Big Bad Vlad

On his first day in my classroom, after being kicked out of another classroom, receiving two detentions, and garnering an impressive reputation all within his first week at our school, Vlad the Bad decided to throw "poppers" while I was reading.  The first time, I thought someone must have dropped a ruler (when you are thirteen it is unutterably hi-lar-i-ous to make loud noises during quiet times.)  The second time, I saw, out of the corner of my superhuman teacher eye, that same eye which often rotates to the back of my head at crucial moments, his arm in the act of swinging.  And I knew he was just dying for a confrontation.  I could see it in the tilt of his head, the smug smile that pulled his mouth to the side, the way he waited, watching.  The rest of the students watched too.  I tossed him a direct but bland look and kept reading.  After class, I drifted over to his desk and gave him the straight-up:  I know it was you, your face tells it all, understand now that this will not be tolerated, have a nice lunch, and oh yeah, pleased to meet you.  I'm sure he was disappointed.  But disarmed--and though he is still pushing the limits a bit, because one can't let the teacher appear to win, he hasn't thrown another popper, or dropped a book, or started a coughing symphony, or challenged my requests.  So, is Vlad the Bad conquered?  Probably not, but he's not an enemy either.

If I hadn't read Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer so many times growing up, I think I would be a decidedly worse teacher.

On the other hand, if many of my colleagues had been watching, they would decidedly have thought I WAS a bad teacher.  To many of them, I would be far too non-confrontational.  I am always shocked when I walk down the halls and hear a teacher yelling at a student;  I flinch when the math teacher in study hall takes a tone.  I was deeply disturbed once when I witnessed a substitute bullying one of my students against the wall, haranguing him for who knows what crime--it couldn't possibly have deserved that kind of humiliation, I knew the kid.  And there was the substitute in my classroom during my prep today--sweet elderly lady, the libarian's wife, in fact, who has watched my class many times before.  That is, I always took her for a sweet old lady until she went to war with the cheetos this afternoon.  The regular teacher allows snacks, since second lunch is so late, and she wants one herself.  Madame flew into a scalding rage, seemed to consider it a personal insult that a student should dare to eat in her (MY) classroom.  But worse, when the students politely explained that it was not against the rules, she shrilled, "I don't care!  I'm in charge here!  Do as I say now!"  I tactfully averted my eyes and gritted my teeth.  How could she not know the enemies she was making?  How could she not understand what it means to teens to say, "I don't care about the rules!"?  Sure enough, the rest of the class period was absolute chaos, paper flying, desks dragged from one wall to another, chairs knocked down.  Should I have intervened?  Maybe, but I was a little scared of her as well.  And yeah, too, she made the bed.

All this to say, I prefer to let things slide a bit than get caught in the avalanche.  Honestly, as with the presidency, those who seek power should never be put in charge.

And I'm grateful to my parents who taught me the art of peace, so that when the time comes when my self-control might be tested, I really don't have it in me to wound.