Through Their Eyes

There's nothing as humbling or as gratifying as seeing yourself through the eyes of a child. The above drawing was done by four-year old granddaughter, Princess 2. (She has two sisters, Princess 1 and Princess 3.)  She got the hair exactly right...and the freckles...I have lots of those.  It's brilliant that she drew me with a brown crayon. I almost always wear brown or black.  I wondered about the unibrow since I barely have eyebrows at all, but she has seen me draw them on in the morning, so I guess she was making sure they stood out.  While she was drawing this, she asked me if yellow and brown make green and now I know why she asked. She gave me brown eyes and tried to change them to green, but adding yellow didn't work so she quit after one.  I love that she gave me a great big smile.  I asked her why she didn't give me arms and she said because my heart was too big.  The smaller heart, she said, is hers.  This will be on my fridge for a long time.

It's Just an Empty Container, But Still....

 

Four of my seven grandchildren live in what I would call the Deep South....the really, really Deep South. Visiting them is always an adventure. Like now, for instance. I'm sitting on the back deck with my ipad while the children play in the woods behind their house. Freckles is on the four-wheeler, zooming around and around and around the yard while Fancy hollers at her to come and help with the construction of a "fort" in the woods. A verbal war ensues.

"La,la,la,la....I can't hear you!"

"You can't ever, ever, ever play in here because you didn't help!"

"So what? I don't want to play in there anyway!"

"Shut up, Freckles!"

"YOU shut up!"

Wise Guy, the official ADHD member of the family, has been working on the building project for about an hour now. That's gotta be a record. Oops, spoke too soon. He is now flinging acorns at Freckles every time she zooms by, tearing up the yard and coming dangerously close to tipping over at each turn, not to mention that she's doing her best to run over Bigfoot and make it look like justifiable homicide by provoking him to throw sticks at her.

Bigfoot just ran in the house to show his mother where the stuff is to get started on his English class project, which is due tomorrow and which he has known about for two weeks. I guess he got her squared away, because he's running back to the woods to work on the fort. Freckles was just ordered to get off the four-wheeler for reckless driving and she went stomping into the house. Fancy, the oldest child of the clan, is uncharacteristically focused on the construction of the fort, probably more to avoid studying for the geometry test she has tomorrow than to spend quality time cooperating with her brothers. Wise Guy, aka, self-proclaimed 'Defender of Evil' announces that he has to poop and goes inside, stopping on the way to show me where he got a giant splinter in his hand.

Earlier today, this blended family of crazy kids was getting along just fine playing Guitar Hero; and by getting along, I mean they were laughing at each other's farts without rolling on the floor gagging and making throw up noises, and singing the "One Pound Fish" song in unison until their mother is ready to strangle them all.

There is something oddly appropriate about the whole 'grenade as part of the decor' in this household.

Where Not To Retire

I can't say that I understand the allure of Arizona to so many retirees. It's a great place to go to get out of the cold, but how people can actually live there is beyond me. Anyway, I just returned from a week of basking in the relentless Arizona sun where I definitely did NOT purchase the above property. And guess what's still sitting on the back of the downstairs toilet? The replacement parts I bought several weeks ago...still in their packages, waiting for "someone" to install them. To be fair, it IS bow season in Michigan. That means Handy spends his weekends precariously perched in a tree somewhere, waiting for a deer to help himself to the feast of apples and corn piled nearby. The way this works is, many weeks before it's legal to shoot a deer, the baiting begins. That gets the deer accustomed to visiting the bait pile on a regular basis, unaware that they're being set up. Although, you'd think after awhile they'd get the hint that if it's not a corn field, don't eat the corn! Also during this time, Handy washes all his hunting clothes in a detergent that smells like dirt and sprays them with a cologne that smells like deer pee. Go figure. At that point, I try to get as far away from here as possible until it's safe to come back. If I do happen to come home for a few days (like now), I'm not allowed to touch anything related to hunting for fear of getting something that smells nice all over it. For example, if I applied hand lotion after showering and happened to retrieve a pair of dirt-washed socks from the floor, I would contaminate them and Handy would have to start over with the laundry routine. The horror. For a long time, I used to believe that hunters walked out into the woods, shot a deer, dragged it to the camp, and day was done. But I have since discovered that a large part of the deer hunting ritual is that you have to get up in your tree early in the morning and hold still, barely breathing, for many hours and then MAYBE a deer will accept your invitation to dinner so you can shoot it upon its arrival, which, come to think of it, hardly seems fair.
So back to the issue of the downstairs toilet. Since it is highly unlikely that hubby is going to even think about fixing it while he's so intently focused on being quiet in that tree, I thought I might just go ahead and do it myself. I mean, right on the box it says, "Install with confidence! Installs in 15 minutes!"  So I get out the instructions, and I swear to god, here they are:  "1. Adjust Height.  2. Install.  3. Connect."  Huh?!  Adjust height of what? First of all, how do you get the water out of the tank? Isn't that a prerequisite?
I guess the toilet will have to wait. I'm off to see my grandkids. They would never have the patience to sit in a tree for more than five minutes.

Branching Out

  An acquaintance told me I needed to be careful not to "isolate" during retirement. Another said I should never turn down an opportunity to do something different. Still, when I was invited to spend a weekend with a group of women I hadn't seen or spoken to since about the 4th grade, my first impulse was to politely decline. I had a bunch of nifty excuses, such as it was too far to drive, the weather was turning bad, I wasn't sure I would recognize any of them, but truthfully, I'm just not good at socializing. I don't like parties or making small talk. So I'm not sure why I took the plunge, but it was so worth it! There was sand dune climbing, a little shopping, a couple good restaurants, and even a parade complete with a clown band, but the best part was just being in the company of women whose friendships were forged in the formative years. It was akin to putting on your most comfy sweatshirt and fuzzy slippers and sitting by the fire with nothing to worry about. It's easy for me to say no. This experience has taught me to say yes. It WAS too far to drive and the weather was pretty bad. But recognition of childhood friends was not an issue, and my cheeks still hurt from laughing. 

What Not To Wear

I live in a climate where socks and sandals make sense. In fact, much of what people wear in my town makes sense....just not fashion sense. I totally understand why a person would go out in public looking like she just rolled out of bed and threw on the rattiest jacket in the closet, but I don't want to be one of those people. One of my school pet peeves was teachers who wore blue jeans and sneakers to class. I always thought their message to students was, "My number one concern is to be comfortable, and to hell with trying to be a good role model."  It really bugged me that teachers who themselves didn't know how to dress appropriately were the first to demand that I do something about what students wore to school. For the most part, students are given a free pass in the fashion department. They are experimenting, trying to find what works and what doesn't, and they have the added pressure of living in fear of being ridiculed by their peers while not getting in trouble with the adults in their lives. But I did have more than a few discussions with girls in my office about why they shouldn't expose various body parts in the classroom. Girls at school often told me that they thought I looked nice or they liked my shoes, etc. One time, while I was giving a girl a ride home to change, she said, "You always look so well put together. I hope I look that good when I get old." (OK, the word "old" bothered me, but when you're 16, everyone over 20 is old.)

So now that I'm retired, I have to think about what to put on in the morning. I have a closet full of pencil skirts and heels which aren't really called for when cleaning the bathroom or raking the yard. But if I'm in the middle of an art project and run out of Mod Podge, I want to be presentable enough to run to Walmart without ending up on someone's Facebook page wearing flourescent orange sweat pants and a hockey jersey.  I need to build a casual wardrobe that says I might be retired, but I'm not a slob. I still care about how I look, but I really don't know what to wear. It's like I'm back in high school experimenting and hoping people aren't laughing at me behind my back. Yesterday, I was reorganizing my pantry and ran out of shelf paper, so the dreaded Walmart run in a bad outfit became a reality. I did change out of the blue jeans that are a little too short (need to get rid of those) in favor of a pair that fit, but I had on a pull-over sweatshirt and a pair of old navy blue Keds. This is not a good look for a woman my age. I felt self-conscious. While I was worrying about it, I saw a woman my age walking across the parking lot. She had on floral pajama bottoms that hit her about mid calf, a long baggy t-shirt under a dirty brown quilted jacket and bright turquoise moon boots. The thing is, where I live, the only person who will be laughing at me and my blue Keds will be me.

A Woman Needs a Man Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle

 

I once had a t-shirt which defiantly announced the above. A shirt that I actually wore. It was a time in America when women were saying out loud what their mothers had always suspected. Of course, it wasn't completely true then, and men have come a long way since Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan forced the issue. Ever see those shows (think Dr. Phil) where they have a couple men do their wives' chores for a few days so they get an idea of what the poor thing goes through on a daily basis?  It always ends with the expected eye opening and it's all ha-ha very jovial. Well, I've tried the opposite approach to that theme here on the home front since my retirement, and I must say, it IS pretty funny. There was the time I practically electrocuted myself trying to change out a light fixture and finding out later from my super handy hubby that, "Jesus, you coulda burned the house down!" Then there was the day I decided to try out the new tractor/lawn mower. Why do they not put power steering on those things? Let me just say, I had to plant some grass seed after that gallant effort. There are some things that I have to do myself if I want them done at all, like when I changed the back splash in the kitchen. I learned on that job how to repair drywall by doing it and hoping to god I did it right. I truly believed that if I started on the kitchen, handy would step in and take over, but he's on to me in that regard and the task was all mine. It took weeks, but I got it done and actually sort of like it. The other day, I realized that the hideous groaning I sometimes hear in the basement is related to flushing the toilet on the first floor. Knowing nothing about the inner workings of a toilet, I armed myself with a picture of the inside of the tank and set out for the hardware store. I wasn't totally confident that the guy who helped me really knew what he was talking about, but I purchased his recommendation anyway since I had no recommendation of my own. As I was checking out, I saw on the receipt that I had bought a "korky flapper" and a "ball cock." I just had to laugh out loud. The woman at the checkout laughed along with me, saying that hardware has some really crazy names, most likely created by men. "At least you didn't need a nipple extractor," she said. I didn't even ask.

I Can't Seem to Do Nothing Right

I'm a little irritated by the fact that, so far in my retirement, which started less than two months ago, my inner dysfunction keeps nagging me to "do something," when, truth be told, what I really want to do is nothing.  I don't mean I want to do nothing ALL the time, but, for example, on a day like today, when what you see in the photo is what I see from my front porch, nothing seems like a perfectly fine thing to want to do. But here's how "nothing" is working for me:  After about 45 seconds of enjoying the view, I thought, gee, I wanted to get that watch cleaned...this would be a good time to take care of that. So I went upstairs in search of the watch in question and ended up spending three hours cleaning the bathroom. I scrubbed the shower tile, polished the faucets, sorted all the soaps from the shampoos from the body lotions and put them in their proper bins, scrubbed the floor, even took the window locker thing off to clean and shine it. I cleaned every square inch of every nook and cranny.  I didn't find the watch, but by the time I finished cleaning, I forgot what I had gone up there for in the first place, so it didn't matter.  What DID matter was that while attacking the bathroom, I noticed that the light bulbs were mismatched, one being of the curly variety and the others not. It's just under two miles to the store. I should have walked. That would've been a good "nothing" thing to do, but I was hell-bent on getting those light bulbs to match, so I got in the car. After changing the bulbs, there was the matter of where to put the ones I didn't use. In my working days, I would have just stuck them in a drawer (that's not entirely true, because in my working days, I wouldn't have changed them in the first place), but since I had nothing better to do, I thought it would be a good idea to start an actual place to store light bulbs, so I gathered up all the stray light bulbs I could find and put them in a nice, clean bin in the basement (Don't get the wrong idea...it wasn't nice and clean when I found it. Cleaning it was another 15 minutes), which I labeled "Light Bulbs" after a 30 minute hunt for a marker. Needing something to drink after all that, I opened the fridge and saw those pork chops sitting there begging to be dinner. I suck at cooking, but now that I'm home doing nothing all day, I have no excuse anymore to continue to suck at cooking. So I found a recipe that looked like something I could handle and got busy in the kitchen.  Don't get me started on the kitchen. I know it needs a good cleaning as well. But right now I have five minutes of nothing I want to accomplish.

Retired...and this time I mean it!

Someone at work asked me what the first thing was that I wanted to do when I retired.  My answer was sleep late on a Monday!  I’ve now been retired for three weeks, and so far, “sleeping late” turns out to mean 7:00 a.m. (as opposed to 6:00 a.m.)  I envisioned sleeping till noon every day, but I guess old habits die hard. August 10^th was my last day at work. My first official retirement adventure was to accompany my super amazing hubby on a trip to Crystal Mountain where he attended meetings and I played golf. Except for the part where he listened to country music and texted while driving, I thoroughly enjoyed those three days.  My big, big project for this first year of retirement is going to be getting our house ready to sell in the spring.  I’ve lived in this house for 17 years with hubby the hoarder, so it might sound easy, but believe me, it won’t be!  I’ve been accumulating tons of cleaning and sorting and organizing tips from Pinterest. Oh, God, if you haven’t become a Pin Head yet, DON’T!!!  For me, it’s a real love/hate relationship.  Love the great ideas, hate the time it takes to try them to no avail!  Anyway, since I have held down at least one full-time job every day of my life since I turned 14, I never got very good at household chores.  But with the help of Pinterest, I’ve become a freaking clean machine!!  Do you have any idea how much dirt can be banished with a little bit of Borax and a splash of ammonia?!  It would blow your mind. I could still kick myself for buying $50 worth of crap I saw advertised on TV a couple years ago that was supposed to be able to restore a cruddy old toilet to looking like brand new. I received several bottles of these miracle cleaning supplies, none of which cleaned anything. I swear I paid $50 for bottled water.  Then I found this Pinterest idea.  Cut a little piece off a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser and drop it in the toilet.  Let it sit there overnight and in the morning…voila!...no more toilet bowl ring. Except later that night, Captain Hubby comes out of the bathroom wanting to know why there’s a sponge in the toilet. I asked him if he peed on it, but he said no, he fished it out and threw it away, but OMG! what if he had flushed it!!  I told him about my great Pinterest idea and his response was that I should go back to work before I wreck the place.  But I held my ground and told him I refuse to go back to work until the toilets are clean. At the rate I’m going, that’ll be never.  Thank God!!

STEP AWAY FROM THE JUNK FOOD!!!

Sometimes it's hard to work healthy meals into my busy day. I usually eat my lunch at my desk or standing around in the student cafeteria....or not at all.  By 3:00 p.m. I realize that I'm REALLY hungry and am inclined to grab something quick and easy.  That's why I love South Beach Snack Mix, and here it is with my own twist:

Here's how to make it:  Stir together:
3 cups of regular Cheerios
1 cup of grated Parmesan cheese (the real stuff, not the canned)
1 cup of sliced natural almonds
1/2 cup of unsalted peanuts
1 cup of twisty pretzels
Sprinkle seasoned salt to taste
Cayenne pepper to taste

Drizzle 4 Tbsp. of olive oil over the mixture and keep stirring to get it all coated. 

Bake on a large rimmed baking sheet in 350 degree oven for five minutes, stir, bake another five minutes, stir again, and another five minutes should do it.  You have to stir often or it will burn and the cheese will be in clumps.  After baking, stir in 1 cup of soy nuts.

Amounts are approximate.  Be creative!  I use lots of cayenne pepper because I like it spicy.This stuff is WAY better and healthier than Chex Mix!

Things 8th Graders Want to Know About High School

http://voicethread.com/share/2963344/

This is a link to a podcast I created for a class I'm taking.  Proof that you CAN teach an old dog new tricks!

Technosaurus

Yeah, this is how I feel most of the time when trying to integrate technology into what I already know how to do.  When I was an undergraduate student in the early 70's, I took a class in "Audio-Visual Aids."  No, it's not a disease.  It was learning to use the technological tools of a teacher.  We learned how to use the overhead projector, mimeograph machine, opaque projector, film-strips, slide shows (they were actually little pieces of cardboard that fit into about a hundred tiny slots on a carousel that you manually advanced from slide to slide), reel-to-reel tape recorders, and 8 mm film.  Did you know that to edit a movie you needed a razor blade?  My, how things have changed!

And yet, for the first 30 years of my career, it was easy to keep up with the changes in technology. Advancing from mimeograph machines to photocopying was revolutionary, but simple to do.  In 1996, when every classroom in my school got its very own TV and videotape player, there wasn't a single teacher who didn't know how to use them and what to use them for.  A few years later, every teacher got his/her very own computer.  That was pretty easy to handle, making research much faster and enabling everyone to produce assignments, tests, etc. in a snap.

Then all of a sudden, in 2009, every classroom was equipped with SMART tablets, iclickers, ceiling mounted projectors, document cameras, and microphones.  There are more computer applications that teachers can use than any one person can ever know about, much less use.  The minute I learn a new way to use technology, it becomes "the old way" and there's something better to take its place.  Teachers (and not just the old ones like me) are overwhelmed with how fast it's all changing and they feel pressured to keep up.  I hope they don't get discouraged.  I compare technology to what has happened with television.  TV is a fantastic thing to have, but of the hundreds of channels available to me, I really only watch about six of them.  The rest is a vast wasteland of useless crap.  For myself, then, I use the handful of technology applications that are really awesome, keep my eyes and ears open for new stuff, but keep in mind that most of it will not help me do my job better.