Three Things Thursday

1.  I haven’t written anything in almost a year, but I after a marathon last fall and a baby this summer I am back!

2.  My Garmin arrived in the mail yesterday and I CANNOT wait to start running and using it — hell maybe I will actually keep better track of miles.  Since starting running at age 22, I have NOT done a good job.  I can’t even tell you my PRs at this point for my races in exact time.  Now is the time to be accountable.

3.  Rumor on the street from Duffer is when his grandparents come to visit he will poop on the potty.  They arrive today.  Odds?

3:37 a.m.

Once upon a time it was 1:29 a.m. and my little duffer had woke me up with his snarfuls and inability to sleep.  Fast forward two hours and you have now.  I worked hard to try and fall back to sleep, but I kept worrying that the duffer would wake back up again and I’d be dancing to my Grammy Award winning made up songs.  Now, I am just waiting for the idea of sleep to creep back into my brain.  But, while awake, I might a well write since I don’t tend to have a lot of time to do that usually.

The other day before presenting to the school board about communication I sat around the table with some educators having a meal and nervously waiting for our time to present.  The woman next to me with a young son like me was talking about her holiday plans.  Side note, I’ve now realized that from December 1st to December 24th the only conversation people want to have (especially when you have a small child) is what are you doing for holidays?  I am guessing from December 26th until mid-January the conversation focuses on what you actually did.  This woman did get into all the details, but implied from her tone and whatnot that she had a doozy of Thanksgiving with her in-laws in Massachusetts.

My immediate (and to all those who know me) obvious response was have you seen Home for the Holidays? No.  She had not.  So, of course, I recommended it.  I am thinking she will appreciate it.  I mean how can you not appreciate Holly Hunter, as the pathetic protagonist, who has lost her job and is heading home to thanksgiving sans her daughter (played by Claire Danes — pre-My So Called Life) who she finds out is planning to have sex with her boyfriend after she has lost her nice winter jacket and is forced to wear this horrendous jacket her mother just happens to have in the car.  Oh, and I forgot her trying to kiss her not at all attractive boss after he fires her.  Charles Durning as her dad.  Anne Bancroft as her mom.  Robert Downey Jr. as her gay brother who just lives to make life horrible for her perfect sister and husband (the woman I know from other stuff — she is a total character actor and Steve Guttenberg as the husband).  Throw in Dylan McDermott as Robert Downey Jr.’s friend and you’ve got a complete holiday filled with well, holiday goodness.  A must see at any holiday time (Easter, Valentine’s Day — who cares — it’s hilarious!).

In that same vein, what are other good non-syrupy holiday movies?  Forget Miracle on 34th Street or It’s a Wonderful Life – what are the real holiday movies that make you laugh, etc.?

Over Thanksgiving, we saw Four Christmases — Vince Vaughn & Reese Witherspoon — not bad — some good laughs and one-liners.

A Christmas Story — always a good one.  I believe my husband even showed it to a math class once for what reason I can’t tell you, but it is quoted regularly in our house.

I know there are more, but strangely at 3:54 a.m. I beginning to get tired.  So to throw it out to the void — What is your favorite holiday movie and more importantly WHY?

Response to Poem

At a conference today, I did a quick write to this Billy Collins’ poem.

Yesterday at our friend’s house you became a boy.  In the crisp, brown leaves you left behind the baby and leapt forward with only a leaf in hand.

Balancing you look straight through me as if not making eye contact will make that moment last longer.  Your tiny hand in mine you take off running–as if walking is not an option–toward the rock I think is too hard, too sharp, too tall and you climb over the roughness to the top watching the world around you.  Yelling and giggling at pine tree dancing above your head, you are transitioning like the trees around us to the next season.

Total first draft (please excuse any grammar, usage, mechanics issues), but it made me realize that my little duffer is growing up.

Bittersweet.

Past Lives

It’s funny how music makes us think about our past lives.  Just this week, my mom posted a video of Mel Carter singing “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me” on her Facebook page.  Now, I was nowhere even a thought of being alive when this song was popular, but it held a great deal of importance for my mom and her sister.  So much so, that some time in my middle school years, much to my sister and I’s chagrin they actually belted it out at full blast in the car.  How do I remember — the music.  Music transcends time and brings you back to a time when you were a different version of you.  I’m pretty sure it was in our brown Suburu (I’m talking crap color not that nice champagne color people try to pass off nowadays).  I’m pretty sure thankfully I was out of my feathered hair/mullet phase that possessed me during my early middle school years (sorry K for the bad hair advice).  Sidebar: Looking back on that haircut, my sister and I may have been attempting to join the band Winger or take David Spade’s job in Joe Dirt — you choose.  It was after the deer incident, but before B went to Greece.  I know if I listen to that song again I can find all the details I have forgotten and bring it back like it was yesterday.  That my friends is the beauty of music.  Two days ago, I felt I needed to have the song “American Pie” on my I-Pod.  I couldn’t explain why for the moment, but then I remembered back to freshman year in college and a group of friends getting ready for Saturday nights on the town and how perfectly the song worked out that you could sing-a-long and shower in the time allotted.  I think since I reconnected with some of those friends that song and memory came back.  I can see dorm rooms, Tang, the climb to the fourth floor, and belting that song out at the top of our lungs.  Of course, somehow all my friends were part of the chorus at school and well, I’m pretty sure I had flunked out of that a long time ago.  Thank goodness they carried my off-tune self.  Of course, the funny thing about memories — you can relive them in your mind, but when you try and attempt a shower in the 8:37 that American Pie is with an 11-month-old baby you get as far as “Now for ten years we’ve been on our own…”  Not even halfway through the song.  Ah, to be young again.  Well, here’s to new songs and new memories AND my topic for this year’s NaNoWriMo Project.  I will use songs to write about memories and stories from life.  50,000 words — who knows how many songs or memories, but I’m ready.  Are you?

NaNoWriMo

Again, it creeps up on us — the month of November.  Lots of great events happen in this month including my sister’s birthday, a childhood friend’s birthday, and my son’s birthday.  All that aside, it is also National Novel Writing Month.  So, in the insanity that is my life I am actually thinking about doing it.  Not because I think I will actually finish a novel (50,000 words) in 30 days but because it will get me back writing.  I miss writing.  This year, however, I am not going to write fiction.  Instead, I think I will work on some non-fiction.  Doesn’t matter what you write — as long as you are writing!  So, are you up to the challenge?

Writing…A Dream I Have…

Yesterday my friend came down to visit with the babeep and me.  We are writing friends.  Well, technically, we knew each other beforehand because her husband works with me, but we became friends during last summer when we participated in the Summer Institute of the National Writing Project in Vermont (NWP-VT).  She is pregnant with her first child.  It was lovely to talk with another adult about life with baby and hear about all the things she has been up to in her pre-baby world.  Another friend of ours from NWP is planning a writing group for some time in the next month or so.  I immediately became excited.  To meet with other adults and talk about writing, a dream.  My husband spent this past Sunday at the movies watching Gran Torino with a guy friend and having a pre-show beer compliments of his wife (Duffer and I meanwhile attempted to convince the evil Toys R Us folks to take back their sucky humidifier).  Could a writing group mean participating in an aspect of my life pre-baby?  Well, technically yes and technically no.  I, of course, would bring the little duffer to the meeting (but, as we know he loves social situations so he would thrive and it would allow my friend’s dog to get used to hearing, smelling, and being around a baby), but the glitch comes with the whole writing part.  I don’t have any.  I keep meaning to write a rendition of my child’s birth because I figure every birthday starting in 2009 I will tell him it, but that requires being able to use two hands.  I have that novel I started in November (I ended up with 5,000 words out of the 50,000 I was supposed to write), but let’s be real I think it was bad.  I had key points I liked in it, but it seemed to go on.  I have a million ideas that I think about on drives into town while listening to this killer 80s mix my sister made me (how my friend and I made fake student ids to see Henry Rollins and why it didn’t work, etc.), but again need two hands to type.  I am thinking that maybe this Sunday while my husband and the baby are enthralled with The Sports Reporters maybe I can steal a half hour to write something (hell, one of the girls is bringing a novel she is working on — I can’t compete with that — maybe I can write a short poem).  Again, a half hour to myself seems reasonable right.  Well, a girl can dream.

Why I Teach…

I wrote this post a couple weeks ago, but somehow with my little munchkin I forgot to publish it.

I’ve been in the teaching biz for ten years.  Most of that time has been spent working with students who have challenges of a variety of sorts so the rewards are usually few and far between.  A regular teacher has an a-ha moment about every two weeks, my kind of teacher has one every six weeks or so (if that).  One of my a-ha memories involves receiving a picture of Che Guevara from a student while he was “away” for a bit (we had done a unit on revolutionaries in class) as well as a note mentioning how he remembered our unit.  The next memory involves seeing the same student while I was chaperoning prom years later with a really nice girl all grown up and doing well.  Last year, I made the transition to working in a more mainstream set up.  I taught classes where students did homework, volunteered to participate in class, and liked going to school.  It really was an alternate reality to what I had been involved in up until that point (I still miss the other type of teaching, but I am doing new things now).  I had two classes where I taught writing to juniors and seniors.  We worked on a variety of essay including the dreaded college essay.  Students were asked to create an essay that they could submit to the college of their choice and hopefully get in.  A week ago, I received a note from one of my former students saying that she was accepted into her first choice college using the essay we worked on in class.  This student is not the only student who was accepted into their first choice using essays they wrote in class and we had writing conferences on.  However, this student actually received a handwritten note on her acceptance letter saying how much they enjoyed reading her essay.  I’ve been home on maternity leave for the last month so I haven’t really been focused on my job, but this note reminded me that in addition to helping my little duffer at home I am also helping other duffers when I am at school.  Again, why I teach.

Like Mother…Like Son?

Well, the infamous due date has come and gone and the baby is still on the inside.  I guess in some ways I shouldn’t really be surprised.  I think the only time I have been on time for something in my entire life is my birth (I was a week early).  Since that time, I am usually a couple minutes late at minimum.  My husband says it has something to do with my Myers Briggs Personality Type (Myers & Briggs Foundation).  Probably more importantly the P part of my type (ENFP) which is Perceiving.  Perceiving means you stay open to new ideas, but my husband says it is usually people who are so open to things they don’t always follow through or show up when they say they will because they have a better offer.  However, for my baby, what could be a better offer than hanging out with my husband and me?  So now, we are in the wait game at least until next week to see if he will make an appearance on his own or if our doctor will have to pull the trigger.  Until that time, I am set to continue working on my novel, which didn’t go anywhere yesterday because I was at school and it is hard to sit at a computer in a room full of people and try to think stuff up.  I am behind in my word count already (at around 3500ish) right now.  I hope to be at 6000 by the end of the day.  I also think it is hard to write a novel without any planning in place.  I went into this experience with a really loose idea and four characters.  From that, I am attempting to build a plot.  I think I know in the end the amount of material I have will probably be turned into a really short novella or short story, but I think getting all the writing out will be helpful.  I also have my writer’s group this Saturday (again, if I don’t have a baby), so I need to write something else for that.  I am not in a space to bring the novel anywhere just yet.  And while doing it and planning to be at this writer’s group, hope it throws my son off completely so he will want to be born before it all goes down.  Who knows?  Otherwise, I’ll be driving down a lot of bumpy roads this weekend and trying all the other old wives’ tales before it is all through.  Please send good vibes.  We’d like to get this guy out on the outside before the second snow of the season!

Writing Prompt of the Day

I am borrowing the inspiring line today from a conversation had yesterday by someone else, but I think it can lead you to develop some interesting plots if you spin it the right way.

You need to have at least two characters to make this prompt work.  One character will set limits about something the other character cannot do (drink coffee, wear leather, pick his/her nose) and the other character’s response will be “Not even on a Tuesday night at my house.”  

Be creative.  Be imaginative.  Try this line on for size with a couple different characters and scenarios.  See what you can come up with.  You might just find a plot for NaNoWriMo or something else you are working on!

Snow Falling in October

After waking up this morning, albeit at 11:00, I noticed this white fluffy stuff drizzling outside my window where my vibrant leaves has just been.  Stretching my eyes for a better view, I realized that it really is snowing in Vermont.  Although, it is pretty lame — just a trickle of light flakes almost like dandruff that won’t collect on that black sweater you are wearing.  However, it is official — I have to find other shoes to wear to my doctor’s appointment today instead of flip flops.  I think I should be in good shape as I have actually been able to see my ankle bones the last couple days!  Winter is a funny transition here in Vermont.  Officially, it doesn’t start for a while, but we gear up for snow as early as October and expected it as late as May or June.  This year I am having a hard time imagining snow because I am in a different place than usual.  I won’t be able to grab my board and head to the mountain any time soon with a baby.  I am thinking I might get an opportunity to strut my stuff during February if at all.  Snow represents being stuck inside all the time with a newborn because walking on snowy, dirt roads isn’t easy and many of the bike paths aren’t plowed.  What if I become a mall walker, destined to cruise up and down past the Auntie Ann’s Pretzel Stand and Victoria Secret’s?  Could my life come to that?  Hopefully, I’ll be a little more upbeat and find creative ways to get out to things like Story Hour at the local library.  And, of course, starting on November 1st I’ll be writing a novel.  Do I have a plot yet?  No.  Characters?  No.  A theme?  No.  However, I am ready to start.  Today’s writing activity comes from Natalie Goldberg’s book about writing a memoir entitled Old Friend from Far Away.

Writing Exercise:  Write about coffee.  Think about times when you have drank coffee.  Experiences.  Tastes.  Who drinks what type of coffee.  All you need to know is your topic is coffee.  If you spin in a different direction, maybe that is a signal from the writing gods and goddesses — however, start with coffee.

Can you tell I am missing my usual triple venti nonfat one pump vanilla latte?