Fiddling Around

It came!  This weekend I got a VERY inexpensive/cheap violin on e-bay.  It came today!  I was psyched.  I have been taking violin with my class on Thursdays and wanting to get an instrument of my own, but they are expensive.  Even the used ones that I found on-line from local stores were over a hundred bucks!  This was less than half that, for a new one. Trying to tune it and get it to stay tuned has not been fun.  I do not sound as good on it as I do at school.  It will all come together, though!

Ginny and Harry continue to hiss and growl at each other at regular intervals.  Then again, chasing each other does add a bit of excitement to their day.

My dear student C, who came at the beginning of the year, moved to Phoenix, and came back?  This afternoon he told me that it’s his last day (again).  He’s moving.  That will briefly bring me back down to 22.  We have conferences on Wednesday, but not for everybody.  We pick who we want to talk to, the parents of students not making progress or students you have concerns about.  C was on that list.

Then there’s dear K, who has surpassed 20 absences.  He ordered a couple things from book orders — some sort of volcano science kit and a bridge building kit.  So he and two other students chose to stay in at recess to work on them.  I loved it.  K is definitely lacking in academics, and is frequent absences don’t help.  But he does have a curious mind about some things (as in things that don’t involve math).

We have been in competition all month with the other fourth grade classes.  The first class to have 80% of the students pass the weekly (Friday) multiplication test gets an Eegee’s party.  One thing we’ve done is flash cards.  Sound dull, you think?  Nope!  They ASK if we can do them!!!  Oh, did I mention that whoever is left standing when I’ve been through the entire deck (both sides) gets to go “shopping” in the prize box?  I’m so bad.  Today I did division cards instead of multiplication and actually had five or six kids still standing at the end!

Tomorrow morning I’m having breakfast with the folks at IHOP, and then Dottie and I are going shopping.  She likes the skirts at Old Pueblo, and their new store should be open.  Of course, we’ll no doubt find other places to go as well!

Today must be “drive like you don’t want to survive” day.  On the way to work, someone was trying to get in my lane while I was in it!  Apparently I was in her blind spot at some point, like when she decided she wanted to change lanes.  That was nice and scary.  Then going home this vehicle from one of the cable companies got tired of being behind me, as if it was my fault that the traffic through the university area was its usual stop and go (with more stop than go).  So he pulled around me suddenly and impatiently … and immediately discovered that the left lane was just as bad!  Good thing he had good breaks!

Monday

I got to school today and said hello as usual to one of the teachers.  Later I saw someone who hadn’t been at the school in a while.  I never put the two together until someone else who had all the information put it together for me:  the second one was replacing the first.  The first had been a sub like me, and had become “official” like me.  Her class was awful though.  I changed when I took my own class to the restroom so I wouldn’t have to watch hers while she was using the adult restroom.  They were rude, disrespectful, and otherwise just totally ignored whatever you said.  Fifth grade.  Someone said they were the worst class in the school, which is definitely saying something when you consider the size of the school!  I have no idea how long this was in the works, just that one is gone now and replaced.  I guess both were in the class today to transition.

More students are passing the weekly multiplication test, but not enough.  We are still in third place out of six.  We need to be in first and pass the goal in order to get the Eegee’s party.  In the meantime, my darling K still doesn’t think he needs to learn multiplication.  He is making no effort at all, beyond what’s forced upon him.  How … delightful.  One of the MANY things we do is have a multiplication bee.  There are problems on both sides of the cards, so once I get to the end, I turn the stack over.  Whoever is left standing at the end gets something from the prize box.  At first it was just one person, then two.  Today it was four or five.  The cards include the twelve times tables, which knocks some of them out who would normally last if it only went up to the tens.

Did I tell you I went on e-bay yesterday?  I have been wanting a violin ever since we started violin lessons at school, but even used ones are over a hundred bucks.  But I found a shop on e-bay that sells incredibly inexpensive ones (probably one at a time) and so I was the winning (and probably only) bid.  I ran into our music teacher today and told her about it.  I had been talking to her about it off and on all year.  So she let me copy some of the music we’re using in class.  I really am excited about this!  We don’t get to do much with the violin because we only have lessons once a week.  But I do love it, and can’t wait!

Posts

I have been posting, it’s just that I’ve set them to private.  The second post I made yesterday, and it talks about my mother being in the hospital, etc.  But then it goes on to explain what I’d do if I knew I had a limited time left, and that might seem a bit … morbid.  So I set the post to private.

The student who I lost on Valentine’s Day (well, actually nearly a week earlier, but it was only official on Valentine’s Day) is now definitely back in Mexico.  I have no clue what her own citizenship status was, but judging by where she is now, I think I can guess what her mother’s status was.  The thing is, unless you saw the student’s name in writing, you would have no clue.  She spoke perfect English without an accent.  I didn’t even know she was bilingual at first.  (Yes, I have students of Hispanic ethnicity who don’t speak a word of Spanish.  I probably know more Italian than some of my students know Spanish!)  Our principal talked about this one day — how it is for the kids who were born here and have spent their whole lives here, going to Mexico suddenly.  If they went back to their parents’ original home, it’s generally a place with some factors bad enough to make them risk so much to leave.  So my bright, cheerful girl is now going to a school that may or may not have books and running water — if she’s lucky enough to be going to school.   I can’t fix the world.  I can only hope I planted seeds.

My two cats have their own facebook pages!  That’s so … um … not normal!  But fun!

mother

Um, yeah, it’s been a little while since I wrote. Some little things happen: I got Harry his own brush, Harry & Ginny have their own Kitty Facebook pages, I didn’t go to the rodeo parade today, Dottie makes awesome spare ribs and I had some for supper tonight … etc.

Then there’s other stuff. Last Saturday night, my mother telephoned my sister because she had trouble breathing. My sister went over and then called 911. She was taken to the hospital, where she was admitted seven hours later. She has COPD http://tinyurl.com/2fnrrt as well as some pneumonia. I talked to her on the phone yesterday and got a different version from what the doctor told her when my sister was in the room. The latest is that they will do surgery on her in the future, after she does certain things first which includes strengthening her lungs. She told me that her own doctor had mentioned this surgery or need for surgery three years ago but refused to do it because she smokes. I asked her if this doctor mentioned smoking and her answer was that lots of doctors smoke. To borrow an analogy a friend used many years ago, if she’s not on death’s front porch she’s certainly on the sidewalk. I imagine that the second she’s out of the hospital, she’ll go back to smoking, since she always has before.

The nice thing about the surgery not being right away is that she’d have an opportunity to prepare for the strong possibility that she won’t survive surgery, by doing … whatever. Getting things and relationships in order, I guess. But that’s just my own value.

What would I do? Sell everything, first of all. If I survive, I can get new stuff, but not as much, since if she survives she still only has like 1-3 years if I understood correctly. I’d get rid of everything and find a home for my cats, and spend as much time with my AZ friends and relatives as I could while doing it. Then I’d use the money for plane tickets. I’d want a last trip to Syracuse, to see Meghan and a few of the “nunlies.” Not many of them, but some. And there were some good points and some friends. I’d go to Cape Cod and visit my relatives there and go on hikes through the salt marsh and walk on the beach one last time. And eat lobster. Then I’d go to Wisconsin. I’d see the Jefferson group again, go down to see Mary, and then go to Mt. Horeb. I’d stay in Mt. Horeb until it was time to fly back for the surgery. OK, I’d need A LOT of advance notice then, because otherwise it would probably take the whole five weeks to get rid of my stuff!

Then again, other times I’ve wondered: if I knew it was nearly the end, would I tell anyone? It’s not anything that’s actually come up so far, which is nice. Who knows.

It is hard to explain to people who haven’t met my mother what she’s like or what my reactions to these recent events are. MANY people seem to think, in spite of all the things they see on TV and read about in the paper, that all mothers are like theirs.

lazy? and Jim B.

I am doing this walking thing. I’ve mentioned it before. On Saturday, while I was out getting the phone, I got a battery for my pedometer because it was the only one (I have three, I think) I could find.

I decided to do no unusual walking, just to see what my usual days are like, and then decide how to step that up (no pun intended, much). Well: Saturday I walked 371 steps. Well, that didn’t seem very awful considering that it was the afternoon before I got the battery into the thing. I cleared it after writing the number on the calendar and started afresh on Sunday. 554 steps. Good? Bad? Medium? Couldn’t really tell.

Today I went to work. Today was a fairly normal day, with the addition of having library. I walked 2332 steps so far today (1.85 miles). Um, so it seems to me that I’m lucky I didn’t sprout any cobwebs over the weekend!! But at least now I know!

Sometimes I think of my stepfather. He wasn’t really a stepfather, but more like my mother’s second husband.

When I first met him, it was Mother’s Day. I had gone to visit my mother, and he lived in the same apartment complex. He came over, and then we went over to his house where his son Richard was. I think Richard was like 17. They had a big dog, and the dog had gone to the bathroom on the floor because no one had let it out. Jim got out a shotgun and was going to shoot the dog because he was so furious. Eventually my mother and Richard calmed him down enough to put the gun down, and he got into the car and stormed off. My mother decided to go after him and asked me to go with her. She was afraid that he’d hit a telephone pole or something. This was my first meeting with him, and yet it didn’t seem like his hitting the pole would be a great loss to humanity.

Nevertheless, they went to Las Vegas and got married. If I was going to go out someplace with my mother, we had to stop at the store he managed first to prove that she was with me. If she bought herself something with her own money that she earned at her job, she’d pretend that I bought it for her. His store was on the South Side somewhere, and it was filthy. He blamed it on the clientele. But geez, if you don’t mop the floors regularly, whose fault is that???

I think I saw them two Christmases. I went out of my way to buy him something that he might like. My mother insisted that we must celebrate the holiday at her house. There was no celebration. We sat on the couch. There was no meal. Jim rejected the gifts and made it clear that he wasn’t interested in gifts from her kids. We meant nothing to him, and our gifts were both wrong and meaningless.

The thing is, though, to me it was instantly clear that this was the measure of this man. He could have said quite kindly “you know, you don’t really need to bring me a gift. We don’t have that kind of relationship that needs to include gift giving, but I appreciate the gesture and that you made an effort.” Instead, he was a total prick about it and I knew that his problem had nothing to do with me. It was all about him and what was lacking inside him. Perhaps his parents never taught him any manners, and taught him that only his feelings and thoughts mattered and it was OK to treat other people like dirt.

But I really don’t understand. I have received lots of gifts over the years. Some are made by students and are not easily identifiable. Others were gifts from parents who were grateful I didn’t push their child out a window or say what I thought. Most people buy me clothes the wrong size, because once I was skinny. I hold onto them in the hopes that someday I will be again (before they go out of style). Sometimes I’ve gotten things that are TOTALLY not me. But to me it seems the simplest thing in the world to simply say “thank you” and appreciate that the person tried, without trying to make them feel bad or punish them. As someone else says, it takes all sorts of cars to fill up the freeway of life.

Blog of the Week

http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/yoursay/chriss_china_diary.shtml#1

OK, it was hard.  I will show you why.  I like this blog entry:   http://blog.geek2geek.info/2008/01/29/i-didnt-say-you-stole-my-money/ from another blog but it didn’t grab me enough to read the rest of the blog.  I may later, in which case it might become a future Blog of the Week.  This one interests me as it is written by the mother of conjoined twins http://www.emmaandtaylorbailey.blogspot.com/ and talks about some of their experiences to day.   The reason I didn’t choose the following one is that the author is currently undergoing treatment for breast cancer and I know that’s not what some of my readers need to read about right now.  That was a recent development.  I read it because it’s about an older single woman who adopted a child from Vietnam and their experiences. http://justenjoyhim.wordpress.com/

And so instead I chose the journey and experiences of a British man living in China.  You need to start at the bottom of the page if you’re interested in reading it.  I know a very vocal group that hates blogs, but I think there’s an incredible world of people out there.

People

Written Sunday morning but to be posted Monday after school:

There are some people who I just like doing business with. They make things … not a chore. I know, that’s bad English. Two of them are the couple at Olson’s Flowers. Now normally when I send flowers, I just order them on-line. But when I wanted to order something for Lisa I needed something more. It was her birthday, but also the funeral of one of her most treasured friends and relatives. So I called directly the florist who would be making the delivery, and we (I’m guessing Mrs. Olson) chatted about what sort of thing I wanted rather than my just picking something from a picture that wouldn’t necessarily look like the picture anyway. Yesterday I spoke to Mr. Olson and we had a long chat as well. There was something specific I wanted, which he didn’t exactly have, so we went over some ideas on how I could accomplish more or less what I wanted. He also talked about his annual trip to my neck of the woods, which will be a wonderful change from his ninety inches of snow. 90. Yep, that’s the number. I don’t think all five years I was there we managed to get that much. That’s more Syracuse weather! But anyway, I digress. The point is that as much as I like doing business on the internet, there are some people who I enjoy working with directly instead.

The second, believe it or not, is the local Verizon Wireless store. I went there when I was ready to move my phone number from a Wisconsin number to a local one. I had to go there a couple of months ago because my phone charger stopped working and I needed a new one. I went again yesterday, because every two years they let you get another phone free (depending on the model) or at a reduced price. I went on-line first and wasn’t impressed with the choices for free ones. So I picked out the one I thought I’d like the most and then went to the store in person. The store has a greeter, and he types in your name and the general nature of your needs in a computer, so that the clerks can help the next person as they finish (since each customer contact takes a long time).

The lady I worked with was wonderful. I never feel any pressure there, nor do they try to make you feel stupid as some places do (we’re experts, you’re here because we’re smarter than you, etc.). So I got my upgraded phone (a pink razor or however they spell it). Part of doing it there in person was that I was able to move my phone numbers over to the new phone rather than re-entering them!  The nicest thing Wendy did, though, was take a box cutter and open all the plastic packages that came with this and that component.  Ever try to open any of those????

A friend of mine from the chess web site decided to join Facebook, because another friend also suggested it to her. I wouldn’t have known him because I didn’t recognize either his name or his pictures. But I looked on his buddy list, and between his friends and then their friends, a large number of the more infamous from the chess site are on Facebook! It helps that some of them used the same picture for both sites.

Yesterday Gary, Joyce, and Ben came down and had lunch with Dad, Dottie, and I across the street from the Convention Center (they came for the gem show). Of course I would recognize Gary anywhere, and I was as comfortable with him as if he’d been down here last weekend as well, although Donna’s wedding in 1995 was probably the last time I saw him! As for Joyce, I vividly remember when she came out to New Jersey when she was ten, but I’m not positive that I’ve seen her since. But it was nice getting to know her and Ben, and nice to know we have some things in common. OH — for the Jefferson and Liverpool readers, Gary and Joyce are my cousins. There were five children in my father’s family who survived early childhood: Uncle Ange, Aunt Lee, my father, Uncle Mil, and Aunt Florence. Gary is Uncle Mil’s oldest child and Joyce is Uncle Ange’s youngest child. My own family spent part of our childhood growing up with Aunt Lee’s children, and we didn’t see much of the other cousins. That’s why I’m fascinated when I discover that we have traits in common. Some of them are unavoidable — if you’re raised by a Calderone (or by Uncle Bob, who would make a great Calderone), you probably have a Calderone sense of humor. But there are talents and interests that I know aren’t from “nurture” because they weren’t nurtured in my family at least, but they still exist. Anyway, that’s a nice thing about being back here again: getting to see more relatives and be in touch, at least with people who don’t think that being an elementary school teacher is somehow less than other possible jobs.

I got an e-mail this morning: my mother is in the hospital with pneumonia. She called my sister very early this morning, and Donna wisely called 911. It took them SEVEN hours to admit her to the hospital, though!! Donna had briefly considered coming here yesterday, but wasn’t planning to spend the night as she usually does when she comes down. Still, it’s a good thing she didn’t! If she had driven both ways in one day plus done the family thing, I can’t imagine she’d have heard the phone and answered it that early in the morning.

Later I will post pictures and the Blog of the Week.

3, not 2

It rained most of the night, so this morning I went “the long way” to work.  I got there and immediately had to let little angels into the classroom.  So delete that 20 minutes or so to get ready for the day.  Then the day starts, and I pass out the math test, and three students are taken for Azella testing, which is testing to check their English fluency.  Then … the power goes out.  It was out for a couple of hours.  So they finished the math test in the dark, and we just sort of went on with our day.  I trotted everyone over to the bathroom, and went into the teacher one.  The one with no windows.  During the power failure.  It’s remarkable just how dark a bathroom can get!  Another teacher said he used his cell phone as a light while he was in there!  Why didn’t I think of that?  The school compound was such a lake that the cafeteria staff delivered lunches to the classrooms!  So we only left our room for two trips to the bathroom.  At the end of the day I “did them a favor” and let them do their 20 minutes of reading in the classroom instead of for homework.  Then they wrote what they’re supposed to write and I signed it.  That gave them no homework over the weekend and gave me 20 minutes of silence.

Now, about the title.  I spent all day with children on a rainy day and couldn’t even leave the classroom.  There was no “next door” to go to for a moment of sanity.  And so I believe the story of Noah’s Ark is bogus.  There were really three of each animal, not two.  It’s just that after being cooped up, animals started ganging up on each other and tossing some of their buddies overboard due to cabin fever.  Trust me.

Now earlier in the week, we had lovely weather in the (very low) 70s.  Today is cold — cold enough that it snowed on the mountains.  Not just a little bit — the mountains in the east that I headed toward on my way home had snow pretty far down to the bottom, to town.  There is talk that we may get snow here tonight!  If we do, I’ll try to take pictures.

It’s that biting cold, dreary stuff that the rest of you have been seeing over and over and over, I know.  I had to go to the store on my way home from work, and when I got out of the store all I could think about was going home and hibernating.  First it made me think of being at Frank’s County Market (and expecting to see the farm across the street) because of all the winter nights I wanted to hibernate, and then I thought of the nights I couldn’t because I had CCD.  So as I was pulling out of the parking lot with those things on my mind, I saw a woman turning in and I thought “Ah, that’s Helen Arndt.” Um, no.  Not unless she moved down here!

23, 22, 23

We do our attendance twice a day on a computer.  You have to go into the school web site, find the link, scroll down to your school, click on My Class, click on the AM attendance link, and then take attendance.  I try to get most of that set up before I go to pick up the little angels from the playground.  Well, this morning I noticed that I only had 22 students.  I had 23 yesterday, but I’ve had two who have been gone all week.  So I looked, and sure enough, one was off the list.  She had arrived in October I think.  So I went to the office, and they confirmed that she moved.

We did our morning stuff, went to OMA (music) at 8:45, had a great time playing the violin, and went back to class — where I met my new student and his parents!  I had already cleaned out A.’s desk, so I gave that one to him, putting him in a group with two other boys.  They boys were happy to see him.  He is bilingual:  Chinese & English, and has the same name as a boy I had earlier in the year.

I did my valentines for my students last night.  When I packed them for school this morning, I almost only brought the ones I filled in.  Instead, I brought the whole packet including the unused ones, so I had a valentine for the new student.  I had some extras, and a couple students expressed interest in giving him one so I gave them what I had left.  Seems like Valentine’s Day would be a rough day to be the new kid!

When he first arrived, I had the others introduce themselves and tell about their pets and siblings.  Later I found my blog on the school internet and showed them the pictures of Harry and Ginny.  They liked that!

Did you notice your town was empty today from 3:15-4:30?  I know this because all the people who normally live in your town were on my streets driving today!  It wasn’t just a parking lot in the University area; oh no!  The entire trip from my school parking lot to my father’s house was basically bumper to bumper except for a couple of blocks on Ft. Lowell.  Even the only fun part of the trip was bad because there was a 3-car accident.  Please let all those people come home now!

Dottie made awesome chicken cutlets for supper!  They (she and Dad) had been out at the mall and found this teapot that has two kitties on one side and cat paw prints on the other!  I’ll have to get a picture of it!

Compare & Contrast

Remember these lovely photos of Sue’s house from the summer?

Well, these are from around February 6th: