Meander Left, Meander Right

Okay, so seriously?  I've got nothin'.

I've said it before--a thousand times--the most intense stuff can be going on inside my head but on the outside?  It's just a woman typing in a kitchen that looks like a bomb blew up in it.  You're not looking at her thinking, "Oooh... there typeth the seeds of greatness!"  You're thinking, "Jesus, heifer!  Get off your ass and CLEAN SOMETHING!"  And, well, I've got deadlines and cleaning something ain't in the cards.  (The teenagers, however, have started ducking me when we're in the house together.  No, no, this mama didn't raise no fools!)

In various news, I attended Art Docent training, and the general gist was to make my portfolio presentations shorter and to skip some of the stuff in the curriculum, and to make the art project as complicated as their little minds/hands/whatever can make it.  At least, that was the input from the trainer--who, as the daughter of the woman who created the program approached the whole thing from, shall we say, a certain slant?

I, on the other hand, was all on the teacher's side:  It has to fit inside the timeline, and it has to leave them feeling as though they've accomplished something and it has to tie in with the portfolio.  Let the modifications begin!  It doesn't matter-- I'm looking forward to setting the date for teaching the next unit, and I'm looking forward to doing fun stuff with little kids.  Huzzah!  Tomorrow, I'm going to catch the first hour of an inservice showing what the different grades actually DO when they do art projects, and that should help too.  This is a different age, a different venue, a different focus from what I'm used to--but it's also a challenge, and I'm enjoying it very much.

Big T told me today he wanted his birthday to be something small-- going out to dinner--and nothing too big.  He's going to be NINETEEN after all, and it's REALLY not that important.  God, I love him.  I may love him more when he has a job, but maybe not--he really has so much that is awesome inside him.

Chicken is stressing out over college applications and college essays--which she should, because that whole "funding the college" thing is still up in the air.  We're rooting for a private college with lots of scholarships.  She's rooting for San Francisco State, and I have to say that although I only attended for one year, I'm sort of hoping for that too.  I want my Chicken to live by the sea.  I can picture her there, happy, and since I'll be deprived of my Chicken here, she'd BETTER be happy someplace else.  This morning she whined good-naturedly about "I don't wanna brush my hair!"  So I brushed it and put it up in a hearty French braid, and I was, once again, her hero.  Little things.  Don't know how I've been a parent this long without realizing it's really the little things!


Speaking of Little Things, this is Sam Day!  On Thursdays, the kids get out early, so I let them walk to their friend Sam's house.  One of the benefits to knowing Sam is knowing his mother, whom I would cheerfully classify as one of the top five nicest people on pretty much any planet sporting human life.  I'm not joking about this.  She's sweet, she's kind, she believes in a messy house and happy children, and for some reason, she likes me.  I pretty much melt when I see her--she's a big hugger, and I love to hug back.  Seriously.  Very often I tend to gravitate to people with sharp and ironic senses of humor--but I'm finding now that sometimes that irony can be corrosive when taken in large quantities.  My last peer group was (and our vocation tended to make us all like this) almost unconditionally bitter and critical.  In this past year I've discovered a real love for kindness and faithful goodwill.  I think I'll still keep my own sense of irony--but I like to think that it's a better tool when tempered with gentleness, and hanging out with Sam's mom is the way to go here.  That, and she has a really delightful sense of humor and she likes to laugh.  So, there you go.  For us, Thursday is Sam Day--and honestly, I think my kids get as much out of Sam Day as they get out of soccer, and that's pretty cool.