tagged…

…by Danae Sinclair
What were you doing ten years ago?
I was teaching English full-time at a high school I loved; however, ten years, my department chair was awful, and that made all the difference in the world. I remember running through my house screaming when I got the phone call that she was moving up (and out) to the central office. I loved teaching again after she left. I was also raising a two-year old (Lima Bean) and a 13 year old (Mensa Child). I used to drive Mensa Child to his middle school every day since we shared a campus. The car time together was awesome; we had lots of great talks and lots of great silences together.

Five things to do today
Since it’s now 11:25pm when I’m finally getting to this, I’ll do my list for tomorrow, which is Saturday, and therefore more fun anyway!!

First, I have to take my 5 prednisone pills for the horrible poison sumac on my face. I went to the doctor’s today because I looked like I had leprosy when I woke up. And I went to the real doctor’s office, not even the Target Clinic, so you know it was serious. But I digress.

The second thing on my list is to visit a decorator’s store from the local Decorator Show House I went to last month. It’s probably small because it’s on Main Street in this old, quaint town, so I expect to walk through some other stores for an Artist’s Date, so to speak. I’m going to this particular store because they had a rocker with a rush seat and back on the front porch of the show house and I fell in love with it. But it was $200, so I didn’t buy it, and now I’m kicking myself for not buying it because I keep sitting in other rockers and they’re not that comfortable. I’m sure some SMART woman bought the rocker at the Decorator Show House, but I’m going anyway to find out and see if she can get me another one.

The third thing I’m going to do tomorrow is sit by the pool and sunbathe.

The fourth thing I’m going to do is take Lima Bean back to this cool Zen garden we visited tonight. We’re going back because I forgot to take my camera and there were so many cool pictures. We also picked blackberries in the woods nearby. That is a separate blog entry, though, which leads me to…

the fifth thing I will do tomorrow: post a blog entry, maybe even with some photos of the zen garden.

Four places you have lived
I’ve lived my whole life in the same state and most of it in the same county. I switched counties to buy the house we life in now because the school system was the best here. So this could be a boring entry compared to real jet-setters who’ve traveled the country.
My current house will hopefully be my last. It’s a two story colonial on three acres across from a state park; our horses are in the back yard. It is very private and bucolic.

Before this I lived in a townhouse neighborhood, which I thought would be good for Mensa Child to meet friends and run around and play. The world is not like that anymore. There was only boy who was home regularly, and he had negligent parents who weren’t raising him right so Mensa Child couldn’t play with him anyway. All the other neighborhood kids were in scheduled activities during the school year and summer camps all summer long, so there were never any kids to play with after all. That’s why, when we went shopping for the next house, privacy was our priority.

I lived in three apartments before that, one dorm at college, and two houses growing up with my parents and brother.
Overall, as I said, I’m not that exciting in the real estate category. :-)

Five things you would purchase if you were a billionaire
1. The boarding stable and land behind our house so it could never be developed in my life time.
2. A built-in pool with elaborate landscaping and pool house with kitchen.
3. A yearly vacation at an all-inclusive resort in Jamaica for the whole family.
4. College scholarships for deserving children of public school teachers in our area.
5. Louboutin shoes

Six people I want to know more about
1. Georgia O’Keefe
2. Oprah Winfrey (I’d like to shadow her for one month and see how she accomplishes so much while still developing personally)
3. Anyone on TED talks
4-6. My husband and two children

Now I’ll tag…. rusvw, peaches, missmeliss and anyone else who wants to play.

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WOW: where you write

Here’s this week’s prompt from Write On Wednesday: Last week we talked about why we come to the page, now I want to know where you come to the page. What’s magical about your writing spot (or spots!) Free write about the places you put pen to paper. Post pictures if you can - that would be even more fun!

My current writing space is usually the loft attached to my bedroom and overlooking the family room. I usually have to put my earbuds in and listen to music though, because Jagman will be watching tv in the room below and it is distracting. My loft is a rich, deep royal blue with white built-in bookshelves filled to the max. I also put up dry erase boards that currently contain character notes for my second novel. I’m still searching for the artwork to hang on the wall opposite my desk, the one I stare at all the time. I did finally enlarge six of my photos and hang them on the wall of the cathedral ceiling so I can see them from my desk.

I do have a couple “rooms of my own” to write in and have decorated them with gorgeous colors, woodwork and art that I like, but I still do my morning pages mostly in my pilates workout room in the basement. It’s a small room, painted a dark mustard color, and I leave the lights turned on really low, because I’m on my back for most of the workout and I don’t want to stare at overhead lights. Then when I finish my workout, I write in my journal for three pages, there in the dark room sitting on the pilates bench. It is more therapeutic if I play meditation music, but I usually have the tv on in the background. I’ve read that people light candles and even create a type of alter in the space where they write their morning pages, but I never got that far. I really like writing in the dark room first thing in the morning. Then, when I am finished, I head upstairs to the shower and get ready to face my hectic day with a feeling of accomplishment.

I used to do a lot of writing with the laptop in bed, but Jagman complained about the tapping of keys while he was trying to sleep.

When I wrote my first NaNoWriMo novel, I did most of it at home on the sofa in the basement, away from the rest of the family. That room is decorated with about 500 books on built-in bookshelves, too. It’s dark green with mahogany walls and shelving and leather furniture. When I first started blogging, I worked from an extra bedroom that I painted red and lined with bookshelves of dark cherry wood. The walls have white french memo boards filled with photos and notes, and a favorite horse print, large, with a picture light on it. My desk is a door that I stained and mounted on 4 x 4’s. I loved this room because I could shut the door and not hear anything, but my two boys wound up hooking their computers up in there and it was no longer a “room of MY own.”

My favorite and most productive writing space was the classroom I taught in, even though it was the least pleasing aesthetically. When I co-taught with a fellow writer, we would stay after school and write together on our NaNoWriMo novels. We’d both have our headphones on, laptops back to back across desks, minds lost in completely different worlds. At the end of our allotted time, we’d talk about ideas, music we’re listening to, blocks to or bursts of creativity, word counts. I loved having a writing partner. I haven’t had that opportunity since, and it’s one of the reasons I’ve tried sitting in coffee shops.

The coffee shop scene can be weird, I think. Sometimes I’ve been very productive and focused. Other times I am self-conscious and worried that the person sitting behind me can read my screen or the notes on the paper on the table.

I’ve always wished I could get over that and be able to write anywhere and everywhere… to pull a notebook out and write while I’m killing time somewhere, for example, or in front of other people (who aren’t writers). I know a lot of ideas have disappeared because I wait to get to my writing space instead of pulling out paper wherever I am.

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The Kindle

I am totally obsessed with the Amazon Kindle. The idea of having any book I want to read available in my purse at all times is seducing me. But then I’m not sure I can get over the feel of paper in my hand, and writing notes and reflections in a deep, literary book. And displaying it on a bookshelf… to be built because I’ve already filled all the bookshelves in the house already. And there’s the other issue. I probably already own well over 1,000 books. I’m running out of room to shelve them. Still, they are a thing of beauty… and they won’t be in a white electronic box. But I could be reading that electronic box while I’m sitting at a baseball game without looking like a complete geek.

What do you think?? Do you know anyone who has one??

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Last Day of School!

Hooray!  It really crept up on me this year. I was actually sad watching the kids get on the bus, hugging some of them goodbye. I’ve been considering a job in marketing at the central office, and not working with kids is the one drawback.  After the goodbyes today, I really don’t think I’m ready to sit in a cubicle and spend the whole day with adults.  Not yet. Maybe not ever.

I was talking to the art teacher today about her summer plans, creativity, painting and writing and trying to fit it in while working.  She said she doesn’t know any art teachers who paint their own stuff during the school year.  She only paints during the summer.

That made me feel better about my lack of writing for the last year.  I wonder if that’s a compromise I could live with… writing a lot during the summer months when I’m not really busy at school. The only reason I was considering the marketing job was to allow for some balance and creativity in my life. It never occurred to me that other creative art people segment their lives in months instead of hours per day.

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Gangsta rappers in Abercrombieville

My most trusted colleague at work is a black man. Since we’ve built a strong relationship based on trust and respect, we sometimes talk about racial issues, especially as they pertain to education. Today we heard a presentation about a program at another school that focuses on black males with 3.0 GPA’s and tries to teach them leadership and push them toward higher GPA’s.

The problem at our school is that we don’t have many black males with 3.0 GPA’s. We don’t have many black males to begin with and the ones we do have don’t have GPA’s anywhere near 3.0. More like 1.7.

And that led to a discussion about racial issues in general. And one of the questions I asked is this:

We live in an upper class socioeconomic neighborhood with a tiny pocket of apartments. Of the black students in our school, most of their parents are highly successful, well-educated, dual-income people who have realized the need to assimilate to a certain degree in order to get ahead. Even the black parents who live in the apartments are paying higher rents than they need to just to be in our school district, so they value education and work very hard to provide the best environment for their kids. So here’s my question (finally):

Why would these parents allow their kids to come to school dressed like gangsta rappers, with chains on their pants, which are hanging off their butts??

I seriously don’t get how this is ok, unless you live in a drug-infested inner city, and then there are so many other things more important to worry about besides your kids’ boxers showing. But in an upper-class, nearly all white and Asian school, the gangsta rapper look is going to stand out, and not in a good way. So I don’t understand why their parents don’t insist on some kind of dress code. They obviously moved here to provide their kids with the same opportunities as other wealthy kids, and they should understand that part of that is building a social network. And they should also understand that that isn’t going to happen if their kids walk around looking like gangsta rappers in the middle of Abercrombieville.

Even when Lima Bean tries to wear his hat sideways in his free time, I make him change it. “You are not a gangsta rapper. You will not dress like one.” And that has nothing to do with the color of his skin.

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