this was the poem for yesterday, September 11th:

Dance

— Rumi

Steve sent me this clip along with a note that said, At least I’m not this bad!

He’s wrong, he is. Cuz when our girl was waiting for the bus, for her first day of middle school, with a bunch of kids she has never seen before in her life, Daddy wanted to check on her. So he dropped off her brother, buzzed back home, then, uh… yelled out to her…

“HI HONEY, I, UH, FORGOT SOMETHING! HAVE A GOOD FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!”

She loves him so.

“it’s the first day of school/
and the boys are watching…”

putting myself to bed after Wednesday night class (four hours, all scintillating.) (no, i’m not being “sarcastic,” i mean it.) is going to be really really tough.

so it’s now 11:16 p.m. and i have to go to bed! OK??? OKAY!

ps Steve’s blog post about Dylan got hijacked by a Japanese blog today and for some reason that just made my day. yeah, i’m easy to please.

… and if you know the Wacky Family well, you know that means one thing:

Pound Cake.

and a whole lot of fried potatoes.

bon appetit!!!

wm

private note to steve: still love you. xoxoxoxoxo me.

“It has always seemed strange to me that in our endless discussions about education so little stress is laid on the pleasure of becoming an educated person, the enormous interest it adds to life. To be able to be caught up into the world of thought — that is to be educated.” — Edith Hamilton, educator and writer (1867-1963)

Yeah, you’re going to be getting a lot of these ;) Even if you’re not a education student, it’s interesting reading. I have class one night a week, plus weekend classes, too, plus about two hours of homework for every one hour of class. Last week, when we had orientation and our first class, they loaded us up with a tote of about a dozen books — reading for the semester. (Books are included with tuition, I was pretty thrilled about that. Charge me the extra, I do not care, but please don’t make me try to track down stuff that’s sold out, or that I can’t find anywhere, and please don’t give me the wrong edition on the book-buy list, and then say, Whoops! when the next class meets.) (Bad memories of undergrad school. This is a whole different deal.)

I’m really psyched about the titles, and I thought that keeping track of them on the blog would be a good way to remember everything I’ll be reading over the next couple of years.

Plus, plus, plus… Students at the school where I work are back next week. Had orientations at their schools for both of my own kids this week and…

We are settling into fall!

love,

wm

ps — The S.E. Hinton I’m reading just for fun. It’s been forty-three years since “The Outsiders” was first printed — it came out in 1967 — and you know what? My students still love that book, as do I. So it was a real treat to pick this one up. “Some of Tim’s Stories” really is some of her best yet. Susan Eloise, always my hero. Which reminds me, I need to send my former high school fifteen bucks to pay for that copy of “The Outsiders” that I swiped when I was a senior. That would be the right thing to do, don’t you think?

Have a lovely weekend.

Traveling with me everywhere I go:

“In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.”

— Buddha

here’s a post from my sexy husband.

and… Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival.

From my desk calendar, Aug. 21-22, 2010: “I went to college for this?”

Hahahahaha… wait. That’s not funny. But I am. I am your Daily Bitch. Only lately it’s not daily, is it, you poor lil deprived things. Sorry. I’m busy! Watering the yard takes up a lot of time.

I started my new job. My boss is great. Generally I don’t blog about work because, you know. Dooce. (Or as I like to call her, “My little Doocey-woocey.”) You know her, the founder of the expression: “Be ye not so stupid.” Well, who’s laughing now, Internet? Dooce writes about work all day long.

So. With that little disclaimer out of the way… My boss is v. cool. She is Cool 7.0, or possibly Cool 10.0 and I am looking forward to this school year. As my old roommate used to say, “If anyone deserves to be happy, it’s me.” My response, “No, me!” Him: “Me!!!!” etc.

Also I found a ton of new books (including a crateful donated by my Wacky Kids) and I spent the whole day getting the books into the database, bar-coded, with fresh jackets and their little ID stamps, “Property of Wacky Mommy’s New School.” And a fair amount of tape was involved. Mostly I went into liberry work so I can play with tape, stampers and kids all day. Not in that order. The stampers probably are the most critical component for me. Ha! I jest! I’m in it for the love bucks from the students, pure and simple.

So. What’s up, Internet? How’s my girls? And guy? What you may or may not know about me is that I take copious notes. I have hypergraphia, I’m pretty sure. My notepad of choice: My left hand.

Right now it says:

hamster fud
charge Netbook
prom. note
checkbook

That’s right! Cuz in addition to going back to work today (after more than 2 long, glorious months spent in the garage, sorting through my grandma’s china, my other grandma’s “Arkansas Crystal” and… if you haven’t read this post yet, you should, cuz it really sums up my mom’s side of The Family…

(My daughter, “Mom, are you going anywhere with this?”) (Yes, I am.) (Seriously, that’s her new line, she kills me.)

I start grad school on Wednesday. Any school, any place, any time, they should just type a little note at the bottom of the first letter they send you, and that note should say:

plz bring your checkbook!

So I am taking out loans, and a Promissory Note is in order. Hmm. Can I promise what I’ll give them if we re-neg?

* Arkansas Crystal
* the “good slides”
* the 20-year-old truck. It’s paid for!
* and I’ll bake them some Mexican wedding cakes and a Chocolate Volcano Cake.

That should do it, don’t you think?

ttfn,

your friend,

wm