who knew I had another paper due? uh, I did? way back there in the far recesses of what is left of my brain. so that means music, folks. I could watch and listen to this video 3 or 4 times a day and still not get sick of it. my family would though, so I resist the urge to repeatedly stare at Stewart Copeland’s arms. Sting i can do without, nowadays, but i do love the old, old stuff.

back to writing, and i wish you auf wiedersehen, for now.

— wm

is that my favorite song? no, but this is:

i like it when Josh Turner turns upside down.

really, ttfn, i need to get to sleep soon!

It’s midnight and I JUST finished my paper. I hope I did it right. Now… to watch some TV (i’m wired. again) or get some sleep? Sleep? TV? TV? Sleep?

Life: Always with the dilemmas.

Sleep it is.

Talk to ya later.

— wm

“Seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave.” — Muhammad (570-632)

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

— Holden Caulfield in “The Catcher in the Rye,” by J.D. Salinger, Little, Brown and Company, Inc., 1951 (although Holden’s character first appeared in Salinger’s short story, “Last Day of the Last Furlough” in a 1944 issue of the Saturday Evening Post.) (just fyi. wm)

Why do I want to teach? Or (better question) why do I want to continue to teach? (Since I’ve already been teaching, just in a classified position, not certified, for almost three years now.) Yeah, good question. In the class I’m taking this semester, we’re exploring that. Because why bother, if you can’t pin down why you’re bothering? Also, if I would have known that graduate school was going to be such a mind-blower, so fun and intriguing and challenging, I would have gone right after I finished my undergrad degree, like I should have.

Not true — I didn’t know what I wanted to get my degree in, back then. Certainly didn’t want to teach. I tried some education classes, as an undergrad and could. not. stay. awake. eyes closing……… zzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

“Those who can, do. Those who can’t drop the class and go out to the clubs with their friends and dance all night. Alternately, they play cards and drink at home ’til all hours.”
— Wacky Mommy

“My girl wants to/
party all the time/
party all the time/
party all the tiiiiiiiime…”

— my friend JoJo, singing Eddie Murphy’s song to her sister and me

Oh, JoJo. Whenever old men would hit on us downtown she’d woof at ’em like a dog. Pretty girl, barking? Pretty funny. Then we’d run off.

So no, I wasn’t ready for this, then. Writing would have been the obvious choice, but why? So I could write? I was already writing. I write every day, even when it rains. Especially when it rains. Always have. So I guess… I wasn’t ready until now?

For my schtick for class, because I am “visuals impaired” (not to be confused with “visually impaired,” although I’m that, too), I decided to illustrate my path in life via books.

Wicked smart, no? I suggest that you share this idea with all your friends and family. Books are highly undervalued as a supporting player when it comes to presentations. PowerPoint gets all the credit.

Here is the list of the books I chose:

a primer from when my dad was a kid

a primer from when I was a kid

“Catcher in the Rye,” by my main man, J.D. Salinger

Santa Biblia/Holy Bible, Edicion Bilingue/Bilingual Edition (a gift from my husband)

the “Nancy Drew” books, by Carolyn Keene

“Little House in the Big Woods,” by Laura Ingalls Wilder

“The King, the Mice and the Cheese,” by Nancy and Eric Gurney

“Are You My Mother?” by P.D. Eastman

“Eloise: The Absolutely Essential Edition,” by Kay Thompson, illustrated by Hilary Knight (and a small digression: I am unable to weed the following books from any library in which I work: fairy tales/fables, 398.2; poetry, 811; and anything illustrated by Hilary Knight. Just one of those little “librarian quirks.”)

“Henry Huggins,” by Beverly Cleary

“Home Price,” by Robert McCloskey

“Harriet the Spy”

“From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler”

“That Crazy April,” by Lila Perl

“A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” by Betty Smith

“The Great Gatsby,” by F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Song of Solomon,” by Toni Morrison

“The Portland Review”

the “Harry Potter” series, by J.K. Rowling

“The Invention of Hugo Cabret,” by Brian Selznick

the “Oryx and Crake” series, by Margaret Atwood

And the piece de resistance… which I had just read to my first- and second-grade students that very day:

“Green Eggs and Ham,” by Dr. Seuss

“Thank you, thank you, Sam I am.”

As for the presentation? It went okay, I think. But I’m not sharing it here — too personal. Besides, you already know it all. hahahahaha. (That’s a little “blogger joke.”) I will tell you something, though — we all wrote out affirmations and feedback for each other. And while I, like Holden, hate all that kind of crap, it was excellent and made me feel all warm and fuzzy.

Yes, that’s right. My cohort has broken me. I knew someone would, eventually.

One of them wrote me a note, with my name at the top followed by the words, “My life is an open book.” Underneath was a sketch of “Green Eggs and Ham,” and a C.S. Lewis quote: “We read to know that we are not alone,” followed by, “Great job.” All of the notes were cool like that. It’s enough to make a girl feel like she’s not flying solo through life. Oh, wait, Internets… I already knew that one ;) Thank you.

Even if you’re not “required” to do one of these, a LifeMap is pretty cool. I highly recommend that you do one. Break out the colored pens, the magazines to make a collage, the visuals and the written words. Sketch it, bake it, put it to music, whatever works for you. Tie in the political, the philosophical, the ethical. What about family? Friends? Teachers and others who influenced you?

Ask yourself: What brought me to where I am today? Where am I going from here?

You can swipe my books idea if you’d like. There! I just gave my first assignment.

— wm

“I sound my barbaric YAWP over the roofs of the world.”

— Walt Whitman, from “Leaves of Grass”

i’m watching only movies with a school theme. so far I’ve watched:

“Over the Edge”
“Dead Poets Society” (half-way through — just finishing it — have mad crush on Josh Charles)
“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”
“Fast Times at Ridgemont High”

next up:
“Good Will Hunting”
“Goodbye, Mister Chips”
“To Sir, With Love”
“The Breakfast Club”

what are your favorites?

“You must live for something higher, bigger and better than you.”

listening to 2Pac, “Me Against the World,” and doing my LifeMap homework. My life, as illustrated by books. i don’t want to go too deep, but i want to go wide. after five-plus years of blogging, i’m not so into the self-assessments. too much navel-gazing. I’ll do it anyway.

“i got nothing to lose/
it’s just me against the world, baby…”

— Tupac Shakur

lie. he had everything to lose. talk about self-reflective, my Lord, this album — so brilliant. You know the poet Nikki Giovanni has a THUG LIFE tattoo on her arm? she does.

i have everything to lose, too (cuz me and 2Pac, so much in common, right?) — i want to get books to as many students as possible as I can before my time is up, and sometimes, that altruistic mission, which sounds like a cakewalk, right?, becomes such a struggle. wish me luck. have a great week.

— wm

And then there’s this oldie-but-goodie. You know I have to put this on auto-replay whenever I’m writing. I esp. love when she punches him in the nose.

Edited at 10:14 p.m. to say… Homework is done, three days ahead of time! Now I need some sleep. have a really superfine week, y’all. See ya when I see ya. Leave me some comments!

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…”

“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:

Ooooooh, that Rizzo. (wiping tears from eyes.) I find that pep talk highly… peppy, whether it’s Herb Brooks giving it or Rizzo. And now, an update on grad school:

I’ve been meaning to do my grad work for… 21 years. Since I finished my undergrad work, if you want to get specific. Which I don’t, so let’s move along. I still don’t know if I have a job for next year, but I love working with kids, I love my library work, turns out teaching is a good fit for me. I like the order of it, the volatility and unpredictability of it, the way the kids blossom and grow and it’s like time-lapse photography or something, watching it. It is breath-taking. I don’t like to get into the specifics of it here because you know — it’s my students’ lives we are talking about, I’m just a bit player in their production.

But I will say this — when you can get an entire class of 7th grade boys reading, that is more than just a beautiful thing. That is exquisite, and it makes me feel like a superhero. Like a librarian superhero. And I can say, yes, this is why I’m here.

But I have been working as a classified employee (clerk) and that’s what I’ve done my whole life, pretty much. Gotten paid half as much as everyone else (except the other clerks, and man have we grumbled about it together) for doing the same work. Or sometimes for doing more work, when you run into people who want to lord it over you.

How clever, to wiggle out of work and dump it on someone who makes half as much money as you. What a smart, smart person you are to figure that one out. Yuck.

I finished my grad school application last week and mailed it Monday. Went to an information night at my institution of higher learning (as RSG, my little academic all-star friend, calls it) on Wednesday. Yesterday I took the first of many tests I will have to take on the road to becoming a certified language arts (English) teacher (for middle school/high school), a reading specialist (or English Language Learners specialist) and a media specialist (librarian). It will take me about three years to finish all of that, and I’ll be… (I don’t want to say how old) when I finish. (It’s like Dear Abby used to ask, How old are you going to be if you don’t do it?)

I passed my test. It made me feel like a huge success. This week I have my final interview, and the powers-that-be will decide if this cohort is a good fit for me, if they want me, basically. I think we’re all good, but it’s still a little nerve-wracking. Especially when I think of working part- or full-time, taking care of my own kids and my students, paying some attention to my husband (which I’m sure he would appreciate, occasionally, although he’s not a demanding type of guy), cleaning, cooking… oh, wait. I don’t do much of those last two things, anyway. I think it will be fine, but it does seem a little daunting.

But if I don’t do it? I know right now that I would regret it.

No regrets, they get in the way.

Wish me luck.

— wm

* mission to avoid paperwork: completed. it culminated with my 1) cleaning the hamster cage and 2) weeding the driveway.

* eventually, when you’re trying to avoid something, you realize that the energy you’re spending avoiding it is taking far, far more effort than the energy it would take to complete the damn thing you’re trying to avoid.

* SO COMPLETE IT ALREADY, WHY ARE YOU TORTURING YOURSELF?

* Yes. I was putting the finishing touches on the whole thing, feeling all proud of myself, and voila! guess what? A three-page essay was required. A three-page essay that I had “somehow” managed to “overlook” until right this very afternoon. Luckily I like to write, so voila again! I wrote it! It’s done now, kit and kaboodle, addressed and sitting here in its fancy envelope. I will mail it tomorrow. Thank you and good night.

* Oh. Yes. We went to see the new “Twilight” movie. “Eclipse,” it is called. It was a reward to my daughter, for putting up with me freaking out and procrastinating over The Paperwork. (I told her once I had finished it up, we could go. We took Ms. New Orleans with us and went out for a fancy dinner first. Then we got candy from 7-11 on the way to the movie. Don’t you love sneaking in candy? I do.) Y’know what? I liked the movie. Hmm. Will ponder that later.

* I love the Beaverton Farmers Market. We all love it. My dog loved it, my grandma loved it, my husband and kids still love it. I like all of the vendors out there, from the sweetheart who sells her homemade cheesecakes to the family that does the kettle corn to the guy who fixes my iced latte, but these are just a few of my top picks:

Thank you, Rosecrest Farm, for the awesome swiss cheese. Thank you, hippie boys at Deep Roots Farm for always being so sexy. Thank you, Souper Natural lady, for being so funny and for making the best Italian Wedding soup I’ve ever tasted.

And thank you, Arcane Cellars, for the delicious wine, and for the Bon Appetit recipe for Spicy-Sweet Tangerine Shrimp with Baby Bok Choy (“pair with Arcane 2009 Pinot Gris”). Would you like to try it? Well, okay then!

Ingredients:

* 6 baby bok choy, halved lengthwise
* 2 tablespoons Asian sesame oil, divided
* 1 1/2 pounds uncooked large shrimp, peeled, deveined
* 1/3 cup frozen orange-tangerine concentrate, thawed
* 1/3 cup Asian sweet chili sauce
* 12 strips tangerine peel
* 1 1/2 teaspoons distilled white vinegar
* 1 teaspoon oyster sauce
* 2 green onions, chopped
* 1 1/2 tablespoons minced peeled fresh ginger

Preparation: Cover bottom of large skillet with 1/2 inch water. Add bok choy; drizzle with 1 tablespoon oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cover; cook over high heat until bok choy is tender, about 5 minutes. Arrange bok choy around edge of platter. Boil liquid in skillet until reduced to glaze, about 1 minute; pour over bok choy.

Mix shrimp and next 5 ingredients in medium bowl. Heat 1 tablespoon sesame oil in same skillet over high heat. Add onions and ginger. Sauté 1 minute. Add shrimp mixture. Toss until shrimp are just opaque in center, about 3 minutes. Using slotted spoon, transfer shrimp to platter. Cook sauce until thickened, about 2 minutes. Spoon sauce over shrimp.