Ch-ch-changes

Apparently, fourth grade is when our school district begins the puberty videos. Tomorrow, the kids will be separated out by sex and given some level of information with regard to their respective burgeoning bodies. The district hosted a parent preview of these videos a couple of weeks ago, but since I already know about puberty, I passed on the additional information. Continue reading »

No

The more people post on the group page for my high school class, the (increasingly) less likely it is that I will be anywhere near NW Houston in August. It is clear that I did not attend the same high school as these people.

If they were all worth reading, I’d be suspicious

One of these times that I drive down to the Houston area, I would like to drive my old route from I-45 to the house where I lived in Lakewood Forest. I don’t know if I can remember how, though, or if the roads are still called the same names.

I know that I would come down Spring Cypress, which, at the time, was all parceled out farmland. Somewhere out there, nearer to 249, was a place with falling down barns. I would take my Ford Festiva off road, through a break in the fence, to take photos. Most of my outside shots for Photography II were taken there. I kept it a secret, mostly, except from Reid, whom I drove out there one day. I was half in love with Reid for three years in high school. I have, somewhere, a photo of Reid in a shaft of sunlight breaking through a hole in the roof of one of the barns.

This snapshot has nothing do with anything.

My better black and whites were of construction sites. I may have stolen the idea from Kevin, but I loved driving my trusty Festiva (and later, my less-trusty Sentra) out to sites right before sunset and trying to coax some light out of the wonderful textures of concrete dried on the side of a mixer.

Marshall picked me up a couple 35mm SLRs this past summer, and I have a 35mm Yashica Range Finder. I even picked up some film. But I haven’t gone out with them. I looked at Craigslist several months ago, for equipment, but I don’t know how practical a bathroom darkroom would be, especially with the current ventilation situation. And would I use a make-shift dark room often enough to justify the expense? I loved printing back in high school, but how much of it was the printing and how much more did I just enjoy hanging out with Ted  and listening to firehose and Dinosaur Jr.?

While walking

Audrey and I have made a commitment to walk the dogs together every evening for about 30 minutes. According to Google maps, our route is 1.3 miles.  I love to have an extra little bit of quiet time with Audrey. She’s so into computer/DS games and music and growing up that it’s difficult to pin her down sometimes. Much of our dog-walking conversations are about the dogs, of course, especially Percy, who is such a character. Wanda is steadfast, sweet, and long suffering, and on walks she is simply determined to walk as long and far as I let her. She rarely even notices other dogs or people (though if she sees/smells a squirrel, all bets are off). Percy, though, begins every walk with a joyous noise and then challenges ever dog, fenced or on leash, that we encounter. True to form, he also must mark many, many poles and trees, and he’s begun taking care of big business (thanks, Raising Hope!) as we walk, too. I’m going to have to start forgetting my shopping bags occasionally to keep up. So the dogs, especially their differences, come up. We have decided that Percy thinks he is the most incredibly awesome dog in the world. Wanda, however, disdains, mocking him for his diaper. Today, we learned that Percy regards his dignity pants not as a badge of shame but one of honor. He was sharing his awesome sauce so liberally, it seems, that he was becoming slightly–infinitesimally, really–less awesome. The humans noticed this and took steps to help him retain the sauce of awesomeness: thus, the pants. Wanda scoffed mightily. Percy promised to chew on her legs. Ah, pack politics.

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House proud

The fence around the backyard is coming along, and we (read: Marshall and Abel the Fence Guy–soon to be Abel the Painting Guy and maybe Abel the Tree Removal Guy) have decided to just bit the bullet and frame and pour the concrete retaining wall needed at the back of the yard. The previous fence just followed the grade of the yard and thus was lower than we’d like. I’ll have to take a picture of the progress.

When we bought this house almost six years ago, I was pretty much overcome by the very fact of the debt and responsibility. Then, in the first two years, our improvements came fairly fast and furiously–then screeching to a halt in fall 2008 when I became a recession pioneer (I even dressed as a recessionary hobo clown for Halloween). For three years, aside from the insurance paid-for replacement of the living area flooring, we’ve just sat, watched the house age, and fretted. Accordingly, watching our ancient, oft-patched, weak, rotting pine fence come down to be replaced with red, sweet-smelling cedar, I am again overcome. This evening, as we stared at the section of new fence Abel finished today, I asked Marshall if he was sure it was all right for us to have such a grown up fence. Then I laughed, thinking about how respectable our house will look after we have the exterior painted this summer. This spring, Marshall hopes to really renovate the hall bathroom (he did a quick clean up job on it right after we moved in and a creature died in the walls and the toilet became just too albatrossy to bear). I hope to find some plants like these to put in the sad beds out front, as well as some Adirondack chairs or a nice bench for the porch (and some comfy patio chairs for the backyard, too). Talk about adult and respectable, then.

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The little things

OK. Fifteen minutes of irritations. Go.

This new dog in our house, Percy, is driving me crazy. I knew that more than one dog was and would be a mistake. We have the perfect dog in the Woo. Why invite trouble? So first we get Rigby, who was entirely too much for us. He made us all so nervous, and he was biting everyone but me–not yet enough to hurt or draw blood, but really, and this isn’t honorable or anything, we were afraid of owning a pit bull. So as he got larger and more energetic and overly playful with Woo and Audrey, and as long walks and routine  had no effect on his behavior, we called the rescue from whom we got him. They took him back and convinced Marshall that we should take, in an exchange of sorts, a young Lhasa Apso mix. That dog is Percy, and while he is funny and sweet and playful, he’s also a shithead. I am convinced that his previous owner was an old lady who couldn’t properly house train him. She didn’t have him neutered, so that was done recently, but it’s way too late to curb his curbing habits. After washing the bathroom rugs daily for a couple of weeks and cleaning up all the corners and Audrey’s backpack repeatedly, we finally wised up and got him a belly band/pants/diaper thing that catches the pee. And this is good, but it’s a pain. And his STILL poops in the house unless you just happen to get him outside when he needs to poop (he won’t go to the door for poop). Plus, he’s a male and thus noisy and bossy and somewhat destructive. Nor does he have any manners.  I reckon it’s good he’s cute. Also, he prances when he walks and loves belly rubs. Most importantly, he’s great and patient with Aud; he never nips or bites at her and will even sit in her lap as she reads and plays. So he stays.

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(Re) Connect

Right now, life  looks overwhelming and scary and completely undoable, but for today, I’m not intimidated. Time’s gonna pass, and all will get done.  Despite or because of it all, because I’ve come to a place of irritated peace with all that I cannot control, I’m actually kind of happy. Not blissful, but not so overwhelmed that I make it all fall down. So it’s a big pot that I don’t look too deeply into for fear I will fall in. Lots of falling. Repression?

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Tales of a fourth grade something

Audrey’s reading, language arts, and social studies teacher is a man, the first male teacher she’s had, and Audrey doesn’t quite know what to do with him. We received her first six-weeks’ report card yesterday. I wasn’t expecting the straight A+ grades of third grade. Fourth grade is a huge jump in our school district, what with switching classes and a greater emphasis on in-class learning (and can I say how much I love less homework?). Also, the gifted and talented program moves from a half-day, in-school meeting once a week to a full day at a designated intermediate g/t school. So I was expecting a couple of B’s and lower A’s, and I got them. But one of the B’s surprised me since it was not in math but in reading.

Audrey is a stellar reader (though like my brothers, it is not her first interest, so she doesn’t live in her room with a book in hand like I did), reading many levels above the expected and with a keen mind for comprehension. And while I was not disappointed in her 87, I was surprised. Continue reading »

Have you met Rigby? He’s the newest hellion in town.

Three-D

After years of teaching my first-semester composition class organized by modes or strategies (e.g., cause and effect, illustration, narrative, etc.), I decided to build this semester around the idea of exploration and definition, incorporating several modes/strategies in each approach. Because, did I mention that we’re exploring and defining from three directions. The first, the one the students are writing now, is a profile, a written portrait of someone personally important to the writer. The students will be writing a story, then, of their relationship to this person and how knowing this person helps them understand themselves. Next, we’ll be considering cultural stories. This one is a bit vaguer, yet, but we’ll be looking at our perceptions of ourselves/others/both and trying to figure out why … everything. We’ll be looking at media messages, exploring cultural and familial rituals, and reading/hearing/watching other people’s stories.

To introduce this new approach, today we watched a TED talk about the danger of only knowing (and telling) a single story about, well, anyone. Chimamanda Adichie spoke of both being limited and limiting, herself. The easiest thing in the world is to collect these single (limited) stories. They are, after all, the stories fed to us on television, in magazines, by advertisements, on t-shirt logos, and, of course, through the 10 o’clock tabloid, a.k.a., the local news. Plus, the single story is usually our own story, so it’s easy to relate to, to remember, to believe in. Continue reading »