It’s that time

Having done this for almost 20 years, I know when it’s time for a day off from school.  Today is that day for me.  I schedule it months in advance, knowing that just about this time, I will hit the wall.  I will be tired, I will be cranky, I will be feeling burned out.  I know this well enough now that I schedule dental and doctor appointments for just this day, late in October, so I can get away from school for a few hours, take care of personal appointments, and talk to adults who have nothing to do with education.  I have seen my dentist and my neurologist today and been told by both that I am in very good condition.  My car is getting its innards cleaned and serviced too so it can continue to carry me to school each day.

I spent time buying books and even started reading two of them.  After napping for awhile after lunch, I got to catch up on reading some blogs and found that a few others out there hit the wall today also.  Dan, over in the Santa Cruz mountains, took the day off because he was getting sick.  That’s a problem with teachers, we wait until we get sick before we take some time.  I did that in the past, but now I know better.  Just as I repair the car before it breaks down, I do the same with my body.  Sarah, way over in South Dakota, got to school, but when asked to sub for a teacher who didn’t make it, she couldn’t control herself and broke down.  She is fortunate to have administrators who understand and said, “take the day off.”  Too many administrators would say, “buck up, do what you need to do for the kids.”

It’s that time, we are still six weeks away from Christmas break.  Kids feel it, teachers feel it.  Time for a day off.

Kitchen Disaster

I can usually step into the kitchen, and often without a recipe, whip up a dish without too much trouble.  Yesterday, getting home before 3:30, which is very rare, I decided to make a batch of cupcakes with a Halloween theme.  I had a chocolate cake mix, a can of frosting, and an assortment of Halloween decorations.  

The first disaster should have told me to stop right there.  I put the butter, eggs, and water into my food processor, just like I always do, but this time when I turned it on, the mixture flew all over the kitchen.  The lid of the food processor just didn’t want to seal correctly.  I finally got the cake batter mixed up, cleaned up my horrible mess, and divided the batter between the pans, one of which I had gone next door to borrow since I have only two small cupcake pans.  

After cooling the cakes, I pulled out the can of frosting and stirred it up.  The consistency seemed wrong for the type of frosting (fluffy) but I figured I was just being overly critical.  It spread just fine on 18 of the cupcakes and looked very pretty.  Then I licked the knife I had been using.  YUCK.  The frosting had soured and upon checking the use-by-date, found it was way out of date.  I had to dump 18 cupcakes.

I was so disgusted with this huge failure after all the work I had done.  This rarely happens with anything that I cook.  Plus, it looks like the mixing bowl of my Cuisinart needs to be replaced so that’s another task I will have to take on soon as I use my food processor a lot.

Summer is put in storage

Upon leaving college in December 1999, our daughter hauled furniture and furnishings back to Fresno from Oregon, knowing that in a few months she would pack it all up again and move to Berkeley for graduate school.  I did not want all this stuff in my tiny house, so we rented a storage unit nearby, in our daughter’s name.  

It’s now almost December 2008, and we still have that storage unit, still in Jen’s name.  We tease her that should one of us kill the other and put the body in the storage unit, she would be blamed.  She just rolls her eyes and goes on about her business, which by the way, is not to pay the rent on the unit.  I have always paid, and continue to do so.  Most of the stuff now belongs to me.

After Jen moved all of her belongings out, I realized there was plenty of space for me to deposit some items I no longer wanted in my way.  It started with Christmas decorations, then boxes of books, and now patio furniture in the off season.  Saturday was my day to clean all the patio furniture and haul it to the unit.  Here is the result:

And then I put it all under wraps for the winter:

State your preference

I found this site about states over on my buddie’s blog.  It’s a great site that can tell you anything you want to know about your state or any other state.  I learn so much from all of you out there in blogland.  Thank you.

I do give a fig

There is an expression, “I don’t give a fig about it.”  Don’t know where that came from but it means to not care about something, that it’s unimportant.   My house sits on what was a fig orchard, and when we moved out here, there were still many acres of fig trees, but slowly they disappeared as more houses were built.  Only a few fig orchards seemed to be producing.  I have always loved figs, the raw fruit more so than the dried, and have been delighted in the resurgence of the fig industry.

Every week, for the past few months, I have bought black mission figs at Whole Foods.  I think this may be the last batch for the year.  I am certainly going to enjoy this delightful fruit while it’s still available.

Training vs educating

I would prefer to be an educator.  I would like to plan my lessons, walk into my classroom, present my material, give the students an assignment, and let them work.  I would like to walk around, giving advice, chatting, correcting, and getting a sense of how well my students are doing.  My yearbook class is pretty much this way, though I have a few trouble areas.  But nothing like my other classes.

I have kids who cannot sit still, who cannot listen, who cannot work without constant supervision, who constantly need me.  I have kids who do not come to class.  I have kids who come to class but don’t want to be there and refuse to do anything.  (This one young man is probably a whole blog post on his own.)  I have kids who do not bring their materials to class (like a flashdrive or usb cord for their camera) and so cannot work.  And these are high school students, juniors and seniors.

One student I have is constantly trying to figure out ways to get out of class.  He wanted to change classes but it was past the date to do so and he is required to stay in the class until the semester ends, which is only 16 weeks long.  He is absent, he wants me to sign for him to go on fieldtrips, he wants to call home to get something, he doesn’t bring his equipment, he doesn’t do the assignments.  He wants more time, he wants to email me the work (after the deadline).  He whines, he doesn’t feel good.  He’s hot, he’s tired, he’s thirsty.  It’s always something.  And, he’s a senior.

Yesterday, after not having the work for the week, nor starting the new assignment, he whined about about not wanting to work because it was a Friday.  I told him that in four years his teachers haven’t trained him very well.  He said it’s my job to educate him, not train him.  I agree, he should come to my class already trained to be a student so I don’t have to waste time training him but rather educating him.  Because, that’s what I want to do.  Instead, I have to do too much training.

A policeman on my doorstep

Although we have a police officer at our campus, and I see her squad car on a daily basis as it’s parked right near my department, I only see her in passing and never in an official capacity.  We also have a parole officer on our sight.  He’s not quite as friendly as the police officer, but I occasionally say hi to him too.  I’ve not had any official contact with these officers of the law as my students are well-behaved and rarely get in trouble with even the school administrators.  A couple of years ago, on a fieldtrip to Sacramento, one of my students was picked up for shoplifting in Old Sac, and the undercover officer brought the young man to me, flashing a badge at me.  That was very shocking for me.

So, you can imagine my surprise when my doorbell rang at 10:30 last night and there was a police officer on the other side of the door.  My first thought was, “who got hurt?,” but then I remembered that my daughter is grown and lives far away.  The policeman, Officer Brown, was there to question my husband who had witnessed a car break-in earlier in the day, across the street from our house.  

A kid from the neighborhood was attempting to steal something from the car when my husband stepped out on the porch and yelled at him.  The kid, who has been seen doing some strange things in the nighborhood, ran off.  My husband reported all this to the neighbor whose car was being burgled, and he seemed to know who the kid was and said he would talk to the mother of the boy.  My husband thought that was the end of it.

Turns out, entering a car that is not yours, whether you steal something or not, is a felony.  The things you learn when you get involved in criminal activity!  The police arrested the boy, and my husband had to identify him.  The boy admitted breaking into the car, and the police officer told my husband that the mother had been cooperative.  I wonder what his punishment will be?  I would love to get the judge to make the kid do yardwork for all of the neighbors on our street.

Company closings

As many of you know by now, Mervyn’s is going to close its doors.  That makes me sad for a number of reasons.  1) I bought my daughter’s baby things there 30 years ago; 2) there are 3 stores in our city and that means a lot of people out of work; 3) one of my best ever students is a buyer for Mervyn’s and will now be out of a career he really enjoyed; 4) just another sign of our bad economic times.

I never worked for Mervyn’s but long ago, when I was buying baby clothes there, I had a Mervyn’s credit card.  That morphed into a Target credit card which morphed into a Target Visa.  I use that card, almost exclusively, so as to get money for the very poor school in which I teach.  My wonderful student who worked for our local business partner while in high school and college, has worked his way up at Mervyn’s headquarters and was just named a head buyer.  I don’t know what he will do next, but he is very talented so I know he will land on his feet.

Now, for companies I have worked, except for the school district where I am currently employed:  they are all gone, kaput, out of business, no record of some of them.  Payless Drug Stores, Levitz Furniture, Munford Publications, Ranchers Cotton Oil.  None of them folded while I was working there, but I could see the writing on the wall for Ranchers so left to get my teaching credential.  It was also the place where I spent the most time before I became a teacher, 11 years.  I still have dreams (or nightmares) of returning to work there and nothing has changed in the 20+ years I’ve been gone.  

Time rolls on, companies come and go.  Jobs change.  My view of the work I have done, am doing, and will do in the future has all changed, too.  Those company closings would have scared me 30 years ago, when I had a baby for whom to buy clothes, but now I see that we are a resilient bunch and will figure out a way to work through this economic downturn.   Although concerned for what will happen to my students, I know that if I give them skills and a can-do attitude, they will make their way.

Seeking help

This semester I am teaching multimedia for the first time.  I have two sections, one right after the other.  I learn from the first section and do a better job with the second.  So far, I have taught the class about target markets, fonts, layout in PageMaker (that’s what is on the computers although I use InDesign CS2 in yearbook class) and PhotoShop.  

I am definitely not the expert on PhotoShop or design of layouts and fonts so I am on the lookout for any help I can get.  Today I found a great website that sells fonts.  It’s quite fascinating to look at all the fonts out there, and I gather more are being designed as I write.  I plan to show the students some of these on Monday to inspire them to perhaps design their own font.

Seventeen years ago

A few weeks back I wrote a piece about looking back on my life in 20-year increments.  By doing that, I missed what was going on 17 years ago, when I was still a new teacher, teaching shorthand.  I had a wonderful student, May, who did really well with shorthand, and she liked it.  She went off to college, using shorthand all the way through, and she too became a teacher.

This past weekend I attended a CUE conference, signing up for a workshop for the Flip camera in which I actually got to take the camera home with me.  After we had all introduced ourselves, this very tiny Asian lady turned around, and said, “hi Mrs. Zody, do you remember me?”  It was May from 17 years ago.  She is now a fifth grade teacher in the same district where I work.  Her coworker took this picture of us:

She still uses shorthand, and likes it.