My niece is an avid reader, to her credit.  While I don’t have much voice in her life, I still consider her, her age, her place in her life.  And then I transport back to my own time at that age, and I wanted so much to read something, anything, that would give me answers about how to understand this world.

There are books out there that can tell stories that young people need to hear, and tell them in a way that they will want to keep reading.  Some of them are obvious, some less obvious.  There are some books that just scream for a young reader.  The age group I am thinking of is about 13 up to about 23.

When I worked at a library in my high school years, I used to look at words and names like Solzhenitsyn, Cheever, Homer, Thoreau and Dostoevsky and I knew that somewhere in those writers was something I needed, but the task seemed so enormous.  There was the distractions of school, work and social life as well, the job was too big, I needed a guide.

I was intrigued by Great Books programs and longed to embark there, but the ones speaking into my ears at that time of my life painted a picture of reading as a hobby, not as something of great value.  Pity I believed that.

I have been collecting things that I have been reading that I would like to give to my own daughters, books that have spoken to me, helped me to understand a thing or two, or just made me think, or helped me feel less isolated in a hard time, or that I just liked because they were very good stories.

Here are the books I have come up with so far, by no means is this list complete, or in order.  I hope that if you read this, you will leave in the comments a book you read in your younger years that spoke volumes to you.

Harper Lee, herself.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.  This one is painfully obvious.  I am not sure if I can put into words why it is so necessary, I think its the characters, but also what happens.  Doesn’t every young person need to know Atticus Finch is out there?

John Steinbeck.

East of Eden by John Steinbeck.  This is an epic story that completely pulled me in, I couldn’t wait to read it daily.  I loved the people in this book.  The story of life it tells is a good one for a young person.

August Wilson.

Fences by August Wilson.  I just read this this summer.  It was a short fast easy read, and completely for the younger set.  Family, generation gaps, what real love looks like, culture, virtue and reality, it’s all here.

J.D. Salinger

Pretty much anything by JD Salinger.  This author’s characters and stories are ones that I still consider today to be who I grew up with.

The Stranger.

The Stranger by Albert Camus.  I am not sure I entirely understood this book when I read it in my teen years, but I remember inhaling it and being somewhat awestruck by the main character.  I guess it resonated with the contrariness that I was in those years.  And it maybe initiated an interest in philosophical ideas.

Babbit by Sinclair Lewis.  I found in Babbit an utterly despicable and at the same time ordinary character.  I found in him all that fatigued me about the suburban growing up.  His character resonated with me as I demolished him while I was reading and traveling.

Autobiography of Rigoberta Menchu.  I read this at 17 at the Evergreen State College.  At the time my world was so small that a real person of her experience was an education for me.  It was a sort of book that opened up the world for me and asked “Who will you be?”

The Thousand and One Nights.  This initially appealed to me because it was so mysterious.  And when I read it, I could hardly believe what I was reading.  The stories were armchair traveling, and it was grand.  Now I refer to it as a cultural reference to the Middle East, and am so glad I read it.

Saul Bellow.

The Adventures of Augie March & Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow.  I read this in London when I was about 26 but I would recommend it to a younger crew, 18 to early 20’s.  It is a picaresque novel and has coming of age elements.  I loved the main character for his adventures, and for who he was.  I wanted to see what he would do next.  It had another story to tell, one that wanted to hear.

Searching for God Knows What and Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller.  Trying to figure out what to believe when I was young was something that made me wonder if I was the only one who cared about this.  His books tell a story about that spiritual searching in the vein of being a Christ follower, sort of.  It helps that he is funny and he is my contemporary, but much of what he writes is just universal for American young people.

Ernest Hemingway The Movable Feast, The Old Man and the Sea and just about anything else.  I absorbed Hemingway daily while in my first months in a small town in Russia.  I became a familiar face at the English library (an AMAZING find) there in Cheboksary and begged for more Hemingway.  I devoured him. His style of writing, his characters, his Paris, his voice, were an education.  In my small dorm room, one wall with its wallpaper river scene with trees, and a floor that sounded sticky when you walked on it, cockroaches in my kitchen as I weathered a long winter of cultural adjustment in a place where the snow never stopped and it never got above -15 C I could communicate with only 3 to 5 people, I met Hemingway.  And I will always be glad he helped me through that winter.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X.  I am not sure what to say except that it is important to read this book because it tells a personal story but also a historical story.  Malcolm is well-narrated and has an almost endlessly interesting perspective as well as experiences he tells about.  He is a transformative character throughout the whole book.  He is a picture of learning, even as he died, his whole way of understanding the world was changing.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  A great American story, a classic that will not be work to get through.

A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket.  These are good books for younger readers, 11 years old to 15 I would imagine, but I think that I would enjoy them now too.  They are smart, engaging, though I haven’t read enough of them to take away a message from them, except that they are fun to read.  Plus they don’t really fit into the “classic” category, more like the “super fun to read” category.

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.  This is sort of a cultural literacy book.  Plus it is just in itself a complete depiction of irony.  I would love to read this at the same time with my kid, if life presented these sorts of opportunities.  Naturally this would be for the older teen, younger 20 set.

Kurt Vonnegut.  Does it matter which book?  His books are so rich.  Maybe I will go get one from the library now.  I might not agree totally with the way he views the world, but appreciate his intelligence, creativity, insight etc. I hardly care that I disagree.  Is that so wrong?

And here I leave off, I may come back and put in more works.  I haven’t read A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, The Giver or the Narnia books, but I can only believe the overwhelming majority of people who like them.

As I research more about the books themselves and the writers, I realize that these choices tell a little bit of a story of my own youth.  Perhaps they are not the right choices for every youth, but they were the books that made me feel less isolated in those days.  I see the contrarian that I was (am?).  Maybe I shouldn’t give these books to my kids.

Hah.  But truthfully, some of these books answer questions with more questions, rather than giving answers.  I might offer a book or two that had some answers.

In that vein I would add The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis and The Shack.  Both books that I refer to mentally repeatedly.  And a book about Mother Teresa.  And Shane Claiborne, because he is a very refreshing voice.

Gentle reader, what classics do you think young people should read?  What did you read that changed you a little bit when you were young?  What is a classic, formative in understanding this world?  Leave me your recommended fiction (nonfiction?) that is more than your average good read…please?

I have read a couple of the recipes this woman does, and I do think I am in love!  I feel like a teenager all gushy inside!

Her humor and voice is spot on, she is fun, and it would seem that she does all the things I love… cook, take pictures and homeschool.

The Pioneer Woman

This is one for the grandmas.

Tonight he took A out for a date.  They are two of my most favorite faces.

I just bookmarked some books by Zinsser who tells people like me how to write.  I need the advice.

J, my husband, is privy to many, many little stories.  And either his memory or his listening are just poor enough that he seems to not mind when I repeat a story.

He gets to hear about many of characters I have met.  And I have met many, mostly while traveling.  Like the plotnik (Russian for carpenter) who knocked on my door at 6 AM wobbling drunk.  He said something to me which was totally unintelligible to my freshly arrived ears.  And then he kissed me.  He was about 50.  I pried him off and slammed my door.  “Welcome to Russia!”  he was probably trying to say.

And for my readers who know Russia, this was not a large town, but a very small town in a small republic where the main language wasn’t even Russian, it was Chuvash.

This trend repeated itself there, in Chuvashia.  People, mostly men, were very, very friendly.  I also received attempts at kisses, men quite randomly throwing themselves at me from the gym teacher, and the minister of education.  I was told it was because I smiled.  Mental note, smiling brings unwanted attempted kissers.  The gym teacher was actually kind of cute, though, more scary than anything.

One of my favorite people, who I never actually spoke to, was a guy who lived next door to me in some apartments near Portland State University.  I lived with DaLynn, a sort of distant relation by marriage and we shared this little 2 bedroom apt.  It backed up to a green slope, there was no place to walk on the ground outside the windows of my bedroom, and the other windows next door backed up to this green slope covered with all variety of ferns, trees, weeds, blackberries as well.

I had a neighbor who liked to give himself pep talks.  In the shower.  At 7 AM or thereabouts.  Only his pep talks were pretty harsh.  He would berate himself daily.  In the shower.  Audibly.

I got used to waking up to this guy telling himself what a failure he was, how he was incompetent, ill-equipped to deal with things and how people didn’t like him.  I felt kind of bad for him.  But I also didn’t like waking up to a tirade of insults, which it took me quite awhile to figure out from whence they came.  Poor guy, I saw him on campus.  It appeared that one of his legs was longer than the other as he limped.  This was back in the days in school when I had to pay rent in 25 dollar installments sometimes, I had troubles of my own.

J told me I was the only person he knew with stories like that.  Sorry, I only remember it because it’s funny to me now.

Another interesting person I recollect was actually a lot less bizarre and only seemed odd because of circumstances.  She was my counterpart in Russia.  She was older, in her 60’s.  She was very Soviet, strong and kind of like a brick wall.  She would gather English teachers to introduce me, and remind them of all the great things she had done for them.  Grant monies, training, etc.  And then she would say “And now I bring you, AN AMERICAN!”  And there I was.  This scene replayed itself so often I got used to feeling like a little prize poodle trotted out and marched around.  And I played into it.  What else could I do?  This was the job that I had been given by Peace Corps.

So I taught.  I learned to teach about things they already knew, because my English was enough of a hurdle for many of them.  I mentioned stories taken out of their textbooks, referenced Americans that they were familiar with and waxed eloquent about Helen Keller, whose heart wrenching story was familiar to them.

I had gyms full of kids who would ask me questions like “Do you like to go to the circus with your brother?”  And I learned to answer “Yes!! I do!”  I learned not to tell them that I liked tacos, because they had no idea what that was.  Even starting off to explain with “tortilla” was too much.  I learned to stick with Pizza, which gained wide recognition as something foreign, but available in Russia as an exotic item.

Oh I went on about Ernest Hemingway, drew maps of the US which made them think I was smart (this is very important in Russia) and read books into tape recorders.  I agreed when they asked if I like serials like “Santa Barbara”, I had to learn to tell them that I did (even though I never saw it).  And I tried not to betray myself when they commented that I spoke English pretty well.

I cannot recollect right now more of the characters I have met, but I will post more when they come to me.  I can remember lots of crazy eyes, strange mantras and times when the crazy has been told to me as if it were plain fact.  It’s all good.

Lately, maybe because it is spring, I been thinking a bit about my grandma who we buried in the month of May a couple years back.  On one of my last visits to see her, we took a drive and stopped at a nursery there in Eastern Washington on Quartzite mountain, around where she lived most of her days.  I bought this rose.  And then I planted it in the ground when we moved here.  For the first time since I have owned it in about 4 years, it bloomed this year.

I stared for a long time at all the little buds on this not-previously-blooming rose.  And I sprayed away all the aphids with a quickness, to protect it.  And I visited the rose weekly, remembering when I bought it with grandma.  When I purchased it, I bought it for its brownish coral color.  It doesn’t have the same color I bought it for, but I really am just glad it is blooming.

I was glad to see this rose bloom, it was some good memories of my grandma.

And this is just a much more flashy iris that I ran across one morning as the family was out walking around.

And now on to another story.  This end of the school year has been hard.  Just simply so.  But the little ones make things better.  They throng to me and scream “Mommy!!!” when I get home, as if dad had been torturing them.  This particular day, J told me that Addy had worked all morning long on a “gift” for me.  She took me to come see it after patiently waiting for me to eat some lunch, since I was starved.  She had put the gift next to the chair, in a Christmas bag.

And she wrapped the gift carefully in legal paper with LOTS of tape.

And she even decorated the gift with a small flower.

And even the gift itself was hand made.  From kindling.  She had nailed it together herself with a little help from dad this past weekend.

But wait, that’s not all she gave me.

She drew a little picture of our house, a car, a driveway and wrote our names.  With curly cues.  And she raided the party bag to acquire some decorations for cakes and things to hold down helium balloons, just to make it more festive.  Awesome.  I was very impressed with the outpouring of thoughtfulness I received from her that morning.

But then there was also the baby to feed.  I came to her and discovered that she had stacked her carrots neatly, like blocks.  And this also made me so happy, I snapped a pic.

And let’s not forget how fond she is to dress up like a cat burglar, with the appropriate rapster flourishes of plastic rings gleaned from cupcakes worn over her gloves.  In June.  Recognize the hat, Zhenya?

I had to ask her to show off a little more.

Over the long weekend, we went to a nearby park, where we… played some basketball…

And Addy took some pictures.

Some really good pictures!

And some that were particular to the 5 year old point of view.  Notice baby toes.

And at home she kept taking pictures, from her point of view.

We also went downtown, which we hadn’t done in a long time and went to our favorite downtown toy store.

And Addy played and read books.

And this morning, we walked as I am trying to begin this AM habit.  I am not sure though now.  As Sylvie scrabbled to the top of the play structure, she lost her balance.  In this glass are two misplaced front teeth.  It is too fresh to recount, it still hurts me to think of it.  Needless to say, today her smile changed for the next several years.

In the late 90’s I lived in a house with a bunch of people of different talents, skills and interests.  It was in Portland Oregon, and I learned a lot of things there, like about making a pond with a waterfall, and not to hang hammocks on branches that are grafted on, and that sand blasting a house to get 100 years worth of paint off is a huge mess.  And I learned to love Ethiopian food, and that I could make a meal out of anything in the veggie bin that other people weren’t going to eat, and they would want me to share.

I also learned a little about vermicomposting.  I mostly just call it feeding my kitchen scraps to the worms that live in a cedar box outside, but there are some rules.  I learned pretty much everything I needed to know to start out on the internets about this whole process, but I learned alot when I did it for myself so I am going to document my process.

So, it is actually really cool, I think, this idea that you don’t have to throw all this stuff away and that you can turn it into compost for the garden.

This is how we did our vermicomposting thing.  We made a box that stands about 3 feet off the ground and is about a foot and a half deep and is three feet or so long.  My husband actually made it, and he made it out of cedar, which will not rot but has a more desirable quality than plastic, which will not vent and can heat up.  We have vents at the bottom of the bin in the form of very narrow, gaps between the boards that cover the bottom of the bin that allows drippings to come out, but in our current iteration we have no way to collect the drippings. If I made another one, I would make it much larger, because in order to harvest, we have to separate the box into two parts.  Right now, my 2 adults 2 kids family is overwhelming my box.  It isn’t large enough.

I have heard that you can do the whole thing with a rubbermaid bin, but the idea of bending over a plastic tub of worms and food scraps sounds unpleasant.  The bin will be ideal if it isn’t too deep.  Large and shallow would be ideal.  Plastic can work, but it should be opaque and should not sit in direct sunlight.  It also should be vented.

We keep our box in the corner of the yard under a tree, against a fence.  Once a week or so we empty a plastic container that has a tight sealing lid (it is something they sell to keep dog food fresh) that has collected kitchen scraps.  In very wet months I put a tarp over it to keep it from getting too wet, and also because I am not sure if frosty/snowy weather would kill the worms.  They have so far survived 2 winters, one with temps down to below freezing for weeks.  Not sure how much the tarp helped.

When I say kitchen scraps, I don’t mean the stuff off your plate after dinner because there are some rules about what the worms inside the bin can eat.

I knew that I couldn’t feed them:

• bread
• noodles/rice (at least not at first)
• meat
• eggs
• cheese or any dairy
• grease/oil
• no anything that had animal product in it.

And I knew I could put some unexpected things in it like coffee grounds, in fact, coffee grounds are very good.  And tea bags. Definitely I could put

• peels of any fruit of veg
• cores or stems
• fruits or vegetables that were starting to turn
• tops of strawberries, trimmings from peppers, celery, carrots, any fruit or vegetable, onion peels

And I was told I should not put in:

potato peels, or potatoes.  Not sure why.  They just don’t break down.  And I learned from experience that avocado peels don’t break down easily.

Egg shells need to be crushed.  Corn cobs will break down eventually.

And the stickers they put on things these days have to be meticulously taken off.  If not, they will make your compost look like garbage.

And I do put in saw dust (we don’t get a newspaper) from time to time, but not on a regular basis.

I have heard that there had to be specific amounts of things that had to go in, but once my worms were established, I just check in on them every week-ish and if they look too wet, and if I have time I might get them some sawdust or shavings.  Truthfully, there are so many worms I do not worry about my amounts.  For about the first year I was totally astonished by how fruitfully they proliferated.  And all my scraps would just disappear, poof!

So after the box was made, I had to not get just any kind of worms, I had to get special compost worms called Red Wigglers.  Fortunately there was a guy selling them, because there was no one I knew who had worms to give away at this time.  They cost a lot, 15 dollars for 500… the most expensive part of the whole project, really so get them from a friend if you can.  I would happily supply worms to anyone who wants them.  I have gazillions.  I’ll even put them into your container for you.

Once I had the worms (he sold them to me in a Chinese takeout container), I knew I needed something for the little buggers to get started in.  I threw some leaves from the previous fall into the compost bin, and then some ripped up paper and then I went and made dinner and buried my scraps in the bin.

It is very important to bury the scraps.  They can attract bad bugs like flies, and then you will have maggots if you don’t bury the scraps.  Plus, it makes it easier for the worms to get to the food, since they don’t like light (the bin has to have a lid).

I knew I was successful when I saw the little tiny white things, which are the evidence that the worms are reproducing.

Your vermicomposting bin should never stink.  If it is stinking bad, then something is wrong.  To keep it healthy, it is a good idea to turn the compost over (I basically do this when I dig a hole to bury my compost) every now and then.  If it is goopy gloppy wet, get yourself some newspaper and give it a break from new scraps for a little bit.  If there is something molding and rotting, get it out.  If meat or animal product or poo got in there, get it out.  The worms can’t do anything with that stuff.  I wouldn’t apply pesticides near the bin.

If your bin is attracting too many bugs (very possible in summer months) put it somewhere that the bugs won’t bother you.  It shouldn’t be attracting flies, but potato bugs, slugs, crane fly larvae I have seen in there.  A spider or two is good to have around the bin.

Harvesting the compost can happen as early as 3 or 4 weeks.  Once the material in the bin is a dark in color, moist and thick, it is worm castings.

There have been 2 methods I have heard about.  One, which seems bizarre and trouble some is to pull out all the compost you want and put it on a tarp in a pile.  Apparently the worms should crawl out, and then you have nothing but compost.

The other way is to only dump scraps on one side for a few months so the worms will mostly go to the side with the fresh food.  This is the reason why one should get a larger bin than what they think they will need, because in order to harvest, you should be able to cut it in half.

I have heard that the red worms are considered invasive and that one should avoid having any in the compost that gets pulled out and used for gardening.  I have also been told that if they don’t have any food scraps to eat that they will die.   So far this hasn’t been my experience.  I have a few of the red worms that are now in my raised beds because my level best I still wasn’t able to keep them all out of the harvesting of compost process.  It might not matter at all, but I notice they are still there.  I have no idea if it will in the least effect my garden.

Alot of people think vermicomposting is something they can do on their regular compost pile.  I am not sure about this.  Every vermicomposting thing I have read keeps the worms contained.

I stole this info from redwormcomposting.com

• Worm composting (also known as vermicomposting) involves the breakdown of organic wastes via the joint action of worms and microorganisms (although there are often other critters that lend a hand)
• Regular (soil and garden) earthworms cannot be used for worm composting. They will die if added to an indoor worm bin.
• Soil worms will however congregate in the lower regions of outdoor bins (if open to surrounding soil)
• Composting worms are specialized surface dwellers (not burrowers), typically living in very rich organic matter such as manure, compost heaps or leaf litter
• Most common variety used is Eisenia fetida (also spelled ‘foetida‘), although it’s larger cousin, Eisenia hortensis (a.k.a. the ‘European Nightcrawler’) is commonly used as well (more commonly to be sold as bait worms)
• Common names for E. fetida include: red worm, red wiggler, brandling worm, manure worm, tiger worm
• You won’t likely find this species on your property (unless you live on a farm, or happen to introduce them into your compost heap).
• Lumbricus rubellus is another species (and also a small reddish worm) sometimes used for vermicomposting, but is not as effective as E. fetida
• It is widely believed that a composting worm can process the equivalent of it’s own weight in waste each day. Under highly optimum conditions (not likely to be attained with a small home system) red worms have been found to process multiple times their own weight! This is very much dependent on the foodstock and how well managed the system is.
• A reasonable guideline to follow is 1/4-1/2 total worm weight in waste per day. So if you have a pound of worms, they should be able to process roughly 1/4-1/2 lb of food waste per day. Keep in mind however that you may need to feed them less during the first couple months since they usually require a period of acclimation when added to a new system.
• Red worms technically graze on the microbial community that colonizes waste materials – not really the waste itself (although they certainly ingest some of the rotting waste in the process). Some research has indicated that protozoans are the primary food source, while there is also evidence that fungi and other microbes are consumed as well.
• There have been a number of research studies indicating that vermicomposting can significantly reduce levels of pathogens in waste materials, such as biosolids.
• Red worms love (and can tolerate) very high levels of moisture content (80-90%), but they also require oxygen so it’s important to find the right balance
• One lb of composting worms is estimated to consist of approximately 1000 individuals, and can cost anywhere from $15 to $40 USD
• Surface area far more important than depth when it comes to worm bins (ie tubs work much better than buckets)
• Regular light is harmful to worms but red light is not
• Red worm eggs look like tiny straw-coloured lemons
• Baby worms look like very small versions of the adults (but have less red pigmen

Adding crushed egg shells (or other calcium sources) can help stimulate worm reproduction

Happy composting!

When it was just me at dinner time, a fancy meal meant I turned on the stove.

I enjoyed cooking, it was just that there was no real reason to cook much, since it was just me.  So, dinner could be anything from an egg sandwich (one of the most underappreciated culinary creations that I know of) made with seasoning salt, Poulsbo Bread and sprouts, and never mind the egg had to be done in bacon drippings.  Those sandwiches tasted better than most anything I can think of now, despite their humble reality.

Now, if I don’t some how put some plan of some sort for dinner, I feel like I have rather shirked my duties, since I have 4 mouths and tummies aside from my own.  Dinner and all meals are far beyond the oatmeal, toast, tea, coffee and an apple and or milk that completed my diet in my solo years.

So, at least 15 to 20 percent of my energy goes into the food I buy, the menu, the recipes, the prep, the side dishes, the presentation and all of it that happens at 6 p.m. weeknights.  Never mind the vermicomposting, or the Community Garden which requires us (read:  my woodworker husband) to go and work off the cost of our “all you can eat buffet” of organic vegetables.

The table is a big place in our house, in my head, in life and in our family.

And as I pull out some ground beef, that I eye with shirking disdain after watching Food Inc., I know that some days are meatloaf (or love loaf, as my friend calls) and some days are green curry with basmati and naan.  Some days are sandwiches with cheddar and lunchmeat, and some days are proscuitto and basil and mozzarella.  Some days are samosas, and some days are just chicken.  What can I do?  I am not the president, although that thought sends me into a food daydream that I might just have to lay down to fully appreciate…

It is a rainy Friday after all, what will I do to redeem this day?  Family time would by necessity have to be indoors because we are all full of germs, fighting off colds.

Yesterday, Sylvie redeemed the day by saying “Ow!” for the first time (imitating her sister whose stomach was being stepped on) and then she repeated “Bay-bee!” over and over bringing pure joy.  Because certainly the Mexican we had for the 4th time in a week wasn’t going to make this Thursday memorable.

So as I walk out from the freezer with my footballs of frozen ground beef and canned concentrated orange juice, I try not to think in terms of the fancy meal we are not having, and focus more on the fact that “Hey!  We get to eat food!”

Wrong meatloaf, byt the spitting image of my friend Greg.  I hope he still has a good sense of humor.

And on a side note, we will translate the meatloaf into Italian wedding soup, because deep in my heart I want to believe that the only difference between an ordinary meal and a meal we want to eat was just a little bit of creativity.  Though creativity can be hard to come by when cooking in a haze of fighting off a bug.

Throwing ones hat in the ring for a job can be stressful.  Especially if one really needs the job in order to pay rent.  Which is most of the time.

But sometimes it happens that for whatever reason, there isn’t alot of stress tied to getting a job.  This is a better place to be.  Are you still waiting for me to tell you something you don’t know yet?

I have been employed in one way or another for so many jobs, I can’t even count.  I got my first job when I was 15 at a cookie shop without my parents permission.  Then I informed them that they had to drive me to work.  I laugh so hard I slap my knee when I think of this now.  If my own daughter did this, I think I would just blink at her.

That was my first job, but my last job was a real trick.

I was interviewed by administrators of a school district of a bedroom community of Portland Oregon for a job that required me to speak Spanish.  Most of the interview was in Spanish, which is really only taxing afterward, when I pass out from fear.  They interviewed me at least 3 times, and while all that established that yes, I actually spoke Spanish and yeah, I am an actual teacher, I think that what happened afterward was the thing that got me hired.

In the last interview, there were 2 teachers in the room.  I emailed them and told them how nice it was to interview with them.  One emailed me back and said likewise.

After the interview, while waiting, I guessed that the 2 main interviewers actually had nothing to do with the on the ground position I was applying for, but the teachers did.  I knew it.  When the interviewers asked the teachers, guess what happened?  I was hired.  Because I emailed them back, I had drawn attention to myself, and because I fit the basic qualifications, I got the job. Although after I got it, I wasn’t sure I wanted it.

On the other hand there was the one job at the bank that I didn’t get.  And I would never have gotten no matter what.  Why?  Because the lady fell down 4 or 5 stairs as we walked down to the conference room where the interview was held.  Right. on. her. bum.  babump babump babump.  babump.  I should have just left right there because there was no way she would give me the job after losing face like that in front of me.  I felt bad for her.  And then I felt bad for me.  Because I needed that job.

Edit:  I didn’t just et a job, unless you count the one I got in August that I am still loving immensely.  The above referenced jobs are bygones, I have such stories to tell, but I think I told most of them once already, here.

This whole month, I am learning.

That sentence sounds a little bit like a tense error sentence that I would find in from one of my Russian speakers, but it is accurate.

Now that the big day has passed and I am exhaling a little  I can say that the mess of our days has not overcome us.  In brief, the joy robbers threatened mightily, but in the end they lost.

What is the mess?  Oh you know the mess, imagine it for yourself;  family problems, mean people without boundaries, money (or the lack),  old hurts and of course a few house falling apart problems just to keep it interesting, c’mon… nothing new.  Yawn.  I don’t even get interesting problems, just messy ones.

When I shared my mess in its complexity with an acquantaince (thought she might be a friend?), when the mess was new and I hadn’t learned the degree to which no one wants to hear about it, her only comment was “Glad I don’t have to deal with that,”

ouch.

But then she got her own mess.

And as J put it, after he was done punching things and yelling words we hoped our daughter slumbered soundly through, that we should remember how much good we enjoy.  Our kids, our jobs, our marriage intact, the sun on the holiday, the snuggles and stories, the hysterical giggles, the wagon rides with big blue eyes bundled up with a smile, the back rubs and the meals, the conversations that end with “I love you” and working together to make the Christmas gifts.  We have something worth a lot more.

This year I start to do something new to me.  I am teaching my little miss what this whole Christmas thing is, anyway.  I can’t pretend I know what I am doing.  I told her for all December we were celebrating Advent.  We read books, made cards, watched The Nativity Story and a raft of other specials.  But the best times were listening her read me the stories, and seeing just how much at the tender age of 4, how much she already had taken in.  When she did that, any concern that she might not get it went away.  She just looked at the pictures, and they told her everything down to Bethlehem and Herod.  Not to mention her pointing to the terrorists in the Time magazine and in her child innocence saying “Look mom, Mary and Joseph!”

And so just tonight brings a feeling of relief, and joy.  Again, mess, you did not win.  You may cheat and play dirty, but you did not win.

Though let me say here and now, without our family, I am not sure I would be able to say any of this.  Thank you Doug, Roberta, Tricia and John.  And mom.

I did not pose this shot.  She just is this way.  Every bit.

The amazing squealing wagon.

Cute?  or Crazy?  Does it matter?  We’ll take her however.

I bet you’re wishin’ your babe had an octopus on their head.  What? You don’t?

The smallest part of our mess this season.  What is not visible is that half of the drywall in the ceiling will have to be replaced.  What you are seeing is the insulation from the attic and pieces of the ceiling now on the ground.

I guess I thought for a moment that it wasn’t so bad that it fell all over the car, until I had to drive around with this junk all over my car for several days because all the car washes were frozen and the pipe that burst was the one that one might use to wash a car.  Note the ice on the ground, that was water from the pipe that burst.

My first year of teaching was so full of moments that one should never bring up in a job interview, and my students laughed at me so often, it turned out that they really liked me.  Not so much because I was a great teacher, because they were a great group.

The one that sticks with me starts not stateside but in Mexico.  I was 30ish and had gotten a grant to do intensive grammar and culture and teacher training in Puebla Mexico for a month.  The grammar classes were grueling, 6 hours a day parsing when to use imperfect and preterit, when to use estar and ser, culturalisms (more fun),  subjunctive and past subjunctive and having my Spanish picked apart to a point unprecedented.

The owner of the school interrupted class one day to tell us that she would be our teacher tomorrow, and that we would be having a test.  And then she put her fingers up on either side of her head and she said “Soy la pinga!”, which one could gather from context that she was saying that she was the devil or bull.  Yawn. I guess she was the toughest one.

So fast forward a year or more later, I was in class teaching my ESL kids in Portland Oregon.  They were going to have a big test the next day, and I wanted them to STUDY, which was not natural to many of them.  So I lifted my fingers up to either side of my head and I said “Soy la Pinga!!!”

I knew pretty much immediately by the shocked expressions on the faces of my Spanish speakers that something had gone very wrong.  These kids were from Guatemala and Cuba, not Mexico.  And then, they covered their mouths and tried not to die laughing of my obvious ignorance about this word.

“Okay, I just said ‘I am the devil, that’s all!”

“That’s not what it means…!”

“YES!  It is what it means!”

“No, it means something else, something on a boy…”

“OOOOOOH no it does not!  It means devil!”

Hilarity ensued as these kids ridicule me…. I laughed.

And that’s why it’s important to have a grasp on the meanings of swear words.

And I never declared that I was a pinga again.