At the end of a long day…
I’m too tired and busy this week to really write substantial posts, but since it’s been a few days, I’ll give you a quick glimpse of my sleepy mind. I got five hours of sleep last night. I jerked awake when my alarm went off, still thinking I was inside the dream I was having where I was at a conference in the world’s most ghetto hotel, and I was worried about the safety of the people I was with. I didn’t know what that means–I’m never very good at interpreting dreams–but I did know that I needed caffeine fast.
My friends Betty and Melanie, and my college roommate Sarah got me hooked on coffee in college. Back then, I slept whenever I wanted to and didn’t care if I was up until 4 in the morning, so I drank coffee at all hours of the day and night. Now, I’m hooked on caffeine and will actually get headaches if I don’t get it in the mornings. I am annoyed with myself for being addicted to it, but I don’t really care enough to do something about it. Ever since I got braces (stupid things), I am not supposed to drink coffee. But I do. Nothing starts my day off better, particularly when I can go to Starbucks and get my favorite–tall nonfat white mocha with peppermint. Ahhh.
Drinks are definitely my comfort food. When I’ve had a rough day, I sit on the couch and drink Diet Cokes until I forget about it. If it came from Sonic and has a little cherry in it, all the better My sisters and I celebrate good things with trips to Starbucks. When it’s too hot for coffee, I like their passion iced tea. I’ve even got my hubby drinking it. A little.
Anybody else out there do this? Have a food or drink that never fails to lift your spirits?
School days
You really should check out my husband’s blog, since his inspired this post. (By the way, he brought me pretty jewelry as a back-to-school present today. He’s pretty great.:) ) He wrote a blog today about his elementary school memories, and with school right around the corner, I’m having some flashbacks too. So here are some of my Top Elementary School Memories.
1. Sitting on the carpet in my mom’s kindergarten class, hoping hoping hoping that she wouldn’t separate my best friend and me.
2. Accidentally walking in on a girl in the bathroom and being reviled by everyone I knew as a creppy perv.
3. My first boyfriend bringing me candy, which my father ate.
4. My sister and I dressing identically, hoping people would think we were twins. (It happened much more often than you might think, based on how now she’s much taller and hotter than I am.)
5. Walking my little sister across the railroad tracks to her preschool and feeling Grown Up. Walking back to school by myself, talking to myself right out loud and laughing at how witty I was.
6. The awesome days when my mom would give me a Lunchable to put in my lunch box.
7. Hating New Kids on the Block just because they were cool. But also being jealous of my sister’s super-cool NKOTB sleeping bag.
8. Making up insane imaginary games and bossing everyone around as to how they should be played. Also making up clubs, but only if I could be president. I had a few control issues.
9. Writing and illustrating books with my friends, which we planned to sell and become famous authors.
10. Piling out of the clown car with my family.
11. Trying very hard to go to sleep at Beta Convention before bad movies came on HBO that I knew would get me in trouble if my parents found out I watched them.
12. Attending the funeral of my best friend’s nephew, being with her while she touched his tiny hand.
Literature Concerns
Over the past year, I have been reading a variety of young adult books, hoping to find more options that my students would be interested in. In doing so, I have started reading blogs written by some of the authors I like. Today, while reading one of these blogs, written by an author I have very much admired, I was really taken aback by a rant against classic literature in the classroom and insinuating that the teachers who use it are responsible for making students hate reading.
I’ll admit I’m a classic literature nerd. I love Of Mice and Men, Huckleberry Finn, Pride and Prejudice, and yes, even Great Expectations. I think everyone should read these books, and not because they are “good for you” or even because they have been traditionally taught at certain grade levels. These authors are amazing, and they offer things that readers can’t get anywhere else. Some of these books are not easy to read, but I see that as a good thing. If people only read things that are easy to understand, they never stretch their minds and grow. Students need a challenge, and they need to learn to look at things from different points of view.
I think there’s a misunderstanding about classic literature–too many people perceive it as boring and out of date, which couldn’t be further from the truth. The books are so very relevant. I’ve had so many students who were pleasantly surprised when they got into a particular novel that they thought would be dull, and they were fascinated by it. The classics definitely belong in the classrooms. But that doesn’t mean that those are the only types of books students should read, or that there isn’t much to learn from other types of novels too. I love young adult literature–I have spent most of my day today rereading The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Maybe it’s silly, but it’s a lot of fun to read, and that’s important. I love discussing all types of books with my students. And there are so many other genres students are interested in–anime, sci fi, etc.
All students operate on different reading levels too. That’s okay with me–education is not a competition. People have to learn at their own rate. One of the things I love about teaching is differentiation, trying to find a way to reach each student on his/her own level. It’s not always easy, or even possible, but it’s part of my job. No matter how fun or relevant to real life a book is, there is no one book or genre that is going to reach all students. They need a variety, ideally covering ALL genres.
Reading problems are huge in schools today, and there’s no easy solution. I’ve thought about this so much over the past year that I’m not sure what I’ve written even makes sense, or expresses exactly what I think about the issue. I guess what bugged me the most about reading this blog is that while we search for a solution, we’re all supposed to be on the same side here. I don’t understand people who rant against classic literature, or YA literature, or any other kind. They are all important. People just need to READ.
Need good food
As usual, I’m thinking about food. I just finished my blueberry muffin breakfast and I’m already contemplating lunch and wondering if I can find an excuse to get myself to town this afternoon in time for Sonic’s Happy Hour. I got hooked on Sonic drinks during the Writing Project, and now that I don’t drive by it every day I feel deprived.
For the past seveal years, I have spent my summers watching the Food Network and cooking a lot. I had a great time watching Rachael Ray, Giada De Laurentiis, Emeril, and Paula Deen, picking up tips, and picking out recipes to try on my very willing husband. I have even considered cooking as among my favorite activities, which was a surprise to me, since for the first 20 or so years of my life, I would have much rather been reading a book. My husband says I’m not bad in the kitchen either. At least, I’ve come a long way from that first year we were married, when my fried chicken ended up half burned and half raw, and the poor guy tried to eat it anyway.
But not so much this summer. I just don’t feel motivated. Maybe it’s because most of my favorite Food Network shows aren’t running as much as they used to. After she started this new talk show, Rachael Ray quit doing as many of her Food Network shows, like $40 a Day, which I loved. After she had this baby, Giada seems to have cut way back on her Everyday Italian. And I guess since I’m not tuning in for those two as much, maybe it just seems like there’s not as much Paula Deen in my life either. So I don’t have as much inspiration. Plus, every time I turn on the TV, it seems like there’s another dumb challenge or reality cooking contest on. It’s annoying. I don’t need competition on my food TV. I just need food.
But I miss cooking all the time. I really do love it–chopping veggies, reading cookbooks for fun, planning meals, tossing indredients while dancing to whatever music is playing (all right, so that part isn’t necessary, but it makes the process much more fun). I really want to stop eating out so much–although I’ll still be visiting Sonic for Happy Hour, thank you very much. So if anyone has any good ideas for tasty summer recipes, I am definitely open to the suggestions.
The aftermath
The worst part about going on vacation is unpacking when you get home. It takes forever, and with me anyway, it always seems to lead to more problems. I don’t know why I thought it would be a good idea to dump the damp bathing suits out on the laundry room floor. Despite brushing my feet off every time I leave, I am pretty sure I have managed to track sand into every corner of my house now. I see little white gleaming particles everywhere. Guess I’m going to have to vacuum too. There is no food to eat in my house, but, inexplicably, there is a bag of leftover snacks on my front porch. I have no idea how it got there. I know we brought everything in last night. I’m leaving it there until Joe gets home–maybe he can explain it.
The trips are always worth it though, even if I can only get away for a long weekend. And while I love to fly, I think my preference will always be driving. I’m not a morning person, but I love getting up just before daylight to load up the car with beach towels and bathing suits, toss a bag of ice in the cooler, and pile in my favorite snacks. Joe and I generally make road trip CDs, trying to outdo each other with a cool mix of fun songs to sing along with and a few guilty pleasures to make each other crazy. I usually do better with the latter–I have a huge collection of crappy country and pop that makes him want to cut off his own ears. For this trip, though, I listened to Springsteen albums on my iPod as we rolled through Tennessee and Georgia. You get a totally different perspective on the Boss when you listen to him while driving through this gorgeous countryside rather than while sprawling on the couch browsing websites.
I’ve always loved long-distance car trips, although my husband says it’s because I’m generally not the one driving and have time to enjoy it. I disagree. After I graduated from high school, my family and I took an epic road trip out west, to the Badlands, Mount Rushmore, and Yellowstone, and then down to Las Vegas and over to the Grand Canyon. I’m not going to claim that I drove a ton, but I have fond memories of speeding through Montanna with everyone else in the van asleep. We were in the middle of nowhere, so I couldn’t pick up a thing on the radio. I simply drove and drank in the scenery. It was awesome. You can’t get that feeling hundreds of feet overhead in a plane, where the clouds are lovely, but they block out everything else.
I just got home last night, but I’m ready for the next trip, where and whenever it may be. But I have to stop for now. This load of laundry has just finished, and I guess it’s time to start cleaning up the sand. (Sigh.)
Home again
I haven’t posted in a few days because I’ve been out of town. My parents and hubby and I took a long weekend in St. Augustine, Florida. It was wonderful. St. Augustine is the oldest city in the United States. When Joe and I went to England a couple of years ago, I was fascinated by all the history that people just take for granted. I loved seeing a little of that in America too.
My mom went to St. Augustine when she was a little girl with her parents, and she says the town hasn’t changed that much. We drove past the old jail and briefly visited the Castillo de San Marcos. The old downtown is so cute–lots of adorable little shops and places to eat terrific seafood. We stayed near the beach for a couple of nights and got up early to walk on the sand. It’s a beautiful beach. The waves were high and, judging from the number of people attempting it, perfect for surfing. I didn’t do anything more than use a boogie board, and nearly drowned doing that. The waves had me doing underwater somersaults and scraping up my knees, and they swallowed my sunglasses. But it was so much fun!
Besides the beach, my favorite stops were the Fountain of Youth and the old lighthouse. Much of the Fountain of Youth tour was hilarious to me–the two-story globe and the planetarium show are very much relics of my mom’s youth. But the grounds are pretty and the tour guide told us a lot of stuff I never learned in school. For instance, after finding the Fountain, Ponce de Leon drank barrels of water from it, and bathed in it, and he ended up living around 30 years longer than other Spaniards of his era. He died when he was shot in the leg with an arrow in a fight with natives. He wore armor to protect his head and chest, but nothing to cover his lower body because his high rank allowed him to wear a very short skirt which he didn’t want to cover up. Ah, vanity. Maybe if he would have worn a longer skirt he would have lived forever. We also got to drink water from the Fountain of Youth. It’s disgusting–smells and tastes like old eggs. I could only manage a sip, but the tour guide said that should get me thirty extra years. We’ll see.
I would write more, but I have to unpack and do laundry. I’ll be back with more tomorrow!
Tift Merritt
This is a weird day. I’m still trying to wake up from an odd night of sleep, and my brain keeps catching on random thoughts. To try to get myself moving, I am watching the Food Network–Emeril is on–and reading blogs about one of my favorite artists, Tift Merritt.
I’m so excited because I get to go see Tift in concert in a couple of weeks. She’s finally coming back to this area, and I’ll be able to see her play twice. For those of you who have never heard Tift sing, you’re missing out. I fell in love with her music when my hubby was still getting the magazine No Depression (the fact that it’s out of business now is a absolutely a crime). We stopped by Ear X-tacy in Louisville, and I was restless for something new. Joe scanned the alt-country CDs for a few minutes and pulled out her second album, Tambourine. “I think she’s someone you’d like,” he said.
As usual, he was right on. (But don’t tell him that.) Tift’s melodic voice manages to sound comfortable and passionate at the same time. She sounds like someone you could be friends with, someone it would be easy to get to know. Her songs on Tambourine quickly became some of my favorites, and I think I like her latest album, Another Country, even more. These songs have a personal quality that makes them easy to connect to. Tift worked on this album during an extended vacation in Paris, and you can hear her rejuvenation in the songs. They are a relief to listen to when I’m stressed out, especially “I Know What I’m Looking for Now.”
I also have to recommend The Spark, Tift’s radio show, in which she interviews artists about the way they work. It’s a relatively new enterprise for her, and the offbeat shows are lighthearted and fun. It’s a new program, so she hasn’t done a ton of interviews yet, but the few that are available are interesting. They can be downloaded from iTunes, and listened to from her website and on Marfa Public Radio. My favorite so far is her interview with Nick Hornby. Check her out and let me know what you think.
Born in a small town.
“Educated in a small town / Taught the fear of Jesus in a small town / Used to daydream in that small town / Another boring romantic that’s me.” –John Mellencamp, “Small Town”
“Small Town” is my favorite Mellencamp song. I love almost everything about being from a small town. I love sitting on my front porch overlooking farm land, and moving to the back porch to see the thick stretch of trees bordering the yard. I love waiting in line at Subway and chatting with the guy behind me, whom I’ve known absolutely for my whole life because we went to church together, and our parents still do. I love how quiet it is out here and how people still wave when they pass you. If I ever get bored, Louisville is just a couple of hours away; Nashville is even closer. I feel like I live in the best spot possible, if I could choose from anywhere in the entire world.
But small town life does have its disadvantages. You can get so used to your small-town routines that sometimes, without realizing it, your vision can narrow until all you focus on is the predictable patterns and experiences that define your little corner of the world. My husband, who didn’t grow up here, is obsessed with eating breakfast at a little diner on the edge of a nearby town. When he first mentioned it, I was shocked. “Why can’t we eat there?” he asked.
“Well…I’ve never eaten there before,” I said. My husband thought it was stupid, and he was right–I honestly could come up with no better reason. Why shouldn’t we stop in some Saturday morning and have breakfast on the way to the grocery? I didn’t know. All I knew is that I had never, ever eaten breakfast there, and so there must be something wrong with it. Right?
Part of the reason that my husband and I moved back here is that we were hoping to have kids quickly, and this is an excellent place to raise them. We’re still hoping. I’m excited at the thought of raising my children in a small town, where they can run down to the store for a Coke or take off on their bikes without my freaking out that they’re going to get kidnapped. But I worry about the smallness of mind that can accompany small town living, the ruts you can get into where you won’t try a diner because it’s not your habit, or you won’t accept someone because they behave or look differently from you. It doesn’t have to be that way though. I hope that my children, whenever they arrive, will be able to sink their roots deep into this place and always have it to call home. I hope they can experience lazy summer days lying in hammocks and long hot evenings catching lightning bugs. But I also hope that they always keep their minds and hearts refreshed and renewed, that they stick to their faith in Jesus, and that they experience the great big world outside this place and all it has to offer.
Summer Reading: Joshilyn Jackson
Two years ago, my husband and I planned a trip to Pensacola. I was dying for the beach, and I convinced him it was a good idea by letting him route our trip through Alabama and Mississippi so we could hit some music museums he wanted to see, and of course, our favorite place: Oxford, Mississippi. A day or so before we left, I headed to Barnes and Noble to pick out some beach reads. Cosmo, definitely, and I needed a new book. I didn’t have a lot of requirements for the book; it just had to look interesting and like a decent escape. I did not want to sit on the beach reading Wuthering Heights.
I guess it took me a while to sort through every book in the store, because finally Joe came up to me holding a copy of Gods in Alabama, by Joshilyn Jackson. I’d never heard of it, but (proof of how ready he was to go home) he pointed out that Glamour had given it a good review on the back, comparing it to Steel Magnolias. Sounded perfect for a beach read, and I’m a sucker for southern fiction anyway.
It was better than I could have imagined, so much more interesting than the chick lit I had been looking for. From the first sentence: “There are gods in Alabama: Jack Daniels, high school quarterbacks, trucks…” I was lost in the world of Arlene Fleet. I was never quite sure I really wanted to be friends with her–her sweet cousin Clarice sounded like a much safer bet–but I was instantly immersed in the mystery and familiarity of her life. I knew people like Arlene, with just enough craziness to make them lovable. A novel about the the complexities and secrets among women in families, Gods in Alabama sucked me in, and I couldn’t escape. I didn’t want to. I spent the entire trip down to Pensacola reading hilarious bits out loud to my husband and trying to explain to him why I just couldn’t put this book down. I think he regretted suggesting it.
Ultimately, it’s a story about which secrets are worth keeping, and what exactly you would be willing to do for the people you love. It was so powerful, endearing, and captivating that I had a hard time paying attention to the beach I’d waited months to visit. Growing up in Kentucky, I could completely relate to the setting Joshilyn Jackson created and to her description of southern culture, but you don’t have to be southern to relate to this book, or any of her subsequent novels: Between, Georgia, and The Girl Who Stopped Swimming. If you’re looking for something wonderful to read this summer, definitely check out Joshilyn Jackson.
