Monthly Archives: April 2012

Citrus Cake and Appreciation

Posted by Jackie in conversations, education and tagged with , , ,
Happy Teacher Appreciation Week 2006

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week 2006 (Photo credit: angegreene)

This weekend I had a fit of cooking and baking energy and made fudge krinkle cookies, applesauce banana bread, and a three-cheese pasta al forno for dinner on Sunday with homemade garlic bread. I finished with a citrus cake, baked in a tube pan and topped with a lemon-flavored powdered sugar glaze.

It’s the cake that stands out to me, though, because I baked it for the annual Teacher Appreciation Luncheon the PTA at my girls’ school holds each year, in honor of Teacher Appreciation Week. This year, the luncheon was held a little early because the school’s annual spring festival is on May 12. I’ve participated in both of these events for the past five years, but since my girls are changing school in the fall, this will be the last time I participate in either.

On the one hand, my life will be easier next year, logistically, and I’m looking forward to this big change for our family. On the other hand, however, my children have had excellent teachers at their current school, and we’ve found a wonderful community of parents and families there. We have tried to show our appreciation of the teachers in different ways throughout our time there, by volunteering in the classroom, sending in donations of supplies from paper towels to posterboard to pencils, and by purchasing books for all my girls’ teachers, current and former, at the Scholastic Book Fair each year. We try to show our appreciation of the community by volunteering at events like movie nights, field days, bake sales and book fairs.

While I have an array of fears about next year, one recent fear is that my girls’ current and former teachers and school community will think we are leaving because we are pissed off about public schools. My kids have had great teachers, and I hope they know how much we have appreciated them over the years. We are not leaving for any reason having to do with teachers, employees, or the treatment my children have received, and we are definitely open to returning to the public school system at some point in the future, if that turns out to be best for our girls.

There are certainly valid reasons to be pissed off with schools, and there are systemic and pervasive problems in many of our school systems, as well as how we think (and spend) nationally about education.The number of students in the average public school classroom, for example, is a big philosophical problem for me. But at the same time, there are thousands of teachers, employees and administrators who are doing their best to work within flawed systems for the good of the students they interact with every day. Are there bad apples in the bunch? Of course. Are there employees who take advantage of the flaws in the system? Sadly, of course. But that should not distract our attention away from the employees who are dedicating their lives to our kids, or from the systems that need to be reformed.

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Easy Wishes

Posted by Jackie in writing

Each summer, my girls and I make a list of things we want to do, from day trips to craft projects, from mundane to ambitious. We never get to every item, but making the list is always fun.

This year, the first two items on their list? Squeezing out an entire tube of toothpaste and pulling every tissue out of a box of tissues, both inspired by different Ramona books. They were super excited when I said that we could definitely do both of these things this summer.

Small pleasures from my own small treasures, indeed.

Careers for A Parallel Life

Posted by Jackie in all about me, conversations and tagged with , , ,
Top 10 Pastry Chefs

Top 10 Pastry Chefs (Photo credit: Stacie Joy for CTTC)

As my husband graduates from law school this summer, career transitions are definitely on his mind. While he preps his resume and drafts cover letters, we’ve also been trading jokey emails back and forth about the big abrupt career shifts we might also make, in an alternate universe.

So far today, he’s settled on cowboy, but FBI agent has popped up before, based probably on too many episodes of Criminal Minds and viewings of Silence of the Lambs. For me, today, it’s pastry chef, perhaps inspired by too many viewings of Top Chef Just Desserts, but also on the satisfaction that baking brings me. I also daydream about running a small storefront bakery, full of pies and cookies, cakes and doughnuts.

I don’t expect him to take up horseback riding or cattle ranching, and I will probably never know how to make a showpiece out of crystallized sugar or chocolate. But I’m sure we’re not alone in daydreaming about lives that seem to be the total opposite of the ones we are living now.

How about you? What’s your parallel life career?

Poetry as Journaling

Posted by Jackie in blogging, poetry, writing and tagged with , , ,

One of the unexpected side benefits of my poem-a-day month has been that I have found myself using the poem prompts almost as I would journal prompts. You can look back over the 22 poems I’ve written (yes, I’m a little behind) and get a pretty good sense of my emotional state in the past few weeks, the days when I’ve been down and the days when I’ve been up.

Blogging has been a wonderful tool and definitely made me a better writer, but for me, it’s never been a confessional-style journaling tool. I’m not a blood-and-guts kind of blogger, preferring to save my most revealing moments for longer-form work. I’ve published poems and essays about my life, but that’s not what blogging has ever been about for me, even though I knew it would limit me as far as popularity. I don’t see this as “emotionally shut down,” but simply as self-awareness about what I want blogging to be, and how I want to function as a writer. I want you, my readers, to feel like you know me, but not like you know all of me.

So the poems I’ve been writing, which are all attempts to capture certain moments or emotions, have really been valuable to me, personally and as a writer. As a poet, I like some of what I’m coming up with, but even more, I’m finding some of that release that every diarist knows, when we hit upon the exact right word that expresses what we’re feeling, and our soul feels a little lighter. It’s a nice combination, and I’m trying to think of ways to keep it going after my month is over. I know Poetic Asides does a Wednesday Poetry Prompt, and I’m wondering what else I might be able to find.

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Monday

Posted by Jackie in all about me

Your earliest alarm goes off, and you roll over. 40 minutes later, you roll back and sigh with exhaustion. The chill in the air tells you that yesterday’s grayness and raininess has hung around, and your feet already feel cold.

None of your clothes look good to you any more at this point in the school year. You try on and discard three different outfits while your husband snores peacefully. You realize that you’re running really late and run downstairs to find that you’re out of lunchbox materials, according to your accusatory children. You send a quick email to the school secretary. You run back upstairs, and curse the day.

You find a halfway decent outfit that doesn’t make you shudder at the sight of yourself. You fix your hair and makeup and remember that you’re out of perfume, which always makes you feel uncomfortable, like going out in public without your false teeth would (you imagine). You wake up your husband and pick a petty bitter fight with him. You always have to do everything and this one time can’t he even help you?! He finally agrees to take the children to school and pick up lunch stuff on the way. Don’t be late, you snarl, they already sent us a letter about lateness! (Don’t do it that way, that’s stupid, do it this way!) Don’t let them be late!

You change your sweater. He lurches downstairs and shuffles the kids into the car. You run downstairs and then clatter back upstairs for a barrette, then downstairs, then you grab a snack bar for breakfast and accept that there’s no time to pack a sensible lunch. You leave the house, finally. You run back inside when you realize you’ve left your laptop. You run back outside and try to dodge, for the second time, the large overgrown bushes on either side of the front porch steps. They shower droplets of rain on you and you realize that the day is even chillier than you thought. Sandals might have been a mistake, but it’s already too late. The bushes will have to wait until later too.

Finally, you make it to school. You unpack yourself, check your emails, realize that you have more grading left to do than you thought. You realize you’re going to feel behind and discombobulated all day. You have Poptarts for lunch.

It’s Monday.

Emotional Eating (and a poll!)

Posted by Jackie in all about me, conversations, polls and tagged with , , ,
A US Milky Way candy bar, broken in half to sh...

A US Milky Way candy bar, broken in half to show contents. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My daughter Lucy was feeling nervous last week about beginning a new activity, and I heard myself saying, “Well, we could always go to Coldstone afterwards to help make you feel better, if you want.” The more I thought about it later, the more it began to bother me, both how that was my instant response, and how I phrased it to my growing young girl

While I have never really struggled with my weight, I have spent a lot of time over the recent years thinking about my own food and eating habits and how I’d like to do some things differently. I struggled to quit caffeinated soda, and now I’ve tackled trying to eliminate soda altogether. I have struggled with exercising regularly and eating more vegetables, and I have done so many stops-and-starts that I get frustrated and discouraged, but keep trying to start again.

Sure, I’m concerned with my own health, but one of the driving motivations is that I want my daughters to have better health habits than I do. That’s why we bribed them to add vegetables to their diet, and that’s why I drive one to ballet and the other to rock-climbing and insist on semi-regular family hikes and walks. I want them to have better ideas about how to care for themselves than I feel like I often do.

Recently, this has been on my mind in terms of my tendency to eat emotionally, or “feed my feelings,” as I’ve seen other people call it. I know I’m by no means alone in this habit, but it still seems like a good one to be more aware and reflective about, if I can manage it. Some experts see it as a problem if you’re trying to lose weight, while others believe that emotional eating can help you stay slender as long as you choose something you really want and focus deliberately on enjoying it, without overeating or starting with an empty stomach. This last approach makes sense to me: it’s not that I think Coldstone is evil, or that I’m worried about obesity. I’ll never deny my love of classic comfort food or make my girls feel like it’s not okay to go out for a celebratory cone or slice of cheesecake. But when I “feed my feelings,” often what I used to reach for is potato chips, soda or a candy bar,  none of which actually ever made me feel much better. Eating an entire medium-sized bag of chips now makes me feel sick, and wolfing down a candy bar after a stressful day doesn’t relieve much stress. I don’t want my own kids to rely on this pattern regardless of what their weight may or may not be, and I want them to know how to feed their emotional hunger in other ways.

In all honesty, I feel like “feeding my feelings” is a habit I have eroded steadily as I’ve grown older, but there is still enough of it left that I worry about my girls feeling the same way. I ended up taking my girls out for dinner so we could talk and enjoy some pizza before Lucy’s activity instead, and teaching her some deep-breathing patterns she could try to help calm herself down that day, and I think those were the right approaches to take, approaches that I think will be more useful in the future than an instant application of ice cream would have been. For the future, I hope to help them both (as well as myself) keep building their emotional toolbox, and filling it with plenty of strategies–plus a little comfort food along the way.

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Pottermore!

Posted by Jackie in authors, media mentions and tagged with , , ,
Pottermore

Pottermore (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

How did I spend my Saturday night? Definitely geeking out over Pottermore, which is finally open to the general public! Many of us Potter devotees have been waiting since the summer, so this was a thrilling moment.

Now that I have seen Pottermore, I still find it hard to describe what it is, exactly. The official description is “a unique and free-to-use website which builds an exciting online experience around the reading of the Harry Potter books.” But is it a social networking site? A video game? So far, it seems to be a little of both. I have made friends with Dana Huff, and and I have dueled, made potions, and collected Galleons that I can use to buy schoolbooks or potion ingredients. But while I’ve enjoyed collecting Galleons and other items as I made my way through the chapters, that is not the main appeal for me. The times when I’ve felt so excited that Pottermore is finally open are when I’ve seen the gorgeous illustrations, heard the sounds,and most importantly, gotten to read the J.K. Rowling exclusive pieces. Ever wanted to know more about Mr. Ollivander? Professor McGonagall? Why toads are unpopular pets to bring to Hogwarts? There’s so much to read and learn, and all of it is rewarding for any HP fan. Of course, it was wonderful to be sorted (Ravenclaw, which I’ve always felt a real affinity for), and to purchase my own wand from Ollivander’s (cypress, with unicorn-hair core). But getting to delve deeper into this beloved world, and learn more about some of my most favorite characters, is truly special.

There’s a ton of fan-created art throughout the site, which I think is also really special for kids like my students, who love to imagine their favorite characters and worlds. The official Pottermore Insider blog does a really nice job of highlighting many of these examples as well. I’m also glad that the fan art is not dominant, however, but viewable in separate galleries. I’m not very good at making potions or dueling, but to be fair, I’m using a trackpad mouse and have not put very much effort into getting good (yet).

My main concern at this point is that only the first book exists on the site so far, and I’m already craving more! I have to admit also at feeling tantalized by what has been made available and longing for more; for example, you can collect rare books in the library, but you cannot read them! I’m hoping to be more satisfied once the long-awaited Harry Potter encyclopedia appears.

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Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Posted by Jackie in book reviews, writing and tagged with , , , , ,
Pacific Crest Trail logo

Pacific Crest Trail logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There’s a genre of books, and memoirs, that could be summed up as “I went to the woods” books, inspired by or akin to Thoreau‘s famous Walden manifesto about life in the woods and why you should seek it out. You know the one: you read it in high school English class or you remember it being quoted in Dead Poets Society. Here’s a refresher: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived….I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world” (Thoreau). As our society gets ever more technologically connected, these memoirs seem even more relevant and appealing.

Most often, these tales are written by men, but Cheryl Strayed‘s Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail makes for a funny, sexy, gritty and feminine addition to the category. It might sound funny to use the word “sexy” to describe a story in which the author loses five toenails and doesn’t shower for weeks on end, but even without the sensual interlude Strayed does find along the trail, she describes plenty of other sexual episodes with Joe, her heroin addict ex-boyfriend, and the confidence she gains through each daunting section of the trail. I found the book easy to connect to on personal levels, as Strayed and I share some similarities, but I think it’s also so easy to connect to the narrative because Strayed has such a distinctively honest and intimate voice, so that you feel like she’s talking directly to you.

Like many, I was a fan of Strayed’s for months before I knew her name, while I was reading her work on the fabulous Dear Sugar advice columns at The Rumpus, which are being collected as a forthcoming book as well, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar (Vintage). If you haven’t been a fan of Sugar’s, I can’t recommend her work highly enough, and if you are a fan, you’ll find Wild a great read as well.

However, even if you don’t know Strayed’s work at all, I think Wild is really a great read, with a brutal beauty in the style of writing as well as the landscape it depicts.

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Getting Drafty

Posted by Jackie in daily blog challenges, poetry, writing and tagged with , , , ,

So far in April, I’ve written sixteen poems, following the prompts given at Poetic Asides for the 2012 Poem-A-Day Challenge, and including an additional tanka challenge.

Now, have I written one each day? No, there have definitely been points where I lagged behind and then caught up, drafting several poems in a day. I’ve got one to go right now, actually, a prompt from a few days ago involving the idea of shadows and shade.

Have I written sixteen good poems? Definitely not; most are first drafts, and some I knew were not very good, even as I wrote them down.

So what is the value, then, of a challenge like this? I would say part of the value is that you push yourself to pile up a lot of shitty first drafts, as Anne Lamott wrote in her wonderful book on writing, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (please buy a copy of that if you don’t already have it, whether you use my link or not). The value of the shitty first draft is overcoming procrastination and perfectionism and getting something down on paper without worrying about whether it’s good yet or not. According to Lamott, every good writer has to do these drafts before you get to the good drafts, and I think I’m not alone in finding this reassuring. There’s a version of this sentiment at work in National Novel Writing Month as well, where they value “enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft” and say, “Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.”

Will I revise each and every one of these drafts further? No, probably not. But I can tell already that some of them have potential as ideas, and I know also that some of them have some good lines, or at least the germ of a good line, and any poet knows the value of one great line.

I think that once I’m done this challenge, I’ll have some good candidates for further revision, and some recoverable lines that I’ll plant in new poems. But more importantly, I’ll have gained some momentum through carving out time to regularly engage the poetic gear of my writer’s mind, and that will surely benefit me.

Poetry March Madness, Round Two

Posted by Jackie in poetry, teaching, writing and tagged with , ,

As promised, the time has come to blog about this year’s poetry March Madness tournaments in my classes. Before I tell you the results, here are a few ways I modified my efforts this year, rather than duplicating how I handled it last year:

  • Instead of staying digital, this year I printed out paper brackets and made a bulletin board display, with the brackets, the booklet of poems, and a page describing the public poetry extra credit project
  • I reserved several days for the tournaments, rather than spreading them out over the month of March. As our spring break is usually in March, consolidating the poems helped keep momentum going this year
  • I randomly assigned students to read certain poems, rather than letting them choose, which saved us some time
  • We finished the unit by having students choose one poem from the booklet and write a timed explication of about three paragraphs. They were allowed to bring in a carefully annotated copy of the poem, as well as a chart listing poetic devices, with corresponding examples from the poem.

So who won? Well, just as last year, Still I Rise and Mid-Term Break were the finalists from my three sections. Once again, we have a strong inspirational poem and a really heart-breaking one!

I’m really happy with how the tournament went this year, so I think I may keep these revisions for next year. I’ve thought some about changing up the poems I use, but haven’t made any real decisions yet. Either way, I think this unit is definitely a keeper.

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