Moving...!

Got married, moving to Mexico, got a new blog: http://mattandmollyminor.wordpress.com/

My life these days.

My life has been insane lately. Like, utterly and completely filled with work like never before in the history of me. I didn't work half this much last year. I never worked this much in college. And lord knows I didn't work this much at Grosvenor. (Ah...the days of a true 9-5).

Basically, my days go something like this:

5:00 - Alarm #1 goes off (switch phone to vibrate and hit snooze)
5:15 - Alarm #2 goes off (hit snooze again)
5:30 - Get out of bed, boil water for tea while I brush my teeth (I always seem do multitask those two things), throw on clothes that barely match, put my hair in ponytail because I probably didn't shower yesterday, contacts in, grab my external harddrive, throw a yogurt in my lunch bag, make my mug of tea, and rush out the door by 5:45.
6:05 - Get to school, dump my stuff, walk across campus to sign in, make 100 - 400 copies, write stuff on my board, post lesson plans on the door, queue up my powerpoint, set out papers for kids to pick up on the way in, and get ready for kids to walk in the door at...
7:00 - ...when the 'go-to-class' bell rings.
7:11 - First block starts. Teach until...
12:17 - ...third block ends. Eat lunch in the faculty lounge, savor the adult company, inappropriate jokes and swearing for 30 minutes, come back to my trailer to work from...
1:00 - 2:10 - Grade work, enter grades, send emails, enter attendance, make more copies, print off stuff for tomorrow, work on lessons until...
2:10 - 2:20 - ...afternoon duty. Walk back across campus, stand in the courtyard, catch up with students from last year on their way to the bus, encourage everyone to keep moving towards the bus lot.
2:20 - 4:00 - Work at school, meetings, more printing or copying, more grading and entering grades into the computer, more emails, more lesson planning.
4:00 - 6:00 - Drive home, eat something, change my clothes, check my gmail, check facebook, read some online news so I'm not completely clueless about the world outside West Meck, run (if i'm lucky to have the time), shower (if I'm lucky), put off doing dishes/laundry/cleaning because I have no time for such luxuries.
6:00 - 10:30- Plan lessons, type up lesson plans, make worksheets, make quizzes, make tests, make guided notes, make graphic organizers, make powerpoints, make warm up exercises
10:30 (if I'm lucky) - Sleep!!!


My recent conclusion? This is not working. It leaves me with zero time to like, oh, live my life like a normal person. So...I have come up with a plan to get ahead and actually get my weekends free. It doesn't really involve me doing any LESS work, as best I can figure, but it does involve doing it on a schedule and working ahead. Basically, doing more work on the weekdays so I can at least have weekends off.

Isn't it beautiful?!! Okay. It is to me. What's most beautiful? That green circle there? It's a weekend. Notice anything about it? Oh yeah....it DOESN'T HAVE ANY WORK WRITTEN ON IT.


Knock on wood. Next semester my life will be 10 times easier, because my Civics classes start over again, which means I get to use all the plans I've made already this year. And I am being obsessive about naming and organizing files as I make them, so I can find them next semester. But meantime, I'm just trying to figure out little ways to cut down on the work so I don't have to wait until January to have a life. I think my beautiful calendar plan is a good first start.


Also...I still actually kind of love my job. But I need it to be something I can love...that doesn't um, you know, make me go insane and lose all my hair.

"Oh my god Stalonda"

We learned about diversity and multiculturalism the other day in my Civics and Econ class. As part of their homework, I asked them to imagine they were moving to another country and then write an email or facebook message to a friend, telling them what parts of their culture or identity they would change or keep when they moved. I told them to imagine going someplace very different than America. These were some of my favorite responses:

“Oh my god Stalonda, down here the girls suppose to cover up everything but their eyes. I’m like so we can’t show our legs or arms. We not even suppose to speak to the male. I feel like this is a situation that you can get killed if you don’t follow this rules. I will follow the top rules, but as far as my mother cooking changing that not happened. Were not going to be be sitting down here eaten goat when we can still it hamburger. The boy are fine but to bad I can’t talk to them. Well girl I’m out and home to hear from you.”

One girl drew the facebook logo, and then wrote this:

“Heey girl! Smh. Ima miss you! I’m probably gonna have to wear those long body covering things they have those girls wear in Afghanistan! Lmao. I’m lying! I’m not wearing that! But I think I have to learn a different language & change how I act! Man, I don’t wanna go! Text me!”

“Hey, I’m leaving tommorow and I just wanted to remind you. I can’t wait to get to Congo. I plan on just remaining the same fun-spirited person that I am.”

“So I’m going to Saudi Arabia. I guess I’m going to have to learn Arabic. I’m not gonna change how I dress…hopefully the Taliban won’t come after me. Maybe their culture will be really cool.”

“Okay so living here is so strick…I can’t even ask a girl out without paying here parents 10,000 dollars 'as a gift' I cant really express myself as I did in the US. So I must of corse learn arbric and not use curse words…not that I ever did (like once or twice). I miss the USA.”

Intuitive Painting (aka BYOB, we provide the tempera)

Friday night me and Sarah went to an intuitive painting workshop. There was a DJ, people brought snack food, we brought a bottle of wine, and the girl who ran it provided big sheets of paper and big bottles of tempera paint. And then you just kind of went at it. The only rule was that you weren't allowed to say anything, good or bad, about anyone else's work. The idea was to paint for the process, to enjoy the act of painting, and not worry about the finished product. I always worry about the finished product, so it was hard to turn that off, but I really enjoyed playing with goopy tempera on big sheets of paper.

Oil painting is so high-commitment, in that canvas is expensive, paint is expensive, and set up and clean up take a while. If I don't have several hours to devote to painting, I don't do it at all. Which means I haven't painted anything since I made a couple paintings for Christmas gifts this past December. It was really, really good to put colors on a sheet of paper and just enjoy how they looked.

The girl running it would come around and offer suggestions like, "Okay, now if there is one color that you're really feeling pulled by, where you're really feeling that energy draw you in, which one would it be? What would you do with that color?" And things like that. It was awesome.

We had a great time painting, and I was actually really happy with how mine turned out! I'd been wanting something more colorful than my "Girl with the Pearl Earring" print to hang in my living room, and I got it! I might just go out and buy myself some tempera, and leave the oils for the nice Christmas gift paintings. Hooah!

A month of summer condensed into a paragraph.

I haven't written in over a month, it seems. A record, of sorts. I'll give you all a quick rundown of the last month. Ready?

Drove to Florida with my family, saw cousins, giant spiders, drove down nature trails on a golf cart, beach, pool, pool, food, 12 hour drive back to Charlotte, AT for hike number two, Blue Ridge Parkway, hike, sleep in a shelter with a family of bats who dive bomb us, hike, feel like dying, hike hike, EAT MORE FOOD MOLLY, hike hike, get a call in the middle of the wilderness that I have a job back at West Meck teaching Honors Civics and AP Psych, hike, views!!!! sunsets!!!! beautiful!!!!! hike, get a ride to Buena Vista, eat half a delivery pizza, a mexican combo platter, a hotdog, a fried bologna biscuit, and a bag of nachos, drive back to my car through a cloud on the mountain, then back to Charlotte, hurt my foot running, gain five pounds, join the YMCA, Teach for America training, CMS teacher workdays, move my stuff to a trailer classroom, plan like crazy, live at Amelie's for two weeks, wake up at 4:30 this morning, chase a cockroach behind my classroom whiteboard, bell rings, kids arrive!

Whew!

My first day back to school was great. I'm teaching solo this year, which I'm excited about. I'm teaching Honors and AP kids, which is going to be very different in some ways, but I'm excited about it. I'm actually organized to start the year, like, I have binders with all my papers, I'm in the process of making files for each student, I've got my computer file structure all nice and tidy. If you know me you know what a feat this has been. I saw a bunch of my kids from last year at school today, and was reminded again of why I love this job... I love those darn kids.

I'll get some pictures of my classroom once I get my new posters up. And I'll have a new wealth of wonderful student quotes to share, no doubt, although I don't know if anyone can top some of my students from last year for saying the smartest funniest things. A kid today wrote about Civics and Economics, "I thought this class was about cars. But government sounds interesting too."

I love my job. Every so often I just stop and think about leaving Chicago and my hedge fund job and all of that...and I think "Damn.. Best. Decision. Ever." Bring it, school year. I'm ready for you.

Moon lodges, space amoebas, and bare feet

My sister Hannah and I went to the Firefly Gathering last week. It's basically summer camp for hippies (and their kids!) Here is their website. Overall, it was a pretty cool way to spend a couple of days. I didn't ever quite feel like I fit in with most of the crowd, but most people were super friendly and I learned a lot of cool stuff, and more importantly, I think, I'm inspired to go out and learn even more on my own. I had an idea of the crazy hippie vibe I'd be stepping into for a few days, and I tend to veer that way in some things some times, but this was easily the most surreal couple days ever. I'm not quite sure how to sum it all up, so I'm going to try a series of lists. I didn't take a lot of pictures, as it wasn't really the kind of event where people are taking pictures of everything, but I'll share the ones I've got.

List Number One -- Things that were inspiring, refreshing, fascinating, or otherwise really cool:

1. Not wearing shoes for four days. I left them in the car and went barefoot.
2. Little kids running around naked and playing in mud without being told to put clothes on or wash up.

3. Sleeping in a tent in a pine forest.
4. Earthy looking mothers breast feeding infants (and almost-two-year-olds) without anyone being uncomfortable or insisting they wear one of those little cover-yourself-up-lest-we-be-offended breastfeeding capes.

5. Meeting and learning from people who could go out in the wilderness and live entirely off the land, trapping and fishing and hunting and finding water and building shelters. Civilization hasn’t left many of these folks around, but I’d like to count myself in their number some day.

6. Being able to learn and experience skills and knowledge our ancestors had for thousands and thousands of years but that in the last two or three hundred years we’ve lost, like making fire or tanning hides or identifying medicinal plants.

7. Men in kilts. Men without shirts. Men with beards!

8. Un-judgmental hippies, like Natalie Bogwalker, the woman who runs the camp and who taught the hide tanning class I went to. She’d make comments like, “Yeah, I used to think ‘Oh, I need to do this the primitive way! But I’ll tell you, this PVC pipe has made my life so much easier. I figured my 20s were for idealism, and now in my 30s I can be realistic.’”

9. Kids running around fighting with sticks and swimming in the lake and climbing things, with no parents in sight. Parents looking for their missing children calmly and without panicking, knowing they’d find them eventually and that kids are supposed to run around and play without their parents. I hope I can be that kind of parent.

10. Natalie Bogwalker, the hide tanner, told us that she had recently butchered a lamb for her friends’ wedding feast. I just loved that it was a ‘feast.’ People in the Bible always seemed to be having wedding feasts, and doesn't a feast sounds so much more joyful and exuberant than a ‘reception’?

11. I went to a class called “When the Shit Hits the Fan” that was supposed to be about how to survive after we reach peak oil/find ourselves in a massive economic collapse/reach the earth’s carrying capacity and suffer a severe drop in population/the apocalypse happens/other nasty disaster scenarios, etc. etc. It was supposed to be about all this before it veered into batshit crazy land (more in List Number Two), but the point is that I realized how woefully unprepared I am to survive without all the infrastructure and services we take for granted. Like if my water and my power went out, and we ran out of gas so I couldn’t drive and the grocery stores were looted and empty, what would I do? I’d like to not feel so helpless, so this list item falls under the category of inspiring/terrifying me into learning more on my own. It also made me want to buy land and learn to shoot a gun.

12. Learning about some edible and medicinal wild plants. This is something I totally am going to learn more about on my own. (This is Indian Tobacco, or Lobelia. You can use it as an anti-spasmodic if someone's having an asthma attack.)

(Not my photo. http://www.prairiemoon.com/image.php?id=2480&type=D)

13. When (part of) our culture puts so much effort into pretending that men and women are exactly the same and should do exactly the same things (What a waste if a woman chooses to stay at home with children! She could be doing REAL things with her life!) because the only real difference between the sexes is genitalia and the habit of leaving up the toilet seat, it was refreshing to hear people acknowledge (even celebrate) that traditional cultures have always had a division of labor, and that women are designed to care for children (hence the breasts) while men then tend to feel more driven to go hunt and fight and things like that. Not that I plan to spend my life barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, but when so much of our culture insistently ignores real life because it's contrary to one ideology or another, it was nice to see a value system/ideology/what-have-you that is actually BASED on reality, instead of trying to deny it.

14. I made a blanket pin out of copper. It started out as two pieces of copper wire, and look how it turned out! Ha!


List Number Two -- Things that were silly, a little obnoxious, straight up crazy, or otherwise less cool.

1. Hannah and I accidentally attended a moon lodge (we were told we were going to a discussion group). There was a fire, and a woman called Sangoma leading the circle and asking people to “bring things to the fire.” We sang songs (“I have the infinite eternal inside of me…!”) and people talked about their chakras, or about having too much empathetic energy, or about African traditions surrounding the moon goddess. Hannah and I wanted to be respectful, so we sat and nodded and held hands when asked. There were ten or twelve women there, and everyone was incredibly serious and sweet. After we “released the directions” by turning to face North, South, East and West and addressing the spirits (or something) of each direction, I walked away being really thankful that my faith is so much simpler than all the ritual and chant and ceremony and complicated collection of goddesses and spirits and energies that these women looked to for meaning. I can’t imagine going through every day feeling like it was up to me to piece together a spirituality for myself, or to tap into the spirit of whatever, or that if I didn’t do this cleansing ceremony or that healing ritual, I’d be trapped by thus and such negative energy. That’s the great thing about being Reformed though. No having to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, no earning anything, no brownie points with God. As the song goes, grace is an amazing thing.

2. The guy who led our “When the Shit Hits the Fan” class veered off at one point from talking about bug-out bags and strategic community building, to talking about the reptilian humanoids who are ruling the world. Basically, there are reptiles that shapeshift into humans who control everything. The Bilderberg Group? The Illuminati? All put in place by the reptiles. The reptiles came from another dimension, or from space (or both?) and they pull all the strings. You can wikipedia a guy named David Icke to get the full story. It’s basically insane. The wikipedia article suggests that the whole idea is perhaps “Swiftian satire.” I hope to god that’s true. We also learned that space is like an ocean with giant miles-long amoebas living in it that suck our energy. Before he could tell us about the space amoebas though, we had to imagine a white protective bubble around us. To keep out the space amoebas, obviously.
3. There was a lot of jargon at Firefly. I could go on about other kinds of jargon that drive me crazy, like the church jargon that says things like “The Lord placed it on my heart…” or uses the single word “walk” to mean “Christian faith, life and daily experience.,” or using “gift” as a verb, as in “God has gifted him with so many talents.” To be perfectly honest, the Church has a ton more awful jargon than the good hippie folk I met, but there were two terms I heard more than once that just made me go “Eh?” One was referring to a woman as a “female-bodied person,” which was odd to me because I heard it from the same people who were talking about women caring for babies while men went out to hunt. Can’t we just say ‘male’ and ‘female’? The other one that I heard a LOT was people referring to their husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, as their “partners.” Straight people with wedding rings on. If you have a wedding ring, I assume you have a husband or a wife. I don’t want to be someone’s ‘partner.’ That makes it sound like the person you’ve committed to spending your life with is on about the same level as the guy who owns the other half of your real estate business. This is why I totally understand why gay people aren’t satisfied with “civil unions.” You want a wife or a husband, not a partner. So I don’t understand why straight people, who CAN ACTUALLY GET MARRIED, would insist on using a lame, businessy term like “partner.” Is marriage just too mainstream?

4. Judgmental hippies. A lot of people seemed to have a constant need to insert into conversations or discussions the things they DON’T do. As in “Well, I don’t eat canned goods, but if I did I bet that would be tasty.” Or “We don’t have electricity, so we lit candles for the ceremony.” Or “I don’t shop at the grocery store, so I haven’t eaten cereal in a while.” There are some situations where, sure, that’s relevant. But mostly nobody else needs to know that you don’t eat canned goods. Just say “That sounds tasty” and leave out the not-so-subtle judgment.

5. This could go into the jargon category, perhaps, but there was only really one person I heard use these terms so I didn’t want to blanket the whole hippie community with the embarrassment that SHOULD come from making up words. “Shero” instead of “hero.” “Herstory” instead of “history.” Please, please please, just use the English words. I’m all for referring to humanity as “humankind” instead of “mankind,” and I appreciate when pastors say “sisters and brothers” instead of always “brothers and sisters,” but there comes a point when you just sound ridiculous. Please just use the language we already have. It works just fine, as is.


I totally want to go again next year.

White blazes in my own backyard!

Or at least they're within two hours of the backyard I grew up in.

I'm at home in Delaware for a short visit, and since everyone had to work today, I drove out to Berks County, Pennsylvania this morning to find the Appalachian Trail and do a short little hike - only five miles total. The trip served two main purposes. First, after spending a lot of last week in a car, I felt I needed to remind my legs what it's like to hike so that when I set out in August to do another week or so (this time up in VA/MD), I'm not starting from scratch and hating the first 20 miles like I did last time. Secondly, I took 476 up to PA, and 476 conveniently runs through Conshohoken, where the closest REI is located. I wanted to pick up a couple things before Hannah and I venture to the Firefly Gathering on Wednesday.

I also picked up trekking poles!! On my hike two weeks ago me and Jill scrounged up walking sticks after seeing everyone else happily chugging along with fancy-looking trekking poles. I'd always thought the poles were for old people and Europeans (I remember the Austrians walking around parks with them). I was totally wrong. Having four points of impact, essentially four "legs," makes climbing up and down mountains a lot easier. You have better balance, better shock absorption, you get a good rhythm going, and your hands don't get all puffy and swollen from hanging useless at your sides. I got the kids' version. They were 30 bucks cheaper, several ounces lighter, and have a cool snake painted on them.
My mini-hike was lovely. The point I hiked up to is at a relatively low elevation (1200-something feet, I think?) and the forest was more open to sun, and drier, and it was 80-90 degrees out - so it felt really hot. The stretch I hiked went past the Windsor Furnace shelter in Berks County Park. I missed the darker, cooler forest I found in NC two weeks ago, but it was also kind of cool to hike in landscape that looks a little more like the area I grew up in.

It was unpleasantly hot and sunny at Pulpit Rock, but the view was worth it. I ran into a couple south bound thru hikers. We traded taking pictures of each other. One of the guys was just settling into a mushroom trip, after having been given some by "some random guy down the trail." He was enjoying his afternoon.

Some kind soul thought to install an umbrella for shade.