Corrections
Results For "Month: November 2009"
Exponent
Projects have a way of growing on me. I imagine a particular project taking a given amount of time, effort, and resources, and it never turns out that way.
“I’m going to use the orbital brush cleaner to get the kitchen floor sparkling and then put a couple of coats of protective finish on it,” I say before a day off. “It shouldn’t take me more than three hours.” In reality, I’m off by 66%: it takes me five hours.
“I’m going to replace the front sillcock. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours, maximum.” Lunch time comes and I’m still wrestling with it.
I look into the future at projects K and I hope to complete: remodel rebuild the kitchen; remodel the master bathroom; landscape the back yard. These are not minor endeavors. These are things that I anticipate taking weeks, which means they will take months.
The problem is, once I get started, I don’t want to cut corners. At least that’s what I tell myself: I end up doing that anyway, but it makes me grit my teeth to think about it, and I know there’s more to the extended projects than my perfectionism.
It all comes down to inexperience. Except for plumbing, no project intimidates me, but I know my lack of experience will make the job three times as long as it should require. Experience has taught me that, for I used to think my home improvement inexperience would double the time.
Our living room is turning into one such project. “We’ll just pull out the furniture, repaint the walls, polish the floor, and put the new furniture back in.” If only it were that simple.
Saturday the Chameleon
Another Saturday completed: we repainted the living room in preparation for a complete redecoration.
First and second coats and we’re pretty much done. I admit I’ll miss the yellow.
K felt it was too bright; I loved the way it made the room open.
Between coats, I mowed and raked some leaves. It was not warm enough to break a sweat, and so it almost didn’t even feel like work. But by most definitions, it was.
In another life, twenty-five to thirty years ago, my Saturdays were supposed to be days of reverence and quiet rest. Saturday is, of course, the seventh day; Jews and a few groups of Christians believe it is the sabbath, a time of rest. There’s something appealing about that to me, even today.
Still, in the intervening years, my associations with and expectations of a good Saturday have literally turned 180 degrees. Just as I couldn’t imagine mowing then, I can’t imagine not spending Saturdays working now.
It makes me wonder what else might flip-flop in my life, and what else has changed without me yet truly noticing.
Fourth Thursday
With a three-year old and no travel plans for Thanksgiving, we planned dinner around her nap. That gave us the whole morning to work around the house. As L grows, she’s increasingly eager to help.
1/200, f/7.1, 20 mm
It’s impossible to put beans into the coffee grinder or tea into the infuser without L calling, “I want to do it! I want to help!” When I stir something in the sauce pan, when K sweeps the kitchen, L is there, ready to help.
Indeed, if we don’t let her help (either intentionally or accidentally), it sometimes leads to a mini-meltdown.
1/200, f/7.1, 10 mm
When we arrived at Nana and Papa’s for turkey and the fixings, they had a surprise for L.
“We’re tired of making a tent for her,” Nana explained earlier in the week when I dropped by. It was, I would imagine, a well-established ritual: ottomans pushed together, with a blanket spread over it to create a small space for L to wallow in.
1/60, f/5.0, 11.5 mm
As planned, it kept the Girl busy while everyone helped out with the final stages of dinner.
1/60, f/5.0, 10 mm
Turkey with dressing and giblet gravy, with sides of rice, casserole, and cranberry sauce. What could be more American? Indeed, as I ate dinner, I remembered when, living with a host family in Poland, I was asked to create a typical American meal. I mentioned the Thanksgiving feast; I was relieved when told (this was 1996) that getting a whole turkey would be, at best, difficult.
After dinner was play time (until the turkey overwhelmed Papa and he began his post-dinner, in-seat nap).
1/60, f/5.0, 10 mm
It was the first Thanksgiving without any extended family at all. No traveling; no sleeping in strange beds; no absolute dread if it was a rainy day in South Carolina, requiring us all to stay inside with four generations of smokers. It was Thanksgiving without any of the negatives. It also lacked some of the positives that certainly accompany large family gatherings.
1/60, f/4.2, 11 mm
Yet, for one of the first Thanksgivings L will probably remember (at least for a few years), it was perfect. Especially the Mlenmorangie Papa brought out after dinner.
Rings
As a kid, I used to wonder what the view of the heavens would look like if we had some characteristics of other planets in our solar system. I would imagine multiple moons in the sky and vaguely wonder about the effects they would have on the earth.
Learning about dual stars and watching 2010, I wondered what the earth would be like with two suns. “Two suns in the sunset” Roger Waters sang on The Final Cut, the last album he recorded with Pink Floyd, but he was referring to the prospect of nuclear war.
For some reason, though, it never occurred to me that the earth could have rings. Apparently, it’s occurred to others:
Stacking the Deck
A daily game of Candy Land has wiggled its way into our routine. L has mastered the concepts: she knows what the cards are for and she generally knows which direction her piece needs to move.
The problem is that Candy Land is unimaginably dull: draw a card, move your piece, wait. Repeat. While L was learning, it was a pleasant game: actually playing the game was not the objective, and as I love teaching, any educational activity is enjoyable.
Now that she knows how to play the game, though, it can drag.
I feel a little guilty about that. I should adore every single moment with her, but let’s face it: there are only so many times you can feign surprise at having to go back to the Gingerbread House.
When I was working with autistic children, Candy Land was a popular free time choice. I got so utterly sick of it that I — and I am somewhat ashamed to admit it — stacked the deck to make sure the kid I was sitting opposite got all the good cards.
“What!? Another double-purple? Well, you’re well on your way, aren’t you?”
I haven’t done that with L yet. In the truest sense of “stacking the deck.” I might have switched the top two cards after a quick peek at my own, making sure she got another double-purple, but that’s not really stacking the deck. That’s helping.
Little Drummer Girl
Happy accidents are part of growing up. Today, L discovered that my old Lincoln Log set makes a fairly good drum.
Add an old chocolate tin and a tub for totting Play Doe and you have an entire kit.
Goals
A goal of posting daily for an entire month seems simple enough. In reality, with a three-year-old and house, I’m discovering it’s quite a trick. A day of wandering around Ikea after a night of insufficient sleep makes it seem relatively insignificant.
“What’s the big deal?” I ask. “I’ll just skip a day and then the pressure will be gone. Back to normal: three or four times a week.”
Then I think perhaps that is a post in and of itself. Part of the circular nature of posting daily on one’s own site: blogs tend to foster posts about blogging just as poetry tends to lead poets to write about the act of writing. It seems relatively insignificant and somewhat egotistical, but I don’t care. It’s almost eleven; I’ve posted for the twenty-first day in a row; I might be cheating, but then again, maybe not: I make the rules around here.
Time Machine
I work in a time machine. Each and every day, I’m transported to my middle school days as I see bits and pieces of my eighth grade year reflected by my students. Times have changed — there’s certainly a lot more hugging going on these days, for one — but the gravity-bending, end-of-the-world trials of thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds remain. Students charge up and down the hall, furious about this or that, certain it’s the end of the world. Love blooms and the infatuation they’re now experiencing is the one to see the young lovers through the rest of their natural days.
I see myself in this or that student. I see peers in his peers. I watch experiences that I had, and I wonder if they will shape the young people in the same way the events shaped me. Broken hearts, unjust accusations, careless comments — I look back on these things with calmness now, though I felt nothing but anguish then.
Occasionally this gets me to wondering about how I would handle middle school differently were I suddenly to return. Would I have been calmer? Would I have realized that this or that disaster was nothing of the sort? Certainly, but then, twenty-some years later, I’d be wondering the same thing again. “Knowing what I know now, after two times through, would I…”
Part of growing up is growing out of this kind of thinking. Yet spending seven hours a day with thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds makes it easy to wallow in the nostalgia. For about three seconds.
Policing the Waistline
Our school has a dress code that in effect creates a school uniform. It is, in short, relatively strict. Regarding shirts, it reads, in part:
- Navy, red, black, or white (solids only)
- All shirts must have a collar and sleeves
- No shirts made of 100% Lycra or Spandex
- Shirts may not have stripes on the collar or armband
- All shirt tails MUST be long enough to be tucked in at all times while on campus or field trips
The county dress code is somewhat more lenient, and on occasion, students are able to come dressed in the less restrictive, county dress code.
For all involved, it usually turns into more of a nightmare. Such esoteric concerns as “Should this shirt be tucked in?” and “Is this accessory permissible?” take up much of the first minutes of the day.
A few weeks ago, we had such a “county dress code day” and there was much emotion and worry about whether the fashionable, down-to-the-bottom-of-the-crotch tee-shirts had to be tucked in or not. County dress code states that shirts that are designed to be tucked in should be tucked in, so it was a reasonable assumption that this particular style shirt didn’t have to be tucked in. Other styles caused problems, and a general rule was implemented just before first period: if it’s a rounded seem, tuck it in.
It occurred to me that a clothing designer could create a dress shirt (i.e., with the rounded shirt tail) with the intention of it not being tucked in. And walking back to the classroom, I shook my head and laughed aloud at the amount of energy we expend on such trivial things as whether or not to tuck in a shirt.
And the experience made me quite thankful for our strict dress code. The kids complain about it and about my enforcement, but I can simply respond, “The dress code is out of my control, and I will get reprimanded if I don’t enforce it. So if you have a problem with it, you should talk to the principal.” In short, it allows me to pass the buck.