Confession...

People who are not fun get on my last nerve.

[What does she mean by fun? Is she talking about one person in particular? Who could it be?]

a. Fun=focusing on the lovely, pure, admirable, etc.
b. Nope. I may even be talking about my own self.
c. See b.

Sassy little editor...

The bows lasted 12 minutes...

Hope...

Target sure is optimistic about the amount of snow our little South Town will be getting this year. I wonder if they know something we don't know...

CAROLINA Pottery...

I made my pilgrimage to Carolina Pottery. It was... ah-mazing. It's still not Ikea, but it'll do in a pinch, especially since it isn't a couple of hours away. Here are some lovely things I found...

Carolina Christmas... (It wasn't in the budget today, but I'll be back later.)

I really want this friend for the Santa gnome who lives on our front porch all year long.

Carolina nutcrackers and trashcans and towels... oh my!

I would LOVE to have a new stocking. Just sayin'.

I thought these were pretty. I don't like matchy matchy. Just pretty pretty.

That is all. Well, not really. I actually found an apple green area rug that I really want for the family room. It matches the green polka dots in the curtains. But the reason we need a new rug is that the shih tzu does so on the rug a lot, so I hate to buy a new one just to have her mess it up. We're working on barrier protection for the rugs. In the meantime, instead of spending money on a new area rug, I bought a new bottle of pet smell and stain removing shampoo for the steam cleaner. Stewardship and all.

I did get all the teacher presents for Zack's teachers. High school teachers don't get presents much.

Best book...

Disclaimer: The bad thing about being a writing teacher is that you spend copious amounts of time editing other people's writing and very little time working on your own. I am excited to spend my upcoming breaks adding these tools to my writer toolbox and not just my editor toolbox.

I've been on a quest for the best writing handbooks. I teach two creative writing classes and one journalism class. I have to have a book that can handle any style of writing. It has to be lean and muscular enough to lift journalistic writing and flexible and swift enough to undergird imaginative writing. I figured I was in for a lengthy and somewhat painful search.

Not so. Very quickly I found a title popping up all over the place. That title: Writing Tools by Roy Peter Clark. It's been around for a few years, but this is the first year I've gotten my teaching feet underneath me enough to be out of survival mode and into growth mode.

Clark's book is a mini writing institute. In the Introduction, Clark hooked me with two ideas. First, we should be a nation of writers. Why should a select few be tagged to speak for everyone? Writing is a craft, an acquirable skill; anyone can do it and do it well, if given the right tools. And second, he collected the tools from the Poynter Institute, which is THE quintessential journalistic training forum.

Every writer should have Clark's book on his desk. I started to say on his shelf, but this book is desk-top material, not shelf material. It's one for daily use. As matter of fact, I have three book titles on my desk at school. The Bible, the AP Stylebook, and Writing Tools. I'll never teach without them again.

Word of caution: If you are thinking about using Writing Tools with a student, make sure the student is at least high school age. Many of the examples of good writing deal with sensitive topics (PG-13). It's not a book for teaching the younger kiddies how to write.

Pumpkins and such...

It took me until mid-October to have time to take down all the beachy stuff and replace it with scarecrows and pumpkins, but it did get done without bypassing fall and moving on to Christmas. (Ah hem... CVM and TTC, I'm talking to you.)

Here's a brief recap of what late-October looked like around here:


Kelsey has always loved football, and since she discovered there was such a thing as Powderpuff football, she's been gunning to play quarterback. On October 16th she got her chance. Quarterbacking was OK, but what she fell in love with (almost by accident) was playing... LINEBACKER! Yes, our little princess played linebacker. In the first series of the game, she got three sacks. Three. I kept hearing the PA announcer call her name. It was great. She had a blast. We had a blast. You know Jimmy was working the chains. He had to find some excuse to be on the sidelines.

We are grateful for Powderpuff. It was a bright spot in Kelsey's fall sports season. Volleyball was horrible. Many, many issues arose surrounding the coach and team dynamics. I have no complaints about what happened on the court or in the games, but some of the no-parents-allowed-behind-closed-doors-practices allegations left us deeply concerned and prayerfully considering how we should handle things (beyond letting the coach and athletic director know our concerns. We have done that.)

Other than that, Kelsey has learned what life is like when you opt to do everything all at once. :) Lots of late nights and sleepy mornings.


Zane found his dream costume: the gorilla. As you can see, he made it part of his normal wardrobe around the house. Silly boy. He wore it to school on Animal Planet Day during Spirit Week. It was hot. The body of the costume has been in the back of the Suburban for a couple of weeks now. I don't know where the head is, and that means I don't know when or where it might show up. That scares me a little.

Zane had a great football season and played center on offense and linebacker on defense for the JV team. They finished 8-2, with both losses coming against their arch rivals down the street. Zane dressed for all the home varsity games and even got on the field for a kick-off (or kick-off return or punt or punt return or something else special teams... I'm not sure which. I'm pretty ADD at football games.)

He hit a couple of bumps early in the transition from middle school to high school, but he's rallied since and done MUCH better. :) I love it when my kids' teachers stop me in the hall to tell me how well my babies are doing in school.

Our fall play at school is You're a Good Man Charlie Brown, and they have been manic in promoting the play to elementary students. Zack has been in a near frenzied state about the production and hounded me to no end for tickets. Bless his heart. So when we heard that It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown was on TV, we HAD to watch it. Mind you, we have it on DVD and it's readily available on the interwebs, but hey... nothing like the real live broadcast to create a sense of excitement and urgency.

I wouldn't trade those little boy giggles and belly laughs for anything. He thought it was absolutely hysterical. And as a result, we HAD to get a pumpkin from the most sincere pumpkin patch and carve it according to The Pumpkin Patch Parable. If we aren't both culturally-relevant and super spiritual, then I give up (that's a joke, peeps. Don't get up on the ledge over it.) Conveniently enough, the most sincere pumpkin patch was just around the corner and had a gargantuan inflatable jack-o-lantern anchored mid-patch. We arrived there at 2:30 p.m. on October 31st. Discount! Free little pumpkins! Boo-ya.

The Zackster loves third grade. He has a rockin' teacher who is funny and fun. And he genuinely likes the rest of the kids in his class. He's making some bffs and we're having sleepovers and doing things outside of school, which is probably late in happening, but when you're the youngest and have been raised in a car shuttling the older sibs to their activities for nine years, carving time for little guy activities isn't easy.

Speaking of carving...

Happy Fall-Festival-Harvest-Season-Pumpkin-Patch-Parable-Carving-Reformation-Day-All-Saints-Eve Celebration!