Things I can't figure out...

I can't figure out...

• how to stay on the right week of a curriculum guide when each year has different weeks being a different number of days. One year Week #27 has five days of school. Another year Week #27 has two days.
• how to stay on a diet.
• how to find "balance" in a job that consumes every minute of time that I will let it, but one that I love dearly and is infinitely easier than dealing with auxiliary dramas.
• how to get to bed before midnight.
• how to work exercise into the mix when I can't show up at work sweaty and late, and I'm trying to get to bed before midnight.
• how to coach my daughter into womanhood without making her angry or hurting her feelings.
• how to encourage my kids to do their best without making them feel like I don't think they are good enough.
• how to finish "work" in all forms in order to have time to "play" with my youngest.
• how to be more thinking and less feeling. 
• how not to take it personally when I hear NO over and over... or worse... nothing at all.

Note to self: Don't neglect the One Thing.

MMX --> MMXI...

Seven things from the end of 2010...

1. I found the most amazing ceramic travel mugs ever. 

2. When you ask God about leaving somewhere and going somewhere else and the Scripture in your devotional reading that immediately follows the prayer  is Jeremiah 42, you stay put.


3. For the first time ever, the baby girl is ringing in the new year without Mom and Dad in the same room.  Sigh... She is an amazing young lady, and we are so proud of her. 

4. Our boys, for all their playing and silliness, are noble young men.

5.  Twenty-three years go by fast, and it's hard to remember life before.

6. Extended family is a huge blessing.

7. Bloggy, Facebook, and Twitter friends make life so much fun!


Have a great 2011!  Much love and many blessings to all!

Pumpkin spice all-stars...

I do love some pumpkin spice anything from October through December.  I love it enough to have a list.  Here are my top five pumpkin spice favorites:

#5:  Pumpkin spice cream cheese.

I know; I know.  Sounds like the grossest thing you could imagine, and I thought it would be.  I was pleasantly surprised that it was actually good.  Pair it with a nice whole wheat bagel.  Mmmmm...

#4:  Pumpkin Pie Spice creamer by International Delight

There's also a Pumpkin Spice creamer by Coffeemate, and it will do if there's nothing else around; but Pumpkin Pie Spice is truer to pumpkin pie flavor without tasting so chemically.

 #3:  Pumpkin spice trail mix

Who would've dreamed that they could make trail mix flavored with pumpkin spices, but they do and it works.  Very well.  Go ahead on over to Target and get you some. 

#2: Pumpkin muffins

Yeah, I'm noticing a trend too.  All these pumpkin goodies are available at Target.  My world is small.  Yet Target's pumpkin muffins are incredible.  After the Pumpkin Czar announced that the pumpkin dearth of '09 might continue into '10, I was a little scared the muffins might disappear.  Thankfully, the supply increased and everything was fine.  Breathe deeply.  It's OK.

#1:  St. Arbucks' Pumpkin Spice Latte

If you know me at all, you know PSL's from St. Arbucks taste like sipping a pumpkin pie through the little hole in the lid.  It is my favorite of the season.  I love PSL's.  Somebody needs to make me a t-shirt that says that.  Add to PSL season the times I get to have one with a friend and you have my #1 favorite favorite. 

The Christmas specials are coming! The Christmas specials are coming!

It's Christmas specials time on TV again, and that means they're dusting off the best of the best of the best, sir! (Know that line?)  So, we're dusting off our DVDs too and having some movie nights as we watch pop culture on family room screen.

(You can click on the DVD picture and it'll take you to the Amazon.com page, just in case you *gasp* might not have the DVD/blu-ray and want to order it.)

Our Family Favorites:   

#5 

Full of suspense and love and cuteness, this is the quintessential Christmas coming-of-age tale. And the song rocks. That sound Rudolph's nose makes when it lights up is one of the most aggravating sounds ever, though.

#4

You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch. As beautiful as it is to see his heart burst out of the x-ray box, I have to admit I watch the Grinch to see two things: Max the dog and Cindy Lou Who (who was no more than two) because Max reminds me of Pepper and Cindy Lou Who reminds me of Kelsey when she was little.

#3

Linus's speech. That is all. I watch this DVD multiple times each hear just to hear Linus tell the Christmas story.

#2

Heat Miser and Snow Miser. I hate the Mother Nature part, but the Heat Miser and Snow Miser songs are priceless.

#1

Who doesn't love a good Christmas back-story? The good guy raised by elves. The evil Burgermeister Meisterburger. "Put one foot in front of the other" ... yes, I know he's the Winter Warlock, but he's much more Gandolf-like that witchy. And the penguin... we have one almost exactly like him in our front yard each year. And the best part is when they talk about Christmas Eve being the holiest night of the year.


Love, love love the Christmas specials. What about you? What are your favorites?

First Sunday in Advent? Tomorrow!

Well... this would be why I'm not coordinating the Celebrating Christmas blog anymore. Today is First Advent Sunday Eve, and I just got home from buying new Advent candles for our wreath.  Life happens differently each year.

Two years ago when we did Celebrating Christmas live, I was teaching one class at the Christian school where our kids go. Last year I worked full time and did well to remember my name and address on any given day. This year I'm part time and I can remember my name and address most days, but I realize that celebrating the coming of the King needs excellence. With nearly 50 short stories to read, exams to write and grade, and essays to teach, there's just no way that's going to happen.

So, if you're one of the people who said you'd be interested in writing for Celebrating Christmas, let me challenge you to post your thoughts on your own blog, and I will link to it, if I'm not already linked to it. :)

We'll have a cyber-Christmas party and encourage each other along the way.

During the holiday season (and don't get me started about the whole why-we-should-call-it-a-holiday-season thing... I did a post on it here two years ago), I hope that you will take a few minutes each day to treasure the One Who came to reconcile us to our Creator.  I pray He will be the center of your holiday season.  Goodness, I pray that He will be the center of MY holiday season.  I am so "prone to wander, Lord I feel it/ prone to leave the God I love."

With that in mind, here's my list of things I'm doing during this holiday season to focus on loving Jesus and loving others:

1. Keep reading through the One-Year Bible for my quiet time.
2. For family devotions each night, use an Advent calendar that focuses on the gospel message.
3. Sleep at least 6 hours a night so that I will be alert and engaged in # 1 & 2.
4. Work diligently during my planning time at school so that I can sleep 6 hours at night.
5. Have coffee with at least 3 friends between now and the end of Christmas break. 
6. Host one holiday fun event. Maybe even a caravan of Christmas lights tour and dessert fest... hmmm...
7. Update my iPod to include funky, deep, and Christmas worship playlists.
8. Exercise.
9. Get to know the neighbors better.
10. Family movie nights.  And LOTS of laughter.

By the way, if you are observing Advent this year and haven't settled on devotions yet, click here for a couple of Scripture lists you can use.  

So... what about you?  What do you hope to do this Christmas season?

100 or so great works...

Going around Facebook is the BBC list of 100 Great Books everyone should read. You're supposed to copy the list, paste it in a note, and make bold all the titles you've read. If you've read more than six, you're ahead of most. I've read about 30, which is downright shameful for English majors. Sigh. I do not love Jane Austin the way that the BBC loves Jane Austin.  Nope, not even a fraction of the way the BBC loves her. 

I have a little contempt for this list anyway because anything that puts The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as separate entries is a little suspect to me. Last time I checked LWW was the first book published in the Chronicles. They also listed the Complete Works of Shakespeare and Hamlet as separate works. It's been a long time since grad school, but as I recall, Hamlet was an essential title in completing the works of Shakespeare. Perhaps it was THE essential title.

So I decided to come up with my own list of great books I have read that I think most everyone else should read. I like getting 100% on quizzes and such.

1. The Bible
2. To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee)
3. The Chronicles of Narnia (Lewis) - There are seven books in the series: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; Prince Caspian; Voyage of the Dawn Treader; The Silver Chair; The Horse and His Boy; The Magician's Nephew; and The Last Battle.

OK, after these three, the rest of the list is random. Only #1 -#3 are ranked in their order of greatness.

4. 1984 (Orwell)
5. The Iliad (Homer)
6. The Odyssey (Homer)
7. Le Morte D'Arthur (Mallory)
8. The Giver (Lowery)
9. Beloved (Morrison)
10. Hamlet (Shakespeare)
11. Othello (Shakespeare)
12. Macbeth (Shakespeare)
13. King Lear (Shakespeare)
14. Oedipus the King (Sophocles)
15. Medea (Euripides)
16. The Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne)
17. Beowulf
18. The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer)
19. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
20. The Great Divorce (Lewis)
21. Gulliver's Travels (Swift)
22. The Prince (Machiavelli)
23. Their Eyes Were Watching God (Hurston)
24. The Sound and the Fury (Faulkner)
25. As I Lay Dying (Faulkner)
26. Native Son (Wright)
27. Black Boy (Wright)
28. Lord of the Rings Trilogy (Tolkien - The Fellowship of the Ring; The Two Towers; and The Return of the King)
29. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
30. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
31. Invisible Man (Ellison)
32. Go Tell It on the Mountain (Baldwin)
33. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
34. Heart of Darkness (Conrad)
35. The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger)
36. Waiting for Godot (Beckett)
37. Poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks
38. Poetry of E.E. Cummings
39. Poetry of T.S. Eliot
40. Poetry of Nikki Giovanni
41. Poetry of Langston Hughes
42. Poetry of William Shakespeare
43. Poetry of William Butler Yeats
44. Poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
45. Poetry of John Donne
46. Poetry of John Keates
47. Poetry of Emily Dickinson
48. Federalist Papers (Hamilton, Madison, Jay)
49. Writings of Thomas Paine (esp. Common Sense, Rights of Man, Crisis)
50. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll)
51. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Doyle)
52. Cyrano de Bergerac (Rostand)
53. Treasure Island (Stevenson)
54. Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (Stevenson)
55. Frankenstein (Shelley)
56. The Pilgrim's Progress (Bunyan)
57. Walden (Thoreau)
58. Time Quartet (L'Engle - A Wrinkle in Time; A Wind in the Door; A Swiftly Tilting Planet; and Many Waters)
59. Selected Essays (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
60. Bartleby the Scrivener (Melville - We're going with this as a novella.)
61. Ulysses (Joyce)
62. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Joyce)
63. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain)
64. The Complete Tales of Edgar Allan Poe
65. The Divine Comedy (Dante Alighieri)
66. Fairy Tales and Stories (Hans Christian Andersen)
67. Grimm's Fairy Tales
68. Faust (Goethe)
69. Dr. Faustus (Marlowe)
70. The Epic of Gilgamesh
71. Leaves of Grass (Whitman)
72. Madame Bovary (Flaubert)
73. Metamorphosis (Ovid)
74. The Metamorphosis (Kafka)
75. Paradise Lost (Milton)
76. Siddhartha (Hesse)
77. The Jungle Book (Kipling)
78. The Thousand and One Nights
79. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
80. Pere Goriot (Balzac)
81. Poetry of Shel Silverstein
82. The Portrait of Dorian Gray (Wilde)
83. Dracula (Stoker)
84. Death of a Salesman (Miller)
85. A Raisin in the Sun (Hansberry)
86. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Adams)
87. Night (Weisel)
88. Cane (Toomer)
89. A Streetcar Named Desire (Williams)
90. Our Town (Wilder)
91. Poetics (Aristotle)
92. Republic (Plato)
93. Mythology (Hamilton)
94. Origin of Species (Darwin)
95. The Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway)
96. Democracy in America (de Tocqueville)
97. Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (Johnson)
98. The Color Purple (Walker)
99. Twelfth Night (Shakespeare)
100. All's Well That Ends Well (Shakespeare)
101. Uncle Tom's Cabin (Stowe)

I do not agree with every word in every one of these works, but they are all great works because of their impact on the world; and educated Americans need exposure to a good number of these books/essays/collections. So, as my good friend Melinda says, take what you need and leave the rest.

What do you think?
How many of these books have you read?
What are the books I left off this list that you believe are great works?

What I like about summer...

I like...




... the way the colors of the sky and trees come alive before a thunderstorm.

... the way the wind gusts hot and cold as the storm approaches.

... sitting in the sun and feeling the heat radiate down to my bones.

... the sticky humidity... up to about 70%. After that, it gets obnoxious.

... feeling chilled and reaching for a sweatshirt when the evening temperatures dip below 70 degrees.

... chasing fireflies and swatting mosquitoes intermittently.

... sitting on the front porch in the evening, watching the stars and smelling citronella.

... the way spray sunscreen chills my skin in 95 degree heat.

... the mingled tastes of cold Diet Dr. Pepper and honey mustard pretzels.

... lining up seashells across the porch railing.

... impatiens.

... fresh cucumber sandwiches on white Wonder Bread with Kraft Real Mayonnaise. (sorry HLo)

... fresh tomato sandwiches on white Wonder Bread with Kraft Real Mayonnaise.

... homemade ice cream with fresh fruit mixed in.

... sand between my toes, but NOT sand in my shoes or swimsuit.

... the smell of sunscreen-soaked laundry.

... changing out the cushions on the front porch and back deck chairs.

... reading a good book by the pool.

... reading a good book on the beach.

... walking on the beach and making up the back stories of the people we pass.

... eating ice cream outside.

... eating pizza by the pool and swimming until sunset.

... flip flops.

... not setting the alarm clock... and waking up when I ... wake up.

... long quiet times.

... SBS.

... sparklers and fireworks.

... watermelon.

... edged driveways and walkways.

... listening to beach music and making a good beach music playlist on my iPod.

... eating lunch and dinner on the back deck.

... staying up late making lists of the things I like about summer.


So... what do YOU like about summer?

The beauty of Southern dialect...

I majored in English at THE University of North Carolina. Go Heels! (It's March. I have to say that or I could get a nasty rash from suppressing the sentiment.)

In my time at Chapel Hill, I was blessed to have Connie Eble as my grammar instructor for a couple of different classes. What I loved most about her class was that she taught grammar from a linguist's perspective. Now if you don't know what a linguist's perspective is, the short explanation is that they observe and report language without pronouncing the superiority of one form over another. As a matter of fact, you give a linguist a dialect and they just revel in the ins and outs of things like vocabulary and syntax and idiom. It makes them absolutely giddy.

One of the greatest exercises I have EVER encountered in an English classroom -- graduate, undergraduate or secondary-- was the Shibboleth exercise we did when we began our unit on usage. I fell in love with language on that day.

Three other things from Connie Eble's class that stuck in my brain and became part of my personal language philosophy are as follows:

1. English is essentially a Germanic language, although we have borrowed nearly 50% of our vocabulary from Latin. Yet, in all our academic brilliance, we have decided to define our language structure by the rules that govern the Romance languages. Basically, our method of diagramming sentences is the linguistic equivalent of putting square pegs into round holes. No wonder so many people hate doing it.

2. English grammar is helpful but not essential in writing. Writing is like driving a car. You can drive a car and get exactly where you want to go every time and never have a clue how the engine works. But if you want to drive a race car for maximum performance or if you're car breaks down and you don't want to be stranded forever, it behooves you to understand how the engine works. So it is with language. If you want to use the language well, you need to know how to maximize its performance. And certainly if your writing breaks down and can't communicate to your reader, you need to know how to fix it.

3. Who sets the rules of grammar? Well...? OK, think about who taught YOU the rules of the language. Your English teacher. Your English professor. Maybe a journalist here or there. Basically, the "safe-keepers" of the English language are English instructors. They write books about what's right and what's not. Woo Hoo! I can feel the surge of power coursing through my veins.

Now where on Earth was I going with this post? Oh yes... the beauty of Southern dialect... Before I sat under Dr. Eble's instruction, I had a distinct feeling that there was a right and wrong way of doing things. If I did wrong, there would be red. If I did right, there would be an "A."

Having a linguist teach language, I became aware for the first time of the beauty of language in the vernacular. The speech of the native speaker. The glory of dialect. My dialect is Southern American English. I never really appreciated SAE before that moment. Now, it's a treasure.

Some of my favorite SAE sayings:

1. "fixing to" - indicating preparation for an impending course of action. I am fixing to get up and go cook dinner.

2. "might could" - a double modal that is MOST helpful in indicating potential without certainty. I might could cook dinner a little better if I actually went to the grocery store and bought food.

3. "y'all" - properly used as the collective/plural second person pronoun. Y'all need to come over and eat dinner with us after church on Sunday.

4. "won't" - Unique to certain parts of the South, won't is a substitute for the first person singular form or the verb to be. Q: Who ate the last piece of sweet potato pie? A: It won't me.

5. "Bless your heart" - That one is very complex. Here's a nice summary of it. It could possibly be the ultimate Southern Shibboleth.

5 Things that Scare Away Snow...

I have lived in this area of the fabled rain-snow-line my entire life. After years of "The Snow is Coming! The Snow is Coming!"only to be followed by a little jig we call "Oops We Missed It Again," I've discovered five things that scare away an impending snow storm. I'm going to take a gamble in sharing these secrets, as people I know ... in my own family even (MOM!) ... don't like snow. I trust you will use your newfound knowledge for good (snow) and not evil (no snow).

1. Parking your car in a different spot than you normally park. Parking facing out (if you normally pull in headlights first) = Strike 1. Parking at the end of the driveway, facing the street = Strike 2. Parking on the street, facing whatever direction you drive to get out of the neighborhood = Strike 3. We're out of the running for some good snow.

2. Failing to purchase bread, milk, and/or eggs within 48 hours of the predicted snow. They are staples. We can't risk running out of them. And once again, for our friends who have been transplanted from other parts to our lovely area... no... we don't make french toast every time it snows. It's just a coincidence that our must-have-staples are the ingredients for a yummy breakfast.

3. Not doing homework. OK kids... do you want snow or not? If so... get that homework done!!!

4. Bringing home extra work from the office/school so that you will have something to work on while you're stuck at home until it's safe to drive.*

5. Getting snow stuff out of storage before it starts to snow. "Stuff" includes ski pants, sleds, shovels, skis, snowboards, snow boots, etc. If it helps you have fun in the snow, it MUST remain in storage until YOU are ready to walk out in the snow and play.

You see... evidently southern snow is very, very shy. Or sneaky. At any rate, if you act like you know it's coming, you'll scare it away for certain. (The only exception is the grocery store trip. Just don't buy something obviously snow-related like hot chocolate mix or marshmallows. Stick to the staples.) So, for the love of all things cold and flaky and wet, PLEASE be good and let the snow fall without fear.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

*When is it safe to drive after a snow? It is safe to drive after a snow when ALL the snow is gone. Do not even think about using four-wheel drive or chains or any of those anti-snow gadgets to get around on the roads. You may have done it a million times before if you're from another area like, say, the North or the Midwest. But people here don't know how to drive in the snow. We hardly ever get any because folks are always doing ridiculous things like parking cars in the street, not going to the grocery store, skipping homework, planning to be out of work, and unpacking snow equipment early. So it doesn't matter how great a snow-driver you are if everyone else on the road is clueless, does it? If you do go out, be patient and stop saying bad things about southern drivers. Remember, a southern driver warned you to stay off the road in the snow.

Questions...

As I toodle through the day I realize that there are grand and not-so-grand questions that pop into my mind. Below are a few of them from this morning. If you have answers, please share. Or if you have the same questions, I'd dearly love to know I'm not alone!

1. Why are there so many dead cicadas in our yard?

2. Why can Blogger not remember my user name and password even though I click "remember me" each time I log on?

3. Why can Facebook always remember Kelsey's email and password but never mine?

4. Why has our dog been throwing up once a day for the past week since she had a tummy bug?

5. Why does our dog throw up when I'm the only adult in the house to clean it up?

6. Why do men not notice stinky smells?

7. How do males in general navigate their way through a totally trashed house and not notice it's totally trashed?

8. How is it that an adolescent male can shoot repeatedly 2" wads of paper into an 8" trashcan and never miss, but the same male can fling dirty laundry towards a 24"x24" laundry basket and never hit it?

9. Why does the soap always magically divide into two pieces whenever the youngest boy uses it?

10. How come, no matter how closely you follow the Lego directions, there's always a piece left over when you build a Lego Racer?

11. Why is it a teenager on a school trip calls only once and it's when you're in a place with no cell phone reception?

12. Why is our society all thumbs-up about "spirituality," ambivalent towards "religion," and fired-up against Jesus?

13. How is it that the same people who champion the glass-shattering role of SuperMoms can declare a tough, energetic, bright wife and mother to be unfit for public office because she's a wife and mother?

14. How can you dust an entire house in an hour and by the time you get back to where you started, there's already a light coating of dust again?

15. Why does eveyone ignore Mommy until she starts to blog, answers the phone or closes the bathroom door?

16. Why can't they make zebra-patterned croc flats?

17. Whose idea was it to put blueberries into a Krispy Kreme doughnut?! And if they weren't blueberries, what were they?

18. What makes boys think that girls want to sword fight? And where are all the other boys who could be swordfighting with them?

19. Why would a 7 year old slice a popsicle with a sword? On the carpet? In the bonus room?

20. What makes Christian school teachers who advocate family values give so much homework that, to complete it, the students have no time to spend with their families?

21. Why is the fact that there have been no further known terrorist attacks on US soil since 9/11/01 proof that we can let down our guard instead of proof that what we've been doing for the past 7 years is working?

22. How does Charlie Gibson know what the Bush Doctrine is when the guy who first introduced it says there's not a clear-cut definition?

23. Why do pictures upload to Facebook quicker from a mobile phone than a desktop computer?

24. Can is possibly get MORE humid?

25. Where is Tracey's blogspot?

OK... that's enough for now. Otherwise I'll have to add #26. (Why is blogging and Facebook inherently more interesting when you're supposed to be going to the gym to work out?)