The Median Sib

I had mentioned in the last post that I had dinner last night with two coworkers. We got together because of Nancy. Nancy lost her husband two years ago to cancer. She nursed him through some awful times, and then was left to take care of her two sons by herself - both young adults - late teens/early twenties - the youngest still living at home. At the beginning of this school year - during the anniversary week of her husband’s death - she went upstairs to check on her son before leaving for work. He was still in bed asleep, and so she decided to let him sleep. She went on to work. She got home that afternoon, went upstairs and found him exactly as he had been when she’d left that morning. He was dead. Now, almost two months later, the autopsy report still isn’t back. Other than satisfying curiosity or determining if there is someone to blame, the autopsy results don’t matter. They won’t change the fact her son is gone - that she is going through every parent’s worst nightmare. And I can’t do anything for her except just be there and cry with her - and get together occasionally for dinner to get her out of the house and with friends again.

Tragedies like that make me both thankful, and they also scare me. Thankful for my close family and for my healthy children and grandchildren. Scared because maybe my life has been too easy - maybe life is just waiting to whallop me with a major blow. That sounds pessimistic, but it isn’t. I don’t dwell on it. It’s just a thought that goes through my mind at times. Is there such a thing as being too lucky?

I’ve had a good past few days. I had the birthday dinner with my family on Sunday. Monday I had dinner with two friends who also happen to be coworkers. Then I had dinner with my best friend tonight - lots of girl talk . Lots of dinners, huh? To top off a nice few days, I went by the outdoor equipment store tonight and bought everything I need for my camping trip. So when I get home Friday and take the grandkids back to their mom and dad, I’ll be ready for my first camping trip! Yea! I’ve been investigating places nearby where I can camp, and I’ve made my choice. I’m looking forward to it, and apparently the weather is going to cooperate with me.

After work yesterday, I drove by a house for sale - a GORGEOUS house - way out of my price range but still fun to look at. It was a for-dreams-only home - on 21 wooded acres - very scenic and restful looking. Just spectacular. I fantasize about living in a place like that. I saw deer along the road on the way there and on the way back.

It was a Spiderman kind of night for Scalawag’s 27th birthday party. When Sweet Stuff and her daddy went shopping for Power Rangers supplies, they couldn’t find any. So Spiderman stepped in and saved the day. When Scalawag was a little boy, he was rather partial to Superman, but I think he was happy to shift his loyalties to Spiderman for the evening. (Side note: I saved the red Superman cape I sewed for him, and gave it to him a couple years ago. I hope he kept it so someday his little boy can play with it.)

There are few things more satisfying than a great time being with family. I thank God daily for my family. I love being with and watching them all. Scalawag and Meah had work still to do tonight, and so they left soon after dinner. Stinkeroo, SD and the girls stayed awhile longer. Stinkeroo had brought the girls’ pajamas so they could take their baths here before heading home. What is there about being naked that makes children want to laugh and run around? Both girls tore around the house with pure joy before finally getting into the tub. There is nothing in the world sweeter than freshly bathed children — all sweet-smelling and cuddly. I enjoyed brushing and drying their hair. They had not brought socks, and so I gave them each a pair of my socks so their feet wouldn’t get cold on the way home. They wore them almost like tights — with the socks coming above their knees.

I’m sitting here at the computer, smiling at the memories from such a wonderful evening with my family — Singing “Happy Birthday” to Scalawag, pirate costumes, Captain PotBelly, Spiderman masks, the story of Meah’s first patient, SD teaching the girls to say “Go, Dawgs, go!”, watching Scalawag grill the steaks, hearing Stinkeroo tell about her trip to Texas, and then watching each car drive out of sight with blown kisses and I-love-you’s filling the air.

I wrote earlier about how this past Wednesday was Scalawag’s birthday. Today we will have his birthday party. Rather than meet at a restaurant, we’ll all have dinner at my house. It’ll be easier on the girls not to be confined to a restaurant. At my house they have toys and plenty of room for playing. Plus a home cooked meal is almost always better than a restaurant meal. Last night I went to the grocery store and bought the ingredients for Scalawag’s favorite cake - my Aunt Mary’s strawberry cake - a cake I don’t care for at all but that has always been Scalawag’s favorite. But that is good. I can bake it and not be tempted to eat any of it. I bought steaks to grill for the adults and hamburgers for the children. I’ll also cook some of the vegetables that I froze during the summer. Before I left the store last night, I mentally went over the entire dinner and was satisfied that I’d bought everything I needed and wouldn’t have to make another trip to the store today. So I was set…except that I realized when I woke up this morning that I had forgotten about THE POWER RANGERS! (Click HERE is you don’t know why I’m talking about Power Rangers for a 27-year old’s birthday.)

Not wanting to go to the store again today and being a little devious, I made a phone call. Perfect! Sweet Stuff answered the phone herself. It seems that when she answers the phone herself , she feels “in charge” and she carries on a great conversation. Often if I talk to Stinkeroo first and she asks Sweet Stuff if she wants to talk to Grandma Carol, the conversation is short, and Sweet Stuff’s not into it very much. This morning she was INTO it. I wish I could relate the conversation word for word. I told her that we were having a birthday party for Uncle Scalawag today. That got her excited because she LIVES for birthday parties. I could hear her relating our conversation to Stinkeroo in the background. Then I told her that I’d heard she wanted to have a Power Rangers birthday party for him. Oh yes, she said - Power Rangers for boys. Then I asked what Power Rangers things I needed to get. “Cups….plates…. napkins,” she replied, pausing thoughtfully between items. (I heard Stinkeroo talking to Sweet Stuff in the background.) Then “We’ll get everything!” Those were the words I was hoping to hear! “How about party hats?” I asked. That, too. Then, since they had made blueberry muffins for breakfast, she said she wanted to bring Uncle Scalawag a muffin, too. I talked to Stinkeroo after Sweet Stuff and I were finished chatting. She said she was going to the store in awhile anyway and that Sweet Stuff would love to pick out the Power Rangers stuff.

So I’m all set. No need to go shopping again. I can have a nice relaxing day at home. The smell of the cake baking will be wonderful, and I’ll have time to prepare for the party with no rushing. Yea!!!! It seems that often when I think I have EVERYTHING covered and everything planned perfectly, there’s some little detail I’ve forgotten. It’s nice to have other family members who can take up the slack.

I spent a couple hours this morning at a store that had everything for outdoor adventures. A friend who is also wanting to get into camping met me there and we chatted with the salesperson for a long time and asked a lot of questions. The salesperson was most helpful, and I believe I know what I need to go camping. I was SO tempted to buy everything today and go camping tonight. However I reined in my impulsivity (is that a word?) and decided to think about it a few days, and if I still have the camping bug, I’ll buy what I need later this week - and go camping next weekend. And since I know myself fairly well, I’d put money on the fact that I’ll be buying the supplies this week and camping next weekend. I’ll be doing what the salesperson referred to as “car camping” - driving to a park with established campsites, and just moving my camping stuff from the car to the campsite. No hiking involved in getting there. The backpacking can come sometime in the future depending on how well the car camping goes.

I enjoyed looking at all the possible things to buy. There was every gadget imaginable. However, the one thing that got me excited was the COOLEST stove! It’s a small hand-size unit that screws into a propane canister - it has little arms that fold out and you set a pan on the arms. Easy, simple, probably not very steady — but I loved it! The tents were interesting, too. If you haven’t looked at tents lately, you should know that the designation of 2-person, 3-person, etc. is deceptive. The three-person tents would only be practical for three VERY friendly people. I believe I’d get claustrophobia in the one-person tents and even the two-person tents. The tent I will most likely buy is a 3-person tent. It will provide plenty of room for me when I go by myself, and if I find someone who wants to go with me, there will be enough room for two. I really wouldn’t try to squeeze three in there, though — unless two of them were Lily and Sophie. Which is actually an idea for maybe a year or two from now when they’re a little older. They’d think camping was a big adventure.

Now that I know what I want to buy, I’ll concentrate on where I want to go. It’ll probably be a state park somewhere within a hour’s drive of home - with lots of hiking trails and some pretty scenery.

The details are worked out. My fall break starts next Wednesday. So as soon as I get off work I’ll pick up Sweet Stuff and Sunshine from school, and we’ll make the 3 1/2- hour trip to visit my mother - their Grandma Ruth - in Georgia. In one of my mother’s guest bedrooms, she has two twin beds and a full bed. The last time I took the girls to visit my mother, the three of us slept in that bedroom, and they thought it was such fun. They each had their own bed, and Grandma Carol slept in the room with them. So we’ll drive down on Wednesday. Then on Thursday we’ll go to the Pumpkin Patch that their Aunt Debi manages for their local church. Aunt Debi will let us join a preschool group that will be on a field trip to the Pumpkin patch. We’ll participate in story telling and pumpkin decorating. The girls will have a great time, and we’ll bring lots of pumpkins home with us. We’ll come home on Friday morning - just in time for the girls to spend the weekend with their parents and for Grandma Carol to go camping. Sounds like a good plan to me.

I’ve heard a lot about FREAKONOMICS in the past week or so, and I want to read the book.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Here’s the publisher’s description of the book: Steven D. Levitt and co-author Stephen J. Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives - how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. In Freakonomics, they set out to explore the hidden side of…well, everything. The inner workings of a crack gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The myths of campaign finance. The telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher. The secrets of the Ku Klux Klan.

It sounds fascinating to me — and with all the press it has gotten, apparently it is fascinating to others as well. I’ll report back here after I read it.

Another book recommendation is ONE GRAIN OF RICE by Demi. This is a book that always grabs the kids’ attention. In this story set in India, there is a rice famine, the people are starving, but the raja is hoarding all the rice for himself. Then a clever village girl named Rani returns some rice that has fallen from one of the raja’s baskets. He decides to reward her for her honesty. When he asks what she wants for a reward, she requests a single grain of rice, and continues “Then each day for thirty days you will give me double the rice you gave me the day before. Thus, tomorrow you will give me two grains of rice, the next day four grains of rice, and so on for thirty days.” Each time I read this book with children, they want to know if the math is really true. How does one grain of rice become over a billion in only 30 days? So we do the math and see that it is indeed true. It’s a great way to teach multiplication and other math concepts through authentic literature. Plus it throws in a lesson on honesty and caring for others.

One Grain of Rice: A Mathematical Folktale

Today was a special day at school. It was Homecoming Day at the high school across the street. Ordinarily a high school homecoming wouldn’t affect an elementary school. Not here, though. Homecoming Day means that the high schoolers would have their homecoming parade and that it would come through our elementary school parking lot. Around 1:45 p.m. there was an announcement over the intercom that the parade was starting, and that all classes who wanted to see it should make their way to the front parking lot immediately. Such excitement! Children, teachers and parents lined the parking lot and waited while the local police stopped traffic, and the parade began. The floats were obviously a labor of love of the high school students. They wouldn’t have won any awards in a commercial parade, but that didn’t matter. The excitement and fun reflected on the faces of the students were better than any award. Most of the parade vehicles were student-driven cars and trucks that had been decorated with streamers, balloons, paint and, in one case, mud. Two police cars led the parade with their blue lights flashing. Another cruiser with flashing lights brought up the rear, with an assortment of floats, cars and trucks in between. High school kids were packed into the cars and trucks — standing up through sun roofs - hanging out windows - packed in the truck beds -waving and cheering, honking horns, revving up the engines. Excitement reached new heights whenever brothers and sisters or friends would see each other. Little ones would proudly point out their older sibling, and the older ones would yell to the younger ones. The high schoolers threw candy to the eager elementary students. I watched as high school students caught the eyes of former teachers and called out and waved to them. I imagine most of them were remembering past years when they had been the younger students in this event. It was loud. It was not a standards-based learning activity. It was a tender moment - one you wouldn’t see in city schools. I looked down the road at the traffic backing up behind the police barriers, and I wondered what non-locals were thinking of this display of small town pride and celebration. Traffic was stopped for a good 20 - 30 minutes as the parade moved from the high school, across the street to the elementary school, through the parking lot and then back across the street to the high school again. When the children got home from school this afternoon, they may not have been able to remember what they learned in class today, but I guarantee they’ll remember the fun and excitement of that parade.

I don’t know why I’ve got such an impulse to go camping. I don’t like being uncomfortable. I like sleeping in my own bed. I don’t like being by myself - especially outside - in the dark - all night. And yet… I keep thinking that maybe I’ll see if I can borrow a tent from somebody and give camping a try this weekend.

Today I was working with a group of four third graders. As they read, I asked them to make connections. Did the story or illustrations make them think about anything else? Did it remind them of something that happened to them or something they’d read about or something on the news? In the story, there was a cartoon character who was trying to pull a giant turnip out of the ground.

One girl (I’ll call her Karen) told me about how the picture reminded her of the time that she was trying to pull a piece of metal out of the ground and it flipped her up into the air. Then her sister tried to pull it out, and it flipped her into the air, too. And then her father tried, and it even flipped him into the air. Karen looked at me with wide eyes and a sincere expression as she related her tale. Karen wasn’t lying to me. She was imagining pulling on something stuck in the ground, and then being flung into the air where she flipped around and landed softly back on the earth. I could see the excitement in her eyes as she visualized the experience.

In education we talk about connections - text to text connections, text to self connections, and text to world connections. Karen illustrated a connection that isn’t in the books on teaching. She made a text to imagination connection.

And the thought came to me that such childlike IMAGINATION is what is seriously lacking in everyday life today. Creators of TV shows and movies have lost the ability to think beyond the ordinary in innocent flights of fancy, fun, excitement and adventure. Instead, their imaginations have gone in the direction of the dark, cynical, and sexual. And we’re the worse for it.

Wordless books? What’s the use of wordless books. In wordless books, the author tells the story through the pictures. Then the reader “reads” by making up his/her own story to match the pictures. It’s a great way to foster creativity and the use of expressive language. I have two favorite wordless books. The first is Tuesday by David Wiesner. I’ve used this book with all elementary grades, and they LOVE it. I love to watch the children’s reaction when I show them the last two pages. You can just see the wheels of thought and imagination turning in their heads. Children of all ages and abilities will enjoy making up the story to go with this book. As I’ve worked with third, fourth and fifth graders teaching them how to be effective”reading buddies” with the younger grades, I’ve used Tuesday as an example of a book they can “read” with their buddies, regardless of their buddy’s reading ability.

Tuesday
A great wordless (or nearly wordless) book for engaging children in creative writing is The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg. This book contains fourteen black-and-white drawings, each accompanied by a title and a caption. The children are first intrigued by a mysterious introduction explaining how the incomplete manuscript had been found. Then they are invited to finish the stories.

The Mysteries of Harris Burdick

I started to write that I watched Martha Stewart’s “The Apprentice” tonight. However, that would be a lie. I started watching it, but it was so boring, I switched over to re-runs of “The Amazing Race”, but that was a re-cap show, aka a filler show. The B word again. So I turned off the TV and started a batch of yogurt instead. A perfectly logical change of activities. Since I TiVo’ed “The Apprentice”, I checked later to see what happened in the boardroom. Even when Martha called the entire Matchstick team back into the boardroom so she could fire the person she wanted to fire rather than choose between the two the project manager had selected, I was still yawning. I can’t put my finger on why Martha’s show is boring - and Donald’s isn’t. I WANT it to be better than Donald’s. Unless it gets better very quickly, I’m thinking that it’s unlikely there will be a second round of Martha’s “The Apprentice.”

I watched a few minutes of “America’s Next Top Model” tonight. A dozen or so beautiful young women competing for a modeling contract. One girl, Kim, was explaining to the camera about how, as a lesbian, she must deal with straight girls coming on to her – but, she continues, that’s okay - she likes to have fun. She has a steady girlfriend at home that she’s really committed to. However, she just really has a thing for blondes, and one of the other aspiring models in the house, Sarah, is just so . . . well BLONDE. And Kim and Sarah made out in the limousine on the way home from a photo shoot when they were all drunk (Note: captured on camera, of course), and then they spent even more time together and made out again (Additional note: captured via night vision lenses – much more dramatic!) - and so, as Kim so earnestly explained, even though she’s committed to her girlfriend at home, she and Sarah did a lot of making out because they’re girls and (the next line was the kicker) THAT’S JUST WHAT GIRLS DO. They have fun and make out together, but it doesn’t mean anything. OK, I realize I’m eons away from my teens and twenties. But is that REALLY what girls do now? Fortunately or unfortunately, we won’t see how this relationship turns out since Sarah was kicked off the show at the end of tonight’s episode for not performing well enough with her “signature walk”.

I added a site meter to The Median Sib two days ago, and it has been interesting to watch the number slowly increase as people look at my blog - 110 people so far. I may be wrong, but 110 visits in two days seems like a nice little trickle of traffic for a new blog. The meter doesn’t count my many visits which is good because I log on and off all the time as I re-read things I’ve written, make changes, read comments, etc. I tend to be compulsive about looking for typos and re-wording things that don’t read the way I intended them to read. The purpose of this blog isn’t to get a lot of traffic, but having the site meter makes me think about who is here and why they’re here.

My niece has a blog, Reasoned Audacity, and she is nearing the 100,000 mark for site visitors. Her blog is less than a year old. So I wondered how long it would take The Median Sib to reach such a number. If my weak math skills are correct, at the rate of the past two days it will take around 5 years! Obviously this isn’t going to be a record-breaking blog - and it wasn’t intended to be. This blog doesn’t have a central theme. It isn’t associated with any particular cause or organization. Most of the comments so far are from my wonderful family, although there are a couple non-family comments interspersed here and there. I have some friends who read my blog, too. And then I guess there are the other bloggers who are just surfing through blogs and see something here that catches their eye and they take the time to read it.

What’s the purpose of The Median Sib? Not to get a lot of traffic. Not to make money from the advertising. Not to debate the important topics of the day. It’s here as an outlet for me - a communication and expression tool. So to everyone who has taken the time to read The Median Sib - THANK YOU!

I was browsing through some blogs and came across one that mentioned this article in The New York Times. It was interesting plugging in my own statistics and seeing how I ranked in terms of their criteria for “class”.