What did I win? NaNoWrimo! I won a very sketchy first draft of a novel, which is 50,241 words all put near one another in one big google document. I am not sure how I feel about this, but I think it’s kind of good.

What am I going to do now? Well seeing as how it’s nearly 3 PM and my family is rather hungry and I am, too, I think I will head downstairs and see what leftovers we will all agree to eat.

I am back home. I just met my word goal for the day, 34k. It is starting to look like I might actually write 50k before the end of the month, as long as I can keep up the pace.

It’s after one in the morning and I think I will go to bed. Tomorrow we are having a large family get together with Drob’s extended family, and I don’t want to be too tired to enjoy it. The more annoying elements of his family are not going to be there, or so I’m told, and so I am really looking forward to the event.

My mom sort of gave me a non-apology apology for having criticized the kids making a ‘mess’. It was not really all that messy, but mom’s used to having everything spotless. She made comments to me about the mess, which annoyed me, but I blew her off saying, “News flash! Children create mess using small toys! Film at eleven!” I chuckled and told her not to worry, that we would clean up before we left.

We brought home the remains of the turkey, and I cut away the meat from the carcass, then placed the bones in the crock pot to make soup. Soup and writing and writing and soup. The house is already starting to smell delicious.

Tomorrow, we feast again! No wonder we are a culture with lots of extra pounds around our waists… our culture is food obsessed. Or, at least I know that I am. Maybe I can work this into my novel somehow.

I know I’m deep into thinking about these characters because for the last couple of nights, they visited me in my dreams. Hmmm… dreams are a fun thing to put in a novel.

There is a lot of thinking going on in my novel, but not much action. Hmmmm…. action is something that is fun to put into a novel.

Anyway, I’m at 34,178 words if you want to know and now I am off to bed. Goodnight!

The novel is coming along. I am still at my mom’s house, but things are somewhat less tense, and I’ve been doing a lot of writing and a lot of cooking.

I had a great time cooking. My favorite thing so far was pumpkin soup cooked and served in its own shell. Thanks, Barbara Kingsolver, for the wonderful recipe. Here’s a picture, and then I’m going back to the novel.

going

to

sleep

It is the middle of the night. I am now the proud owner of:

- a lovely apple pie
- a pumpkin soup cooked in its own shell and which we’ll serve tomorrow in its own shell
- Two pumpkin pies

and, most importantly,
18,713 words put together in mostly sentences, words which run together in a manner of a chicken whose head is parted from its body, but are words none the less. You put the words on the page, you move on. One word, then the next one. This is how they all do it.

Those heroes of mine. That write. They were all here first. I am imagining Neil Gaimann. He’s got his pen, his notebook. Did he have a pumpkin pie in the oven, filling up the room with warmth and spicey goodness.

Baking. Writing. Making Soup. Writing. Washing Dishes. Writing.

Write.

Write.

Write.

I am going to bed as soon as this last pie is out of the dang oven.

Oh and as soon as I get the chance, I’ll upload some pumpkin soup photos that I took along the way and I am sure Barbara Kingsolver won’t mind if I share the recipe, as she has it online as well.

Oh and she’s another writer. I bet she DID have a pie in the oven from time to time while she puts words on the page. One word, then the next.

Oh and then there’s Annie LaMott. She is completely nuts, and I love her. Bird by Bird - that is the book of her I read that was really about putting one word down and then the next one. She also wrote Operating Instructions, which is HILARIOUS.

Words, and then a few more words. I feel like I am cheating on my novel, writing this post. What! Words that aren’t part of the novel? Not right. No! Hehe hehehehehehehe….

Insert exhausted cackling here.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

I am supposed to be adding words to my novel (16,880 right now) but instead I am a bit distracted by the miserable whining sounds that Carla is making upstairs. We are at my mom’s house, and Nonna has decided that Carla’s hair needs a wash.

As a matter of fact, her hair is indeed quite greasy. It has been, ahem, a while since her last shampoo. She does not like getting her hair washed, but Nonna would never let a little thing like someone else’s feelings get in the way of what she thinks should be done.

We arrived here last night, a little before midnight, the girls and I. It was an easy drive, just about 2 hours and 15 minutes, and I was hoping we’d have a really relaxed visit. So far, it is mostly okay, but I am really looking forward to tomorrow when Drob and Cammy arrive. It’s like I’m all alone out here and I need reinforcements. I need to look over at a sympathetic face, and roll my eyes. I need the protection that having my peeps around me will give.

My mom tends to be more snide, more bossy, more annoying when there’s no one around to buffer her. Why do daughters and mothers clash so? I know this isn’t just Her and Me - it’s many mothers and daughters. And as the mother of two daughters myself, I have to say I know that there will be some clashes, have already been some clashes, especially with my little 8 year old pre-teen.

Carla just came downstairs, and announced “Nonna made me take a shower!”

Me: You smell good.

Carla: That’s because Nonna made me put this body wash stuff all over my body! It made me itch all over my back!

Me: You washed your hair?

Carla: I didn’t want to! But yeah. Anyway, I’m going back to my weaving.

That’s another thing that’s annoying as hell. My mom always gives the kids a ton of little fun things — coloring books, hair accessories (2500 hair thingys ! in a bag!), and small toys. Nice, right? Sure, that’s really nice, that’s not a problem. Clutter worries aside, I think it’s perfectly fine. But then the kids trash her living room with all the little things that she gave them, and I have to spend a bunch of time helping them with their new wooden looms, and teaching them basic weaving, and Nonna goes and gets all surprised and annoyed that her house has crap all over it. Yeah! The nerve! These kids, messing up her house with all this stuff!

Carla has short hair these days, and doesn’t use hair accessories. So she decided it would be fun to string the little rubber circles together to make a chain. A long, long, long chain. I could have told her no, sure, but by the time I even noticed (I’m trying to write a novel, you know) she had already had a long chain going. I decided that was okay. It wasn’t technically wasting anything, after all, we can just unhook the loops from one another when we need to. So what?

So, Nonna wasn’t much pleased with that, either. Tough nuggies, really. Feh.

I haven’t been liking the way that she’s been talking to me, or to the kids. It’s not AWFUL or anything, it’s just not that nice. It’s a tone of voice that is ordering, or commanding, rather than asking or inviting. Instead of, “dinner’s ready! C’mon everyone!” — it’s “Pannn, come over here for dinner.” It doesn’t really read clearly when I write it down, it’s the inflection. It is the way my name is spoken. It is the same way my name was spoken throughout my childhood.

You. Do. This. Do. That.

There’s nothing humanistic about my mother. She’s all surface, shallow to the core. It’s like she has zero empathy or something. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just a little sensitive. But that’s how it’s feeling to me.

There’s also the irritability I get from just being in her kitchen. I made pumpkin bread this morning, oh yum! But it took a long time to make it, because as crazy and disorganized as my kitchen is, at least I know where everything is. And I bake. My mother, does not. So she’s got the flour over here, and the baking soda way under there in this other cabinet, and the spices are all in another place, and the mixer is off in this other corner, and I could not find a whisk to save my life. It was frustrating.

On the other hand, the pumpkin bread came out really, really, well. I will be doing more cooking once I get the kids to go to sleep, which is what I must do now.

I just went into wordpress admin to moderate the 93 comments that were pending. 100% of them were spam. It has been 12 days since I blogged at all. My previous post had zero real comments.

The novel that I’m working on for NaNoWriMo.org has 11695 words so far. To “win” I need to write 38305 more words in the next six days.

I have been occupying many hours with cooking pumpkins. I have fallen in love with pumpkin. Pumpkin pie. Pumpkin bread. Pumpkin soup. For Thanksgiving, I am going to attempt Barbara Kingsolver’s Pumpkin Soup served in its own pumpkin shell. I am very excited about this. I have no doubt that we’ll make something yummy, though I worry it may well be a huge mess, especially if I overcook the pumpkin shell and it spills all over my mother’s pristine Thanksgiving table. That is my biggest fear, but eh! Who cares! Pumpkin soup in its own shell! How romantic is that!!! Maybe I should put that in my novel, too.

As for writing 38,305 more words in the next six days, I have some doubts. If I were to receive some encouragement, dear internet friends, that might just do it for me.

Today I sat waiting for a dental cleaning appointment and squeezed out 1000 words or so, just in the 45 minutes while I was waiting to be seen. I think can do this, I just need some motivation.

I’m begging you, oh wide world of internet-addicted souls, please, leave me some comments. Your words will help spur me to write my own.

Pretty please?

And if you do, I’ll put your name on my Thank You page at the front of my book!

When you work with kids, I think confidence is really crucial. They have to be able to feel secure knowing that you, The Teacher, knows what is supposed to be going on. Kids do not care for ambiguity.

When are we going outside? they want to know. Soon, Later, I don’t know — these are all unacceptable answers. I usually glance at the clock and state definitively 2:30! or, sometimes, I answer “Right after snack.”

Can I take of my shoes? There’s got to be a rule.

Consequences of breaking rules, have to be consistent, reasonable and fair.

I know all of this. But recently I had a thoroughly frustrating day, because I kept on second-guessing my answers. Was I capable of resolving disputes properly? Which technique should I use? Did I give adequate transition time? Was I making my expectations clear? Should I allow Rita to cut up a pipe cleaner? Can Jenna have another cookie? Everything seems to be so significant. I wasn’t confident in my own judgement.

This was the result of having two separate meetings with parents in which I felt criticized. The most recent meeting was on Monday. I felt like instead of having the parents be an ally to helping their children’s behavior in school, it was as if the parents thought any issues their kid had were entirely related to negligence or poor judgment on my part. Then after getting that awful meeting over with, I had to step back into the classroom and provide a structured, balanced, comfortable day for a group of kids. It’s hard to do that with roiling emotions!

Much of this internal dialogue is nonsense, of course. I DO have good judgment. My program IS good, and most kids do great with me. I was meeting with these two families because their children’s behaviors were outliers. In other words, their behaviors had fallen outside of what I expected from them. Parents don’t like to hear that, and so they were defensive and hurtful toward me.

I know this, and I know I need a “thicker skin” as one peer recently pointed out to me. My own feelings should NOT make me have a bad day. The good thing is though, I don’t think the kids knew I was having a bad day. My discomfort was real, but it was internal.

So another day ahead me, and I am trying to feel confident again. I am learning so much, every day, from the classroom environment. Getting kids to behave is a tricky business. I firmly believe that if you provide an environment that meets children’s needs (emotional / artistic / social / physical, etc.) then you will see the behavior that you want. Bad behavior is generally the product of an environment that is missing the mark for that particular child.

We all know that some children have different needs, needs that fall outside of our initial expectations. And parents often REALLY don’t want to hear from me that their child is someone who has “special needs” because of the negative associations with that term.

I do try to be sensitive to that. After all, my own daughter (Carla) is a kid whose behavior at times has been outside of what was expected of her. Specifically, she has a lot of trouble focusing. As her parents, we are working with our pediatrician to find out what we can do to help her. Being defensive about it would be unhelpful.

With this dual perspective of mine (as Teacher, as Parent), I would have thought I could be sensitive to how parents feel about having their child’s needs (be they “special” or “different” or “typical”) pointed out. Yet I feel bad, because in the meetings I had with parents, I am not sure if I managed to communicate what I wanted to say. I tripped over things, misspoke, put things in a way that angered the parents, and triggered their defensiveness. I am disappointed in myself, and frustrated as well. I feel like I blew an opportunity to bring in these parents to a sense of “let’s work together”.

Sorry to be so vague. I am having trouble getting my thoughts organized today, and don’t just want to recount the whole details. Not a great blog entry. Sigh.

This morning my very sleepy family rousted ourselves out of our warm and cozy beds to head over to the voting booth and make history. Drob needed to get his voting accomplished before work, so the strategy we sought (along with about 100 other early birds) was to arrive shortly after the polls opened.

We got there about 7:15 AM. There was a long line that curled around the ramp and down the street. I snapped a few pictures of the people patiently waiting. I heard no grumbling.

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It was clear that we’d have quite a long wait, so the D and I decided that I should take the kids to WaWa for breakfast takeout (coffee, doughnuts) and come back. We get to WaWa and I realize, SHIT, I have no money on me– my wallet is at home. The kids and I head home, I can’t FIND my wallet, but I find a credit card and grab that. By the time we’ve gotten the breakfast, D finished voting, and there was no longer a line. The girls and I went ahead and voted.

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The girls and I all put our fingers on the green VOTE button together, counted to three, and pushed it to record our vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden, along with a host of other Democratic candidates. I took a picture of the girls just before we voted, but of course I was holding the camera so my finger isn’t in the picture (below). There were also several city-related issues to vote on, and we had a fabulous time pushing the Yes or the No button, depending on the question.

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Upon leaving the polling place, the crowds truly were gone, and so I snapped some pictures admiring the strong Obama support here in my neck of the woods.

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STUFFIES FOR OBAMA!!!!

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Once we’d accomplished our voting, and snapped a few pictures for the sake of history, I dropped off my children at school. There I had an opportunity to vote a second time. This time, not for President but something a lot more fun. Our school is choosing a school mascot for our soccer team. The children came up with two candidates: Raccoon or Panther. The kids have been campaigning for about a week - and school is covered with cute kid drawings of Raccoons and of Panthers. They’ve been going around polling other kids and teachers to find out which mascot is leading in the polls. It seems that Panthers are the projected winner. Carla and Annie are both rapid Raccoon supporters, and I have to admit I let that sway my vote.

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From Carla’s campaign poster: “Who would want to be eaten by their mascot? I wouldn’t! VOTE RACCOON!”