Halloween-Kicking Off The Holiday Season

I hate the expensive pre-fab costumes that you spend a million dollars on at Wal-Mart and they disintegrate the minute you pay for them.  So, this year I decided to do something a bit different.  I went to the Goodwill store.  I have not dressed up for Halloween in forever…well since college days…yeah, that was forever.  This year, my school is doing a “Harvest Carnival” the night before Halloween and they want us teachers to dress up.  Great. 

Well, I’m going incognito.  I have this full head mask of an old professor type man.  The hair is scruffy black. The eyes are cutout but the bags under the cutout eyes make me think this mask was an alcoholic in another life.  I went down to the Goodwill to see if I could get a man’s suit that was about 4 sizes too large for me.  Well, I found suit coats but not with matching pants.  I had to go over to the pants section for that.  Found those easily. Picking out the shirt was pretty fun.  There were so many to choose from and many which could have doubled as my own sleep shirts after Halloween.  I chose a light brown one.  The suit by the way is navy blue. 

As I was in the store, I noticed that I was not the only one picking out items for the upcoming weekend events.  One youth, couldn’t have been more than 22, picked out a hot pink ski suit with matching ski boots and a red, white and blue ski hat.  I’m guessing he was going as a ski bunny?  Then there was the girl who picked out a straw farmer’s hat, a green bomber jacket and a flannel checked shirt.  Maybe she was going as a scarecrow? 

Anyway, I was there just having a blast as my wild little mind considered all the possibilities.  I mean, the used bridal gowns, the black lace things, the props!!!!  I also thought how much more fun it would be if there was a special someone in my life and he could have been their with me.  The fun we would have had creating and considering the endless possibilities for the bizarre, silly and weird.  It would have been a wonderful kick-off to the 2008 Holiday Season.  Instead, I contented myself with grabbing up the items my children (who were not with me at the time) told me they wanted for their costumes and enjoyed their squeals of delight when I arrived home with the treasure.  Judging from their responses, I apparently scored.  Now, that doesn’t happen every day.  Pleased and excited children…well, that’s a pretty decent start to the holiday season too.

With Gratitude I Hear My Neighbors Fight

I wrote this poem as part of a writing assignment the same summer I separated from my ex.  Summer 2007.  The assignment was to take the first line of someone’s poem and create your own poem from it.  I, for the life of me, do not remember who the author is to credit this beginning to…but, I’ll figure it out and post it soon.  In any event, I certainly don’t claim the title or the first line as my own original work and I am greatly indebted to the original author for their inspiration.  I’ll do my homework and post the information soon.

With Gratitude I Hear My Neighbors Fight

 

With gratitude, I hear my neighbors fight

Two campsites over

I didn’t know what it was at first

The music of muffled comments

floating through the air

gradually growing in intensity but not too loud

Short staccato vibrations in the otherwise

still summer night.

There syncopated beats

Sneaking in through the window of the travel trailer

I borrowed from friends

 

Looking out, my eyes see the silent, lifeless shapes

of an RV park asleep

A place for happy families vacationing from their real lives

A make believe journey they can escape

by simply packing up

and going home.

They can choose to stay or leave.

 

But not me…for now,

for me this is not vacation

This is real.

Late at night,

in the deep, dark, noisy night

Semis rushing by, air brakes blasting

Their noise chases sleep when it tries to land nearby

Disturbing the silence

Not a hundred feet from my flimsy door.

This is not a vacation, it is my real life.

 

For now it is my escape

From a living nightmare

A nightmare I thought would never end

It is a refuge from hell

A halfway house for my kids and I as we flee Hades

This this is where we live…for now

But this is not our home.

 

With gratitude, I hear my neighbors fight

Two campsites over

the music of muffled comments

Sneaking in through the window of the travel trailer

I borrowed from friends

 

And for now, I know we are safe.

And I hope we will soon be home.

How Very Good My Life Is

Technorati Tags: Creative Writing,Teaching,Learning,Childhood,Children,Struggling Readers,School,Blessings,Struggles,Reading,Children in Poverty,Homeless Children

So, in the past few posts I’ve bemoaned my dire straights,

Griped about my misadventures and frustrations.

But Tuesday of this week

or maybe it was Monday

I was sitting there

at my reading group table

surveying the activity in my classroom.

At one table: students reading

and talking to an adult about their perceptions.

In tables around the room…

students, reading independently, books

of their own choosing.

Reading aloud…

because they still struggle with reading…

But they are reading.

And it is noisy.

Then…at my table… students

repeating and reading

words, sentences

and stories

most of them dull

to me

but difficult for them

and suddenly I realized

how very good my life is.

I am not homeless or hungry.

I own my own home and don’t have to worry

about where I will sleep tonight

or what I will eat.

My own children have a home and a loving mom

and all of us can read.

It is not a struggle.

Except to find the time.

And I realized that I have the rare good fortune

of being employed

at a job

that I truly love

and which matters…

maybe not to most people in our country…

maybe not to the legislators in my state…

but it certainly matters to the ones I teach

and they show me daily

by laughing with me

by writing me love notes on the backs of spelling papers

by waving to me on the way to school in the morning

by telling me “Miz B, You Rock”

by racing me in book reading,

by doing their best.

They want to please me,

but I want them to have good lives.

Lives that they choose, not that

they are relegated to.

I am deeply grateful…

How very good my life is.

Clogged Sewers, Part 2

I’ve been asked to follow up on what happened with the plumber.  The reason I haven’t followed up before now is because nothing happened with the plumber. 

He did indeed come over with steaks and wine.  It was a nice benign evening.  (Of course, what else am I going to say with bazillions of my family, friends and strangers reading this?).  He actually came over a couple of nights later…for a second date.  During this date, I found out, he’s 37 and still married.  Game over. 

It didn’t matter.  He didn’t call again anyway and the “he’s just not that into me” feeling was definitely mutual…especially given the circumstances.

Now I have a cleanout that needs to be upgraded, my drains are working fine and I actually fixed the leak in the kids’ bathroom with the help of a friend.  I actually now know what to do the next time the problem occurs.  The cleanout can wait till next summer.  I plan to work on the yard then anyway. 

And, I still think the plumber thing was funny…

Compatibility Under Fire

In the online dating arena and in the offline dating arena there is a buzzword evolving that is beginning to annoy me because it is so vague as to be meaningless, but it is also becoming overused.  This word is “compatible”.  Another variation of it is “compatibility”.  People talk about compatibility like it is the end all and be all, the one single ingredient to a successful, lasting relationship or at least one of the top five.  The problem, for me, is not that compatibility isn’t important, it is that it is so difficult to nail down.  Just exactly what does it mean to be compatible?  

Does compatibility mean sharing the same interests?  If so, then I know plenty of people with whom I share the same interests, but we would never make good partners for a romantic involvement.  They are either too young, too old, the wrong sex, already married…but we are compatible if compatibility simply means sharing the same interests.  On the other hand, I also know plenty of people with whom I have no common interests as far as activities or hobbies are concerned, but I really connect with these people on some level other than mere interests or hobbies. In fact, some of these people share none of my interests, but we still get along fabulously and have been able to find things to do or places to go spend time together that we both like.  Compatibility cannot be simply reduced to being able to share the same interests or hobbies.  It can never simply be evaluated based on how many things we like to do together. 

Does compatibility mean we get along well together?  And what does get along well together mean?  Does it mean we never argure, never disagree?  Does it mean we can work well together?  Does it mean we resolve conflicts effectively when they do arise?  Does it mean we just don’t care what the other peson does so they never get under our skin?  Hmmmm, that sounds problematic to me.  I don’t think compatibility can be limited to merely getting along peacefully either.

Paul Reiser, in his book Couplehood, 1994, Bantam Books, offers this explanation instead:

Because the way I figure, there are two types of people: those who get it and those who don’t.  If they get it, there’s nothing to explain, and if they don’t, there’s no point in trying to explain.  They don’t get it.  Move on.    But I remember thinking that if you’re going to be with someone, you should find someone who gets it.  And someone who fits.

Simplistic as it might seem, I agree with this assessment.  I’ve done my share of agonizing over the online profile.  I’ve wondered how to nail down exactly what I’m looking for when it can’t be nailed down other than to say that when I meet him I’ll know it.  He’ll get it.  We’ll be a fit for each other. There is no need to agonize over the descriptors because the descriptors can take a million different forms and they can all fit or none of them fit. 

The key is knowing when it is a fit or when it is not and moving on and staying committed to the process.  The bigger problem here is that we want to make what doesn’t fit…fit…because we are tired of the search and afraid the search will never end.  This is where fear creeps in and heartache is born. 

I never want to go that route again and I never want to use “compatibility” as my excuse for doing so and I dont’ have to agonize over what it will look like when it is right.  They’ll either get it or they won’t.   He’ll either get me or he won’t.  There is no better litmus test of compatibility than this.