Goal for 2018: Be Boring

In the past two days I managed to tear down a huge wall of writer's block. This sucker was beefy and cost me several months of writing (though looking at my word count, we're probably talking closer to a year). The culprit, I think, has been all of the life changes my family has gone through. Not only have these changes been distracting (and even derailing), they've also been entertaining. Walls to paint, rooms to decorate, new places in my neighborhood to visit...I guess it sounds like a good thing, huh? I mean, a lot of people believe that the key to writing a lot is living an interesting and varied life. The thing is, I disagree. I think the key to writing a lot is stability, and even boredom. When I first started teaching, it was my dream to write a book, but I couldn't get anything down on paper. Teaching was too new, and it was taking every ounce of creative energy I possessed to create lessons. The job turned my life upside-down, and I was perpetually drained. It wasn't until 2011, after I had been teaching for 4 or 5 years, that I was settled enough in my job to finally write a book. Three years later, my novel was finally finished.

~ Gustave Flaubert

Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon devotes an entire chapter to this principle. The first paragraph sums up his argument nicely:

I'm a boring guy with a nine-to-five job who lives in a quiet neighborhood with his wife and his dog. That whole romantic image of the creative genius...running around...is played out. It's for the superhuman and the people who want to die young. The thing is: It takes a lot of energy to be creative. You don't have that energy if you waste it on other stuff (Kleon 119).

I think that's the key. I need to get to a place of consistency again. I need my life to take on a sort of dull harmony, so that boredom can set in, and I can take all of that pent up creative energy and purge it onto pages on my screen.

Thus, my New Year's Resolution for 2018 is to be bored.

(For the record, I think this resolution is better than the one I made in 2015, in which I vowed to be a hermit crab stuffed into a broken piece of bottle).

Seriously, 2017 was too exciting. And too unsettling. Boredom sounds amazing. Can I get me some of that, please?

Happy New Year, and may yours be more exciting than mine!

Ready, Aim, Fire

This weekend I became a certified archery instructor!

 My first time firing the Genesis bow

Mr. Bales and me with our certification cards

The class was in Wheatland, CA, which is about a seven and-a-half hour drive from where I live (eight hours plus if you figure in stops for gas and food). Clint and I, along with a teaching colleague of mine, Mr. Bales, left right after work on Friday, arrived to our motel around midnight, and started the training the next morning. 

The class was awesome. I came into the class being a tiny bit familiar with archery, but my experience was limited to the compound bow with a peep sight and scope, set at about 42 lbs. The bows we're required to use for NASP (National Archery in the Schools Program) are Genesis bows, which are also compound, but have no peep sight, no scope, and are only set to 11 to 20 lbs. So in addition to having to learn how to set up and run an archery range (including all of the safety rules/regulations), I had to learn the techniques for shooting a bow that I'm completely unfamiliar with. Did you know there are ELEVEN steps to shooting a bow? Here was the nemonic device I made up so I could remember all of the steps for the test: 

Sassy naked damsels boast proudly during an afternoon salsa routine Friday.™

Seriously, I need to trademark that baby. ;) It stands for: Stance, nock arrow, draw handset, bow handset, pre-draw, draw, anchor, aim, release, follow-through. Someone was paid the big bucks to make all that up. If I was in charge over at NASP, I'd have three steps: 

Ready. Aim. Fire.

Anyway, we were also required to learn all of the different parts of a bow, and how to do common bow repairs. It was total information overload...by the end of the training my brain felt numb. But I also came out of it on a high, because I feel like I learned SO much (I ended up scoring a 96% on my practicals, and man did it take everything out of me). At this point, I honestly think I could set up an entire archery range and run an event with confidence.

While all of this was going on, my son was participating in the Monopoly Championship Tournament eight hours away, which resulted in me doing a lot of hyperventilating, squealing, and screaming while trying to shoot targets and memorize that the top cam of the bow is called the "idler wheel." I'm dying to write more about this whole Monopoly thing on this post, but it's way too cool and special, so I think I'll save it for the next one.

Cross your fingers for me now that our grant through NASP goes through, because I really, really want to get this archery program going for the new school year!

Boring Day Challenge

I hereby dedicate the following boring day to my esteemed colleague, Mr. Moore.

Two weekends ago I woke up, fully alert.  The clock read 7:28.  I decided there was no way in hell I was getting up at an hour beginning with a '7' on a Saturday, so I fell back asleep.  Sometime later, I woke up again.  It was now 8:42.  I decided there was no way I was waking up at an hour beginning with an '8' on a Saturday, so I fell back asleep.  Sometime later I woke up again.  It was now 9:51.  I trudged out of bed, feeling proud that I managed to get myself up before the hour reached the double-digits. 

A pile of laundry greeted me at the foot of my bed.  I ignored its greeting.

Bleary-eyed from too much sleep, I meandered out to the couch.  I hopped on the internet (because that’s my coffee on a Saturday morning) and hit the “like” button on a few random facebook updates—not because I actually liked them, or even read them for that matter, but because I think it’s important to be supportive of my friends even when I don’t particularly care about their lives (see why people line up for miles to be my friend?).       

After my mad liking-spree, I stared at the clock for a while, wondering if I should wake up my kids who were now sleeping well into the double digits.  I decided to give them another half hour because waking up the kids meant that…well…I’d have kids.  While staring at the clock, I noticed that the minute hand was seven minutes fast.  Then I thought for a second that maybe the minute hand was just fine, and I had actually jumped seven minutes into the future.  If I was in the future, I thought it might be a good idea to gather as much information as possible to take back to my own time.  Unfortunately while I was contemplating what information I should gather, seven minutes passed, and I was back in my own time period again.  Strangely though, the minute hand was still ahead.

Once I finished analyzing the clock, I decided to make French toast and over-medium eggs, because it’s one of the two meals in this world I can cook.  I cracked open the first egg.  It was hard-boiled.  I cracked open a second egg.  It was hard-boiled too.  At this point I thought that maybe I should do the “spinning test” on egg #3 to make sure it wasn’t hard-boiled.  So I did, and it flew right off the counter onto the tile floor.  It was raw.  Well at least the test worked. 

After the dog licked up the egg, I made my over-medium eggs and French toast.  We were out of syrup, so I melted jelly and told the kids (who finally woke up) that it was specialty syrup.  Like the blueberry syrup you get at IHOP, but grape-flavored instead.  They looked skeptical.

I spent the rest of my fascinating morning in my jammies, eyes glazed over, staring at a computer screen and wishing I had a robot that would grade all my papers and make me look ten years younger.  I'm not sure how my robot would make me look younger...let's say it's a robot with a magic wand. 

And that concludes my boring day.

Okay, I realize that this technically was only a boring morning, but seriously, I haven’t experienced an entire boring day since 1996.  So this is about as good as it gets.

Mr. Moore, I better get a cookie for this. 

Blogger and Pre-Teen Issues

Blogger is driving me crazy.  Ever since I changed the URL, nothing on here works.  I tried commenting on Shan's last post, and once again, Blogger won't let me on the comment page (by the way Sho, that part about the patient has me in stitches! Clint says a "true" therapist would have helped him get there faster).  Sometime in the next month or two, Shan and I will be switching to a new webpage.  We already have our new URL picked out; it's just a matter of us getting together and creating our new space.  This time around I want to go through the process with her, so it's actually our blog; not just mine that she's renting a room from.  Unfortunately the new blog will be platformed on Blogger because that's all we know and neither one of us have time to learn a new one, but hopefully starting from scratch will eliminate these current glitches.  I did manage to use Blogger for three years before having any big problems.

I have too much to write about, but I really don't want to write, so I'll sum everything up.  First, I'm overwhelmed with work right now, but that's nothing new.  Second, I've been absolutely addicted to reading lately--more than usual.  I finally broke down and got a Kindle e-Reader, and I adore the thing.  The first book I read from it was Fifty Shades of Grey.  I started the second book--Fifty Shades Darker--but got bored with it, so I switched over to a new book called Divergent by Veronica Roth.  It was a great read, although it got a little heavy and sad toward the end.  I started the next book in the series (Insurgent), and after that I have four or five other books already downloaded, just waiting for me to read.  Third, I'm currently signed up for three 5Ks, one each month for the next three months.  Yeah, I think I might be getting a little carried away.  Fourth, Trin goes to school with me every day now, which is awesome, but she's driving me nuts at home.  She has been this emotional ball of hormones and constantly having these stupid meltdowns.  And since I'm the parent at home dealing with it, I'm the one that gets demonized.  I have ZERO tolerance for all of this girly crap.  Fifth, we decided to go to the L.A. County Fair again for my and Shan's birthday.  It's not until the third weekend of September, but I am already drooling at the prospect of a giant blue cheese burger and fried jalepenos (coincidentally, I've been craving blue cheese dressing too, but have felt no compulsion to stare at muddy rivers or provinces in Canada).

Okay, I'm going to go count to ten backwards because my daughter is making me see red right now.

Rain Clouds in the Hot Springs

Okay, Monday.  Just like the weekend, it was both really crappy and pretty wonderful--with not much in between.  That morning I woke up, expecting to enjoy a relaxing morning with Clint, whom I hadn't seen in three days.  Instead we got into a nasty argument.  I won't get into the whys, but it ended up monopolizing our entire morning.  We did eventually make up, but the whole thing left me feeling emotional for hours. 

The day wore on, and I started feeling more upbeat as we began packing for the Hot Springs (although my eye infection was coming back, which was really aggravating--guess I should've followed the Rx's directions).  As I mentioned in my last post, Matt and Alana were visiting from Nor Cal, so all of us decided to hike up into the Hot Springs again.  But this time we planned to stay the night.  I had been excited for this excursion for the last three weeks.  I kept fantasizing about soaking in nature's jacuzzi beneath all of those bright stars, enjoying  late-night wine and conversation with good friends. 

Matt and Alana had already hiked up to the Springs earlier that day, so Clint and I decided to meet up with them sometime after 4:00.  The first little problem arose when Clint's mom called us around 1:00 saying she was sick as a dog and couldn't watch our kids, but luckily, she arranged for Moo (Clint's sis) to watch them.  So all was fine.  But then at 3:00, Moo called and told us that Lucas (my nephew) was projectile vomiting, so she couldn't take the kids.  We now had no babysitter.  We tried several other options, but nothing panned out.  I was starting to panic, because I knew Matt and Alana were already at the Springs, and there was zero cell service up there.  We had no way to call them and tell them what was going on.  I couldn't bear the thought of canceling our plans and not only leaving them hanging all night, but losing out on an experience that I had been looking forward to for weeks. 

Clint agreed that we couldn't leave the two hanging, and bringing the kids along was definitely not an option.  Thus one of us needed to do the hike.  Of course I volunteered.  Initially he was opposed to the idea, but he was still so sore from the black belt test that it didn't take much to convince him.  He filled my backpack with all sorts of little survival stuff, plus I took my .38 special and Yang (my dog) in case I needed to ward off any crazies (it is the Hot Springs).  He dropped me and Yang off at the trail head and off we went.

Now I say this casually, but at this point I need to mention that I have a teeny-tiny fear of going to unfamiliar places by myself, and a big fat fear of getting lost.  I used to have recurring nightmares as a kid in which I was deserted in unfamiliar places.  It's one of my worst fears.  I'd rather cuddle with a black widow than get lost alone.

Okay, so back to hiking.  The trail I was on was one I had never taken before and was much more vertical than the other option, but was only two miles from the Springs instead of six.  So of course I decided to take this route.  I was about ten minutes into the hike when my trail went into two opposite directions, and I realized I had no idea which way to go.  Of course there was no one around.  I knew this was a possibility, so I kept calm.  I pulled out my cellphone to see if I could pull up some sort of map, but I had no service.  I remember just standing there for a few minutes, looking back and forth, feeling utterly helpless.  Then it started pouring.  I actually laughed outloud at this point, because I live in the desert, and it might be self-absorbed but I knew that fucking rain cloud was there just for me.

I eventually figured out where I was going, and at that point the hike was amazing.  It smelled so wonderful, and once I found the right trail I was able to just relax and enjoy the scenery.  It also felt so liberating to conquer that fear of exploring unfamiliar territory alone.  After such an emotional day, those two miles were such a soothing therapy.

Once I reached the Hot Springs, Alana saw me right away from the river and hollered for me.  I explained to them what had happened with the babysitting, but Matt spent most of the day not believing me.  The eye infection had given me a case of the sniffles, so he was convinced  that Clint and I had argued about going to the Springs and I had stormed off without him.  All day long, he was like "Why are you crying Jodi?" and my answer was always the same: "Because I have a damn eye infection Matt."  It was pretty funny.

So we enjoyed a day at the Hot Springs, met lots of interesting people, collected wood for a fire that evening, and everything was going great.  Until night came.  Matt slipped from a rock, fell about ten feet, and ended up dislocating his elbow and breaking his arm.  At first he didn't think it was that bad, but then he held it up under what little moonlight was filtering through the clouds to show Alana, and it looked all contorted with a round ball sticking out from his elbow.  When Alana saw this she took a few steps back and told me "Oh my god, I'm going to pass out."  She didn't, so good job there Alana.

Alana and I, along with a dozen of nearby hippies, tried  for hours to convince Matt to let us hike him out, but his answer was a resounding "Hell no."  There was no way he wanted to risk a treacherous six mile hike in pitch dark (there were no stars due to the cloud cover and barely a moon), with us girls having to carry a bigger burden since his arm was useless.  Of course this made sense, but sitting there all night with his injury seemed so wrong.  Ultimately, all we could do was keep Matt's arm in the cool water all night and wait it out until morning.  He did take some Excedrin to help deal with the pain, plus we bummed some mystery liquor from one of our neighbors, so all of this helped a bit. 

Obviously we didn't get much sleep that night.  Matt constantly wanted to be in the water, but neither Alana nor myself were comfortable with the idea of him navigating the rocks in the dark with an injured arm.  Alana was pretty exhausted by 1 or 2 in the morning and could barely keep her eyes open, so I told her I'd watch out for him and ended up staying in the springs until 4 or 5 in the morning.  It was beautiful in those springs.  Even though the stars were hidden, the moon came out at one point and was so bright that it was reflecting off of the clouds.  There were a few people here and there with us, and they were all so easy-going, friendly, and relaxed.  Okay, they may have been stoned. Anyway, we spent most of the time in a spot that the three of us discovered earlier; a river pool containing cooler water, but if you lean against the rock, a hot waterfall spurts down your back.  It's wonderful--a non-stop back massage.  But in this case, it was a nice compromise; it gave Matt the cool water he needed for his arm, but gave me the nice hot water that I was craving.  

Eventually we came back to camp and I finally curled up in my sleeping bag, which was on the ground outside because I forgot to bring a tent.  Matt and Alana insisted that I sleep in their little two-man tent, and had it been necessary, I would've had no issues with it.  I'm not one with worrying about personal space.  But the temperature that night was so beautiful and perfect, and I actually felt excited about the prospect of sleeping under the stars...even if I couldn't see them.  So I tried to fall asleep, but I remember I felt so, so silly.  I think I was delirious with fatigue, but I didn't feel tired at all.  I started chattering to poor Alana who was trying to sleep, until eventually I passed out.  It was more of a doze though...I could still hear all the noises around me.  I do remember that the ground and the backpack I was using as a pillow felt like the most comfortable thing on the planet, so I must have been pretty tired. 

I woke up at first light.  Not because I was ready to wake up, but because my damn eye was super-sensitive to the sunshine even behind the closed lid.  Soon after, Matt and Alana woke up, and we spent time preparing breakfast and breaking down camp.  Matt's injured arm was now very swollen, with purple marks forming around the joint, so Alana and I felt pretty concerned about getting him to a doctor.  Right after breakfast, Matt threw up, and he seemed to be running a small fever, all of which didn't help our worry. 

We decided to hike the six mile trail out, because the trail I had taken the day before would require us to hike vertically upward for two straight miles...not an appealing option for someone with usage in only one arm.  Once ready, we set off.  The hike was long and hot, and we were quite the pitiful group.  Sleep-deprived, hungry, and a third of us crippled (two-thirds of us if you count the fact that Alana's hip was giving her issues).  When we finally reached three or four miles, I at last had cell service.  I called Clint to tell him what was going on, and he immediately drove to the trail head and started hiking our direction.  When he reached us, he took Matt's pack and hiked the rest of the way with us.   

Alana took Matt to the ER while Clint and I grabbed Del Taco for everyone.  We were all famished.  In two days, I had eaten one can of tuna, salami, and a packet of oatmeal.  Clint delivered the food to Matt and Alana in triage, where Matt technically wasn't allowed to eat, but he said "screw it" and crammed a burrito down anyway.  Then Clint drove me home and I crashed for three hours.

Matt's arm (with the elbow popped back in):

He is now doing much better but is still not quite up to par. We're still planning to get in one more visit with the both of them before they leave on Saturday. For this next visit, maybe we should stay at home and play Boggle.  

Universal Studios Monsoon and Other Unrelated Stuff

I stand no chance of catching my blog up on everything, so I'm going to use Shan's numbering method to hit the highlights:

1. I took thirty Builders Club students on a field trip to Universal Studios on Saturday.  It rained the whole time, although the heaviest fall was right when we arrived to the park.  It felt like a monsoon while we were purchasing our group's tickets.  Of course my idea of a monsoon is probably skewed by the fact that I live in the desert, but I will point out that my socks were soaked within two minutes of leaving the bus, even though I was wearing boots that were supposedly water resistent.  On the plus side, because of the rain, the lines were non-existence.  We walked straight on to Mummy's Revenge and Jurassic Park without even waiting thirty seconds.  Plus my students, being desert rats themselves, aren't used to rain, so they were all excited and festive about it.  The park sold ponchos for $4.00 (decent ones too!), so everywhere you looked there was a sea of bright yellow shiny hooded figures sloshing through puddles.  It was quite the scene to see in Southern California.  But my favorite part of the whole day was getting to tour Wisteria Lane.  Desperate Housewives is my weekly guilty pleasure.
2. While we were in Vegas, the cat (Meow--yeah, we give our pets creative names) decided to give birth in my closet.  I lost a duffle bag and a purse in the process, but I just felt relieved that my favorite boots survived the ordeal considering they, too, were sitting on the floor.  We now have five little Meow spawns.  Their names are:  Ewok (although we call her Wookie), Sunshine, Yowler, Pants, and Kitty Soft Paws.  They are adorable as all get-out, but now my closet smells like kitty litter and my nostrils are perpetually plugged up due to mild cat allergies...although I guess the latter makes the former less of a problem.
3. I've been jogging quite a bit lately.  Not by choice, really.  Clint's mom calls me up regularly asking me if I want to run the track at my school, and most of the time I end up saying yes because I can't think of a good reason not to.  We always walk from my house to my work (3/4 of a mile), jog the track eight times (two miles), and then walk back home (another 3/4 mile).  By the time we're done, we've walked/jogged three-and-a-half miles.  Sometimes I loop the track a ninth time while Teri is finishing her eighth loop.  The funny thing is I really don't like to run.  Yet somehow I keep doing it.  And somehow I got roped into two 5Ks: one in April, and another one in June.  The one in June is at Knott's Soak City, so I'm really excited about that one.  The last third of a mile is through their "Sunset River."  Awesome.  I told Teri if I end up living to be a hundred--or dying in June in the Sunset River-- I'm blaming her.  
4. I used part of my tax refund to buy myself a new handgun.  I know...I could've got myself some cute new clothes for work, or a hot new pair of boots, or a new purse to replace the one the cat exploded on, but no...I go and buy a firearm.  But seriously, I love love love it.  It's a turquoise and black 38 Special.  I hand-picked this one because I wanted something that was very compact, but something that packs a bigger punch than a 9 mm.  Eventually I plan to attempt to get my CCW license, so I definitely wanted a petite handgun.  I say "attempt" because the license is difficult to qualify for, and it is very expensive. I did have to take a handgun safety test just to make my purchase, which was sort of funny because I didn't realize I was going to be taking a test that day.  When the store's owner gave me that piece of paper and escorted me to the conference room, I was instantly thinking, "Oh crap, should I have studied for this?"  As it turned out, the test was way easy.  I only had to cheat on two questions.  Kidding, kidding...anyway, I was supposed to pick up my gun today, but the place was closed because they are moving to a new location.  I was so disappointed that I may have cried a little.  Okay, I didn't cry, but I was REALLY bummed.  Clint and I had made plans to go to the gun range this evening to try it out, but that same gun range is now closed to the general public until this Saturday.  So even if I get my new gun by tomorrow, I can't play with it until Saturday.       
5. I'm on spring break!  Yeeeeeeeeessssssss!
6. Our heater is broken.  Our kitchen sink is broken too (something's wrong with the pipe underneath).  I've been using a space heater to keep warm and rinsing dishes in the tub. 
7. Trin and the rest of her sixth grade class were on my campus on Friday for seventh grade orientation.  It was a lot of fun to have my own kid at my actual work site all day.  There's a good chance she'll be in my class next year, but that's something I'll write a seperate entry about once it gets closer. 

Okay, I'm pretty sure when my sister did the numbered list thing, her items were much more concise.

Bulls Eye Shooting & Paradise

I don't have much fodder for a post today, but I still wanted to touch base with my blog real quick.  I also realized I'm not entirely sure what "fodder" means, so I'll be right back....

fod·der/ˈfädər  Noun: Food, esp. dried hay or feed, for cattle and other livestock

Hmmm...I don't think I'm using that right.  Oh well, moving on.

Friday night Teri and I attended a bulls eye pistol-shooting class.  The class required participants to shoot 22 pistols, which are normally incredibly easy to work with because they're lightweight and have virtually no kick.  But we had to shoot them one-handed, and that is a skill I have never practiced before.  I guess I've never seen a need for it, considering if an intruder were to break into my house, I'd have no problem pelting his ass with bullets using BOTH of my hands.  Anyway, I figured as beginners we'd get to start off with targets maybe twenty feet away, but nope.  Our coaches rolled our targets fifty feet away.  With my blurry contacts, I could barely even see it.  But the range officer was really reassuring, telling me that as long as the bullets went "THAT way" (pointing downrange) and "not THAT way" (pointing to the spectators), then it was all good.  All in all, the class was so incredibly fun.  Each woman participant was assigned her own personal coach, and the coaches were very patient and funny.  The actual shooting was very regimented and took place in five timed rounds.  By the end, we had to be able to shoot five shots in ten seconds with one arm (ideally hitting said-target).  Oh yeah, the coaches also fed all of us girls dinner first so we wouldn't have to shoot hungry. Way cool.

Other than that, I've spent this weekend painting, working out, running errands, and watching movies with Clint.  Oh, we've also eaten sushi about four times this week.  I'll be blaming Becky when we go bankrupt because we can't seem to curb our addiction for the stuff, since she was our original sushi-enabler.

This is Trinity's all-time favorite song, and I promised her I'd put it up on my blog so she wouldn't have to keep hunting it down on YouTube.  I don't care for lyrics on screen (I like to listen to the words, not be accosted by them), especially when they write out each 'oooh' and 'lalala', but she loves singing along with songs, so she picked this one out.  Here you go, Trin.  :-)

My favorite line: "I know the sun must set to rise."

Nothing Else Matters

It just occurred to me that today is August 31st!  This means I officially failed my 90 Day Bible Challenge.  I am disappointed, because I think it would have been really cool to be able to say "I've read the entire Bible in 90 days."  But I do feel good about getting through 60% of it, and I know I'll continue on, so I wouldn't call the entire thing a waste.  It did give me that push to try.  My sidebar info isn't exactly correct; I actually read all the way through Isaiah and had just started Jeremiah.  It has been really weird to go to church, because now every time the pastor says "Open your Bibles to verse blah blah blah," I'm like, "Oh cool, I've already read blah blah blah." 

This video doesn't do much for me, but the song is a classic.  When I listen to it, I just get flooded with high school memories.  I like how one commenter put it:

This is REAL music. No stupid fan girls who like it because of how 'hot' the artist is, no auto tune, no fake robot sound effects...just real talent.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that now my classroom is saturated with ants.  I think the little bastards are following me.

Random Updates

I'm blogging from Starbucks right now!  I guess that's not altogether exciting, but I've never posted a blog entry from anywhere other than home.  I did do work from a computer here before, about four years ago when I had to clear my credential.  I remember I had to come up with eleven more items for my teaching portfolio, and my exit interview was that evening around 5:00 or 6:00.  I had to take the whole day off, and I finished all of my work at Starbucks.  But back then they charged for their WiFi; now it's free!  Awesome.  I might come here once or twice a week while the kids are in their karate class.

The rest of this entry is going to be really boring.  I'm just going to give updates on various things.  Here goes:

Bible Challenge: I'm currently on 2 Kings and have officially read 590 pages, although my page-count just jumped up due to switching Bibles.  Yesterday, I went shopping with Teri, and ended up buying myself a brand-new Bible.  I figured it would make a good congrats-gift to myself for sticking with this challenge (one month down, two more to go!).  Thus far I have been using a Bible that my great -grandmother gave me for Christmas in 1988, and for the most part I have been content with it.  But it is a child's Bible, complete with colored illustrations, not to mention the book is absolutely thrashed.  All of John and a chunk of 2 Corinthians completely fell out, and my grandpa had to use his book-binding machine to glue them back in for me about six months ago.  But yesterday, while browsing through all of these beautiful new Bibles, I finally broke down and decided a "grown-up" Bible sounded really appealing.  I found the one I wanted and purchased it for $55.  I know.  Ouch.  But it is so beautiful, and has a larger print that I can actually read without squinting.  Plus it has my name engraved on it in a pretty, silver script.  I might take a picture of it before posting this entry.  I am so crazy about it.  But, like I mentioned earlier, it did change my page count.  My last Bible contained 1,048 pages; this one contains 1,969 pages.  It was thrilling to see my page-count jump up by 150 pages or whatever it was, but then a little bit of a let-down when I realized how many pages I still had left to go.  Anyway, my favorite book of the Bible so far is 1 Samuel. Certain parts of that book actually made me burst out with laughter, like when King Saul is trying to kill David, but everyone he sends to kill him ends up stuck in the city as unwitting prophets (it would be like cursing a really sarcastic, rude person to only being able to say sweet, sugar-coated things).  Finally, he decides to go to the city and kill David himself, but ends up prophesying too.  The whole thing was like the Bermuda Triangle, except for instead of a triangle, it's a city.  And instead of people mysteriously disappearing, they turn into prophets.  So I guess there is really no resemblance between this story and the Bermuda Triangle whatsoever.

Bookworm Challenge: I'm pretty much ditching it. Which is sort of ironic considering that I've finished reading ten books. But I know I'll never get around to writing the reviews. Plus I discovered an awesome site for book lovers: Shelfari, and I'd rather use this as my venue for keeping track of books and reviews. If you love to read, I would encourage you to check it out.  It is SO user-friendly.  I might even have Trinity create a Shelfari account since she loves to read so much.

Manuscript: I'm still at two chapters, plus part of the prologue. Both Shan and Clint have been helping me come up with more ideas, and I'm getting more excited, but still not accomplishing as much as I should.  I'm going to post an excerpt from one of the chapters soon.

Changes on this Blog: You *might* have noticed that I figured out how to swap out backgrounds on this blog. It's just a quick little manipulation of HTML, and now that I know how to do it, a monster has officially been created. Now I'm going to want to change my background every few weeks. The only problem is, I still haven't figured out how to stretch the background from end to end, which leaves an annoying line where the graphic begins to repeat. I have tried every thing I can think of to fix this, so if you are handy with HTML and want to e-mail me with some suggestions, I'd really appreciate it.

Blog Award: The Powerful Woman Writer Award was given to me via e-mail by a YA author who I stumbled upon through Shelfari. The blogging community is obviously a small world, because I came across her again on Kristyn's book blog (offering her a Best in Books award, or something to that effect). I know this fellow blogger gives out a ton of these things, so it's not anything special, but it still made me smile and I decided to display it for awhile. Plus her blog offers a lot of insight for anyone aspiring to publish for the young adult market. I added her button, "A Story Book Blog," to the bottom of my screen.

Art: I worked on my Japanese Maple yesterday, although now it's more of a Japanese Cherry Maple hybrid (those exist, right?).  Since it's been three months since I've painted, I pretty much think what I added yesterday sucked, but Clint assured me it looked good.  And since husbands always tell the truth....

Holidays/Vacations: We’re spending Independence Day at the lake with Shannon’s family (of course), but fireworks and such are actually on July 2nd.   In mid-July we’re going on a week-trip to Arizona. Two of those days we’ll spend at the Grand Canyon. Then, not so exciting, but in August we’re going to Vegas for three days. The only thing that makes this Vegas trip worth mentioning is:  1. By some miracle my entire family can make it (Mom/Dad, Grandma/Grandpa, Shan/Jeremy), and 2. The hotel we’re staying at (Flamingo Hilton) has an amazing pool.

Okay, I think that's it for boring updates and my cafe vanilla frappucino is now empty, so I'll post this now.  I'll try to add the picture of my new Bible later, once I'm at home.

Extreme Bible Challenge

Okay, this Bible challenge thing.  I keep saying that I will say something more official about it, so here goes:

I am challenging myself to read the Bible in 90 days.  It all started on May 31st when I was updating my Bookworm Challenge list.  I had just crossed off my seventh book and begun my eighth, when a very eloquent thought suddenly occurred to me.  It sounded something like this:  

This is stupid. 

The thing is, I already love reading.  So how can challenging myself to do something I already love doing possibly be considered a "challenge"?  That's like challenging a junk-food addict to consume a dozen twinkies a week.  Don't get me wrong, I still love having a yearly book list (especially over summer) to keep track of the novels I have read or intend to read.  But I'm just done pretending that it's actually a challenge for me to read twelve books a year.  So then, naturally, I asked myself this question:

What would be a challenge?

That's when a lightbulb sort of went off (or is it on? I may have butchered that expression).  The Bible.  It has always been my biggest literary adversary.  I've tried several times to read it, and generally have no issues getting through Genesis and Exodus.  But once I hit Leviticus (and don't get me started with Numbers), I start to drown in all those laws and eventually lose interest.  

So why would this time be any different?

In the past, I was never on any schedule.  My reading the Bible was contingent upon my interest in what I was reading, so inevitably I would eventually drift away.  But once I determined that I for-sure wanted to read the Bible, I jumped online to see if I could find any reading schedules to help keep me on track. There was a slew of year-long schedules, but I wanted something shorter to keep me motivated.  With Google's assistance, I found a Bible-reading challenge that offered a printable schedule to allow anyone interested to read the Bible, cover to cover, in 90 days.  This shorter time constraint gives me a sense of...panic, for lack of a better word.  A year-long Bible challenge gives me too much leeway to skip a day here and there, until eventually I get into a cycle of not reading.  But a 90 day challenge doesn't offer much wiggle room.  You miss a day; it's over.  It's nearly impossible to catch up (trust me, I've had the misfortune of already discovering this).

Some churches actually offer official 90 day challenges for their congregations to participate in, hence the logo above, and this one from last year:

But they start such challenges right after the New Year, and end them by March 31st.  Unfortunately, since summer is my optimal time to do mass-reading, I am forced to do this challenge alone.  That's the only downfall I am experiencing so far.  I would love to be able to discuss what I'm reading with others, especially when I'm feeling confused by some of the verses.

Below, I am keeping an ongoing list of the books of the Bible as I finish reading them.  This will be really boring for anyone else to read; it's just a personal reference for me for motivational-purposes.  I'm planning to link this page to the "Bi90 Eleven" logo on my side margin, so I can continue to add on to this list.  Wish me luck--or better yet--more self-discipline than I currently possess!

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

Start-date of Challenge:  June 1, 2011
End-date of Challenge:  August 30, 2011
Date each book was completed:

Genesis:  June 4
Exodus:  June 7
Leviticus:  June 11
Numbers:  June 15
Deuteronomy:  June 17
Joshua:  June 19
Judges:  June 23
Ruth:  June 23
1 Samuel:  June 26
2 Samuel:  June 28
1 King:  June 30
2 Kings: July 2
1 Chronicles:  July 5
2 Chronicles:  July 8
Ezra:  July 8
Nehemiah:  July 10
Esther:  July 10
Job:  July 12
Psalms:  July 23
Proverbs:  July 25
Ecclesiastes:  July 26
Song of Songs: July 26
Isaiah:  In progress

Mary Had a Little Weedwacker

No time for a "real" post, but here's some quick rambling:

We got a lamb today! Her name is Lily. She is soooo cute. We pretty much bought her as a glorified weed-wacker. The dogs just adore her. They follow her around everywhere, and then she turns around and follows them everywhere. If they leave her alone for more than a few minutes, she baaahs unhappily and goes to find them.

Yesterday I finished reading my fourth novel from the Bookworm Challenge. I think I might actually stand a chance of conquering my list this year. Now writing the reviews, that's a completely different story. If I decide to actually write them, they'll probably be special, "one-word" reviews. As in, this book was "awesome," or "mediocre," or "sucked royally" (I might have to bump it up to "two-word" reviews for some of them).

Small group on Monday night was fun!  We stayed up pretty late that night, and then I couldn't spool down afterwards, so I wound up with virtually no sleep.  But sleep-deprivation is a standard for me at least a few times a week, plus I love entertaining, so I really didn't mind at all.  Steve told us this entire story of how he and Becky met, but he did so in such a "story-teller" fashion that it was almost like listening to a light-hearted, romantic little novel, complete with the exposition, rising action, and so on. 

I haven't painted in nearly two weeks.  I miss it...a LOT...so I'm going to set everything else aside and paint some more on Friday.

Clint built a split-rail fence around our yard.  He also put in this arbor-thingie.  We still have to paint everything white this weekend to make it match the neighbor's fence (not exactly the kind of painting project I wanted to do), but once it's finished, I'll try to post a picture.  You can see part of the unpainted fence in the background above.

Well, that was all very hodgepodgy.  Goodnight.

Goodbye to Spring Break

I haven't written in a week, which for me feels like eons.  I've been on spring break, and for some reason I have no desire to blog during breaks.  But my sabbatical from middle school mayhem is now officially over and I'm back to work tomorrow.   Even now I feel no inclination to talk--or write--about anything, but I feel like I'm letting my blog lurkers down when I go too long without posting.  So this is for you, blog lurkers.

Spring break was good, but would have been better if it wasn't gray, windy, and cold the entire time.  I celebrated the last day of my break today by finishing a novel from my book list, Replay, and working on a painting of a Japanese maple tree.  I'll try to write a more detailed entry later about break when I'm in more of a writing mood.   

At this moment Clint is trying to decide what job he wants to "bump" onto for this week (he's been struggling with this for hours, because whatever he chooses, he's stuck with for a month), and he just cried out in frustration, "Help me to make this decision, woman!  That way I can blame you if it sucks."  Hmmmm.  As appealing as that sounds, I think I'll let him work this one out on his own.

Okay, that's all I have the motivation to say for now.  Sorry to leave you hanging for a week and then give you so little to chew on.

Autumn Trees and Angels

Today was a nice, relaxing Saturday!  We went to the movies to see Beastly.  It was a pleasant and romantic little movie, although it didn't really offer anything fresh or innovative to the "Beauty and the Beast" stories of the past, plus some of the characterization was a little generic.  After the movie, we went out for Chinese food.  Between the cream-cheese wantons and all of that buttery popcorn I ate, I'm pretty much feeling like a plump chicken now (I'm not sure why "chicken" came out...you'd think I would've gone with "cow" or something instead).

Once home, Clint and I pulled out our paints and spent the rest of the day painting.  He continued to work on the autumn tree project that he is making for his mom, and I worked on my desolate angel.  His painting still has several more sittings to go before it is finished, but once it is, I will definitely post a pic (or a link to a pic).  My angel is finished, although now I'm contemplating going back in and painting her other hand resting on her knee, since right now that hand/arm isn't visible.  Here she is:

I just realized I never posted my completed "Child's Play Tiger" on this blog.  Oh well, that one isn't one of my favorites anyway.  My next upcoming projects include a sort of fantasy-themed white tiger (just for the fun of it), a waterfall for Madi, a green and lavender fairy for my baby niece, and something for my sis, although I still have yet to figure out what I want to paint for her.  My mom now wants a small painting too.  It sounds like a lot, but since oil paint takes so long to dry, it's almost mandatory to have several projects going at once.  Thank goodness we have a large laundry room, since it has pretty much converged into a very odd-looking art studio.

Weeping Fairy

This was a completely unexpected project.  I pulled out all of my paints today so that I could continue working on the tiger for Trin's room, but when I began, I quickly realized that the previous black sketch I had applied was still wet.  I was feeling bummed because I really wanted to paint something, and that's when Trin said "I love your fairy sketch, Mom."  I was so confused.  What fairy sketch?  And then I saw what she was pointing to.  I had sketched out a fairy about a month ago inside a pad of canvas paper, but I got frustrated with the complexities of it and decided to go back to painting flowers and trees.  Once I looked at the sketch again today though, I started thinking "Hey, maybe I can make this work."  So I started to paint it.  The above is my final product.  I've decided to name her "Out of Tears." 

On a somewhat related note, since this newfound art-interest doesn't seem to be fading, I decided to start an art blog to keep my paintings and related-prattling in one place.  I'm still going to show completed projects on this blog, but I'm going to use my art blog to display the different stages of unfinished projects, not to mention ramble on about what techniques I used or what new things I tried.  I have comments closed on that blog, because I don't want it to be yet another social networking burden on myself or anyone else.  I just want one set place to focus on art.  There are a few posts over on my other site right now, but it's a little deja vu, because I imported all of my "art"-labeled posts from this site to that one.  Oh yeah, I guess I should provide the link.  I named my new blog "Glazey".  Glazing is an art technique in which you apply a very thin pigment on top of a base color to create an entire new color (or to add shine)...something I have done with every single one of my paintings.  But I like how "glazey" reminds me of eyes being glazed over...the way I start to get when I've been painting for too long, or the way you probably get after reading long-winded entries such as this one.

Monochrome Lily with Rainbow Drops

Finished!  Well, barring a few wet spots.  I actually finished it a couple days ago, but I was waiting for it to dry completely before taking a picture.  HA.  Did you know that oil paint can take up to a year to dry?  

I like this painting okay.  It was good practice working with all of these different colors.  But I will admit that I liked the unfinished version better.  It was just so much more simple and clean.  At least I took a picture of the unfinished version before proceeding to glob on more paint.  I did discover that I won't be able to take that oil painting class.  It's two days a week from 10:00 a.m. until 12:15 p.m.  That's an awful long lunch to explain to students and staff.  I'll have to settle for the Dummy book, which should be arriving by tomorrow.

On the non-art frontier, I had a really good conversation tonight.  Last month, in the wake of some personal issues I was going through, I wound up lashing out at someone who had nothing to do with the dejection I was feeling at that time.  My words were so damaging and hurtful, and unfortunately that's not something I can ever erase.  But we did talk for the first time tonight, and it was a very sincere, honest conversation.  I'm not sure what the future holds for our friendship--I highly doubt we will ever be able to reach "friend" status again (some things just have permanent consequences), but I did feel like we reached an understanding.  At the minimum, we decided that we can actually both attend the same functions (i.e. birthday parties) without a big ole' elephant sharing the space with us.

Just another Week

I want to post something but really don't have much to talk about.  Work was pretty easy this week.  On Tuesday I had to go to a training with all of the other language arts teachers at my school.  I was feeling a little tired that day, which made it hard to concentrate during the lecture portions of the training, but it was still fun to hang out with my colleagues outside of our little middle-school holes (aka: classrooms).  The highlight of the whole day was lunch.  Niecy, I, and two other friends went to this little diamond-in-the-rough Thai restaurant that I had never eaten at before.  The food was delicious and the proportions were monstrous.  The rest of the week went by pretty smoothly, except for the fact that one student stole Axe Bodyspray from another student's backpack and then proceeded to spray it, which for reasons still unclear to me led to a bag of chips exploding all over my room.  Yesterday I took my students outside all day to do Socratic Seminar.  I love doing this with them.  It is amazing to see seventh-graders debating about topics with the sophistication of adults.  Plus it was gorgeous outside all day, so that was an added bonus.  Last night was the Celebration of Education, and I had planned to go and enjoy the festivities, not to mention save the surviving goldfish (again), but I ended up getting a stomach ache, plus a nearly crippling case of laziness, so I never went.  Now I really regret this.  It makes me cringe thinking about all of those fish being dumped down the drain.

Today I did laundry, cleaned my master bedroom (see, I told you I had nothing to write about), and finished painting my lily.  I don't really think it's a lily, but I don't know what kind of flower it is, and I'm tired of calling it "flower" because that's like calling a dog "dog" instead of "Brutis" or whatever its name is, so I'm going to go with lily.  I'll take a picture of it hopefully by tomorrow.  I'm waiting for it to finish drying so I can apply the varnish.

So my sister is writing this amazing, likely-to-be-published dissertation while she stuffs more kids into her house which is sliding down the mountain, and I'm folding laundry and painting a stupid lily.  Why does anyone read this blog again?

Monochrome Flower--Unfinished

I was originally planning to wait until this painting was finished before capturing it on camera (I still need to add in the dew drops and touch up the flower),  but then I started worrying What if I end up ruining the whole project by adding in those drops?  This thought motivated me to take a quick picture a few days ago.  Since then, I've added about twenty droplets, and I still have about thirty more to go.  I have mixed feelings about the dew drops.  On the one hand, I love the little splashes of color against an otherwise flat, stark graphic.  Plus mixing all of the different colors has been good practice.  On the other hand, argghhhhh.  It is really difficult to achieve the look of moisture.  Each drop has to be a tiny bit transparent, which means I have to paint them in such a way where the painting beneath subtly peers through.  It's really hard for me to tell if they're coming out or not.  From my perspective, they look a little flat and not very "wet."  But despite the stupid dew-challenge, this painting has been my favorite one to work on so far.  I don't know why, but I loved doing the black background with all of those blurry images...that was definitely the funnest part.

I checked the local community college's catalogue to see if they offered oil painting classes, and I was thrilled to discover they do.  But it doesn't look like they offer any classes for the summer session, so now I'm trying to decide if I actually want to forfeit time during the work week to take a class, or if I want to keep winging it, or if I want to just buy an "Oil Painting for Dummies" book from Amazon, or what.  The verdict is still out on that one.

Cooking Lessons

My mother in law has been teaching my kids to cook--thank God, since I have very little skill in that arena to pass along to them.  I can hold my own with over-easy eggs, desserty items, and macaroni and cheese (I know mac and cheese is from a box, but I am the master of perfectly-proportioned milk and butter), but when it comes to actually putting together an entire three or four course meal, I get a little overwhelmed.  In my past cooking attempts, I have had incidents that range anywhere from getting my hair caught in an electric mixer to catching my kitchen on fire.  Thus I think it's safe to say that this much valued skill should be taught to my kids from someone who actually knows what they're doing.  Clint's a good cook, but he is very territorial about "his" kitchen, and doesn't really have the patience to involve the kids in dinner preparations. 

So a few weeks ago, Teri asked if it was okay if she could take the kids with her every Friday night, help them to prepare a dinner, and then bring it back to our place for everyone to enjoy.  She also said that she wanted to have them bring their laundry each week, that way they could get all of their clothes clean while they prepared their meal.  I think I must have blinked stupidly at her for the first few seconds after she proposed all this.  I was thinking, Wait, Clint and I get a couple hours to ourselves every Friday night, a home-made dinner prepared for us, AND the kids laundry gets taken care of for the entire week?  What possible thing about this plan would I NOT love?  I don't think my "yes" could have been more boisterously enthusiastic.

Since this time, the kids have prepared three meals.  Teri lets them choose what they are going to make, so sometimes it's a little random.  Like last night we had meatballs and porkchops.  The kids are doing a great job though...their meals are coming out delicious.  Plus I love having Teri joining us for dinner on Friday nights.  We get to laughing SO hard.  Last night, she was trying to recommend a movie called "The Nine Lives of Tabitha" to us that she watched as a child, and she was explaining the plotline, but we were laughing uproariously because it sounded like the worst movie that was ever made in the history of movies (girl's cat dies, gets buried alive, gets saved, comes back, little girl sees cat and tells everyone it's alive but no one believes her, little girl gets pneumonia, almost dies, etc, etc).  And the whole time we're telling Teri, "My God this movie sounds AWFUL," she's laughing hysterically and saying over and over, "No I swear, it's really good!"*

Today I finished reading the Princess Bride (one of the books on my reading list) and worked some more on my painting.  The flower and background are finished; I just need to add in the dew droplets.  Clint and I went to Michaels this evening and bought a few canvases and some better brushes.  I'm not ready to paint on canvas yet, but at least we have them now.  I also worked out today, but only for about twenty minutes. I wasn't planning to work out at all, but I single-handedly ate two-and-a-half bowls of salsa at La Casita tonight, not to mention the correlating chips. 

*We later found Teri's terrible-sounding movie on Netflix (which was NOT called "The Nine Lives of Tabitha"), so of course we're going to watch it simply out of morbid curiosity.  I know I watched this movie as a child, because the real name of the movie sounds so familiar!  It's called "The Three Lives of Thomasina." 

Un-longwinded Entry that's a Little Long

I don't have much to talk about tonight, which almost deterred me from writing a post, but then I reminded myself that it's okay to write a short un-longwinded entry once in awhile.

This week was busy but uneventful.  Work has been really good.  My students are getting increasingly more talkative as the year progresses, but they also make me laugh more than ever.  Here are a few quotes from this week (yes, I actually scratched them down real fast right after they were spoken):

Alexis:  "I can't figure out an antonym for the word 'session'.  A synonym would be 'meeting', but what would the opposite be?"
Me:  'Session' doesn't have a true antonym.  So just come up with a word of something that is NOT a session." 
Alexis:  "Okay!  How about 'bouncy ball'?"


Me:  "Why aren't you working?"
Robert:  "I don't have a pencil."
Me:  "Borrow a pencil."
Robert:  "I can't.  I have sharp-stuff-a-phobia."


Robert (two days later, stated to another student):  "I'm not completely useless.  Just mostly useless."


The end of Gavin's story (written on paper):  "So then the little red hen poisoned the bread, I ate it, and died.  This is actually my ghost writing this story cuz it's still really pissed off."

Okay, I will admit that most of these quotes were only funny in the context by which they were said, one of those "you had to be there" sorta phenomenons, but I still had to write them down because at the time they had me laughing pretty hard. 

Last night I sketched out my next picture, which is going to be a sort of monochrome grayish flower with a splattering of brightly-colored dew drops.  I painted parts of the flower today, so I'm hoping to finish the rest tomorrow.  I'm just happy to do something that's not a tree.  I talked Clint into painting with me last week, and we were both surprised to discover that he's pretty decent at it!  He posted a picture of his first painting at his very neglected blog (I think he's averaging one post a year).   Of course he also mentioned in this entry how messy I am while painting, so feel free to glance at the picture whilst ignoring all the words (whilst?  I must have picked that up from Kristyn; she always uses those impressive, Britishy words).

The only other thing I have to report is that I have been having strange dreams again this week.  One of them was so strange and detailed that I actually wrote it into a short story (one that I will never share, of course).  The last two nights were more mild; Wednesday night I dreamt of three rocks, and Thursday night I dreamt of more rocks.  Try not to envy me too much for my exciting, riveting dreams.  ;-)  I'm not going to write down the details of any of them because I'm not in a dream analysis class like my sis, plus I probably haven't properly consulted my inner-old ancient self or whatever it is you need to psychoanalyze, but I did want to mention it.

Another long-winded "short" entry, dang it.

Cherry Blossom Branch

Painting #2 is finished!  This one was much more challenging than the last one, because I actually had to paint each individual leaf, rather than smashing my paintbrush into satisfying, abstract blobs.  Also, the last painting was a silhouette of a tree, which meant that I was able to use one solid color for the trunk and branches.  This one I had to use several different colors. 

There were some oddities about this picture that kind of appealed to me, which is why I chose it.  Like the fact that the sky appears upside-down.  Generally skies fade to an almost-white the closer they creep toward the horizon, but this particular sky is behaving backwards.  Also, I liked the fact that this particular graphic focused on merely one struggling branch, rather than the whole tree.  I think I'll do one or two more practice paintings and then try out a canvas.  Eeeek.

I had such a nice weekend!  But I don't have time to talk about it because I'm getting ready to eat an omelet.