Swim Lessons

Pieces of conversation I heard the lifeguard (my ex-student) Sean say to Henry as Henry tried to convince him not to take him into the pool.

1. "Ha, you're right Henry, you don't have any blubber, but you still have to go in."
2. "No the water isn't attacking you Henry."
3. "No, I don't know how water striders stay on the surface of the water."

Needless to say, Henry doesn't like his swim lessons. He had a pretty rough day yesterday. Jenny and I took the kids canoeing on Long Pond in Barre. Henry did NOT want to go in the Canoe. He pleaded, and actually cried, and I learned something about helping Henry get over his fears. Don't be convincing, just be calm. I had in mind that archetypal coach figure that calmly faces difficulties and is unshaken, unexcitable. I certainly never had a coach like that. I must have seen an account of one on tv or something. Unemotional, reliable, calm. Its not that he needs me to explain why things aren't scary, he just needs me to be unafraid, and unexcitable. He finally allowed me to get him in the canoe and to progressively go further down the river with him. He said he found it to be calm and nice. Thank god it was different experience than the bikes.

Then, to top off his two terrifying experiences, Henry got that throwup thing that's going around last night. He slept it off and was fine the today... although, he did say he was too tired to go to swim lessons  :)

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prattling on and on...

I am an English Teacher. I didn't know I was going to become one. I went to college to pursue psychology. I didn't even really know I was going to go to college. I spent seven years after high school working pretty awful jobs. It was Jenny who finally suggested that I go to college. It is something that I will never be able to thank her enough for. I remember quite clearly how my life felt like it was closing in around me. I had hit, kind of an end. College, for me, was life. I found myself there in a way that many never do.

I hated school (for several reasons, a couple of them my own fault) and barely lived through it. I never saw college as an option at all. My first class, this one at Worcester State (I ended up at Umass Amherst), was an eye opener. I managed to score a motherly professor... I use motherly loosely as she was kind of fond of sexual jokes.... hmm... how... psychological.  At any rate, I loved the class, walked away with a my first "A" in a class.... possibly ever. That started a chain of classes, part time, then full, that were complete successes. It was something that I can only equate to Harry Potter going from muggledom to Hogwarts. Looking backward, I can see I had always wanted to read the big books.... literature. I tried "War and Peace"... drowned.... I read Melville... loved it, well most of it. then in college I was introduced to  Flannery O'Conner, Shakespeare obviously, Goethe, on and on. Still Steinbeck was my favorite, "In Dubious Battle," So good. I graduated Summa Cum Laude. I earned so much money in scholarships that I didn't have any bills at the end of my undergraduate degree. I was accepted into all sorts of honor societies. (one of which had a secret handshake!!! YES!! Phi Beta Kappa...) This was a life of honor and I was kind of the center of it. I attended one consortium class that served us lunch every day as we pondered the possibilities of college level education and its place in society. If any of you that are reading this were friends with me in High School you will understand how crazy this seems. This is me?!?!

After a high pressure talk with my mentor professor, I decided to teach school. (All the pressure was him trying to talk me out of it.) I got my Masters in one year. Henry was born that year, and I wanted to be working by the time he came around. All of that ego came to a huge crash in school system. I teach well. I have a good reputation and solid rapport with my students. But all of the special treatment kinda goes away in the trenches. I have "ideas" about school based on all of my "experience" and I am not afraid to put them into play. All of this to say that I have opinions, ideas and a slight ego = scary.

Well, that was kind of a tangent. I was going to write about why I have so many books around here.Jenny and I organized the kids' libraries today. I do love when a house is overrun with them... oozing out of every pore.  Henry loves reading. He's into it. He actually reads nonfiction most of the time... but I will convert him in time. Oh yes. Nora isn't as interested, and I feel kind of guilty about that. I read to Henry constantly, not as constant with Nora. I still read to her, but not as much. I am trying to have a half-an-hour reading time at the end of every day. We all read during the day, especially when we take a trip to the library, but this time is devoted, to reading. I am determined to make Henry and Nora's experience in school far better than mine. So far, Henry's has been great. He has had good caring teachers that treat him with patience and respect. I am going to be very involved with his learning for a good long time.

I am a proponent of education. Good education. Education, that changes people. It should be alive, and giving. I want this for Henry and Nora and for all of my students.

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Raining...

Its been raining for a couple of days here. The kids are going a bit stir crazy... actually, to be honest, they're fine. I am going a bit stir crazy. I wanted to get away today, but nothing was fitting the plan. So, we stayed in and watched the olympics: Fencing, Women's volleyball, and a bit of swimming. Henry and Nora actually jumped and cheered when we took the fencing match! After that, popcorn and an Olympic Ceremony inspired, Mr. Bean movie. Henry loved it, Nora didn't really get it all.... can't wait to go outside...

chomp wiggle gulp

Nora lost her first tooth a couple days ago. Unfortunately it was while she was eating a hamburger and she ate it as well. She was so sad. I thought about getting Henry's first lost tooth (we still have it) and telling her that I found it in her hamburger. I just couldn't do it. It was... and I know this is really cheesy...a part of her. So I told her that the tooth fairy (who she already knows is us) gives double for eaten teeth. :)  That calmed her down a tiny bit. Also, I told her that she has more on the way. Today she wiggled the opposing tooth and low and behold... loose. I think Nora has my teeth genes. Mine fell out pretty early too.
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Ent er tainment

For the first time this summer, I actually had some time to myself. Jenny was home, and had the kids. Henry had a playdate with two of his friends at tower hill botanical garden. This gave me a few free hours for the first time this summer. (It was nice). I had a bit of a problem deciding what to do with myself. I remember a while ago, I had an idea for an entry in this blog. I am sure this sounds kind of lame to some of you... actually, maybe most of you, but I have this thing for trees. They're old. Really old. In most cases, they are the oldest living things around here. I have favorite trees. I keep them like keepsakes in my mind. So today, I went and shot some pictures of four of them.

The first was in Rutland, right near the center actually. This one is by an old red house right past the elementary school on the left. Like most of these, this one was a bit more majestic before the ice storm. These old guys took quite a beating and lost a lot of their side branches. My choosing of this tree is really more about the setting as well as the tree. The house has a beautiful field and it sits right in the middle of it, lording over the land around it. It felt a bit awkward taking this picture, fearing one of my students or their family members seeing me snapping pictures of someone else's house... well field really.

Number two is on the way to Spencer center. Again, it sits right near an old farmhouse, like many of these old new england giants, they managed to live this long because of the lack of competition. They grow next to houses and roads and along the stone walls that divide one field from another. The house is for sale now, probably because of the "for sale" sign, selling off all of the land behind the house for development.

Number three is special. For one, its in the middle of the woods. Its a hike in a wonderful Mass Audubon owned sanctuary, Wachusett Meadow in Princeton. It is also huge! Its a giant White Oak, 15 feet around the base. Its over 250 years old. The area seems sacred. The canopy above it clears out to make almost a halo around the tree. This one speaks to me. I took a wrong turn on the trail and ended up inadvertently going up to the summit of brown hill. I have hiked this before, and it is a pretty place. Wachusett Meadow is beautiful and is free to Mass Audubon supporters... go us!

The last one is so much more beautiful than I was able to capture with this picture. It is on the way to West Boylston from Holden. It's, again, by a beautiful old farmhouse. It sits by a tiny pond and seems like something out of Tolkien. Unfortunately, its is absolutely surrounded by poison Ivy. You can see a bit of on the tree to the left. I think its growing all over the big tree too! I guess my memory of it was really from the Fall. At any rate, I guess sitting under its "lofty bows" and reading a good book is out of the question.


Well, there ya go. A big collection of trees.... big exciting life of mine huh? Still, they are beautiful and will remain so far after you and I are gone. Trees. :)


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fields of gold

Today was amazing. Perfect summer day, the weather was incredible, my plans were wide open, except for Henry and Nora's first piano lesson in the morning. They loved it. Their teacher definitely knew how to handle kids. After they finished, the day was just too nice to waste on working on projects, so the kids and I just kinda hung out. I took them and the dog for a walk and Nora asked if she could go run in the fields that line the roads in the center of the park. Normally I would have said no because of the ticks, but the grass seemed so sparse due to the dry spell we were in. As soon as she stepped foot in the field, these waves of grasshoppers shot out and away from her. They were everywhere. I have never really seen anything like it. Everywhere we stepped clouds of grasshoppers would jump out of the way. The entire field was completely infested with them. I tried to capture it in a picture, but it doesn't really do it justice, it was, and I don't use this loosely, magical.

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Man's World

I am not one of those handy man type of guys. My dad is. These two facts lead me to massive amounts of inner turmoil. I am pulled between the guilt of not making it myself and the fact that I can't really make much myself. I can make things, but I am not a natural at it. I actually really like the process, given that I know what I am doing, and that I have enough time to wrap my head around the whole project. I usually take on a couple big projects during the summer. This summer's list is to finish several indoor projects: painting the bathroom and stairway walls, building the shelves for that bathroom closet area upstairs, touching up a couple areas upstairs etc... and building either front steps, back steps and a patio area, or building a shed. All of this is very over my head. I honestly need to watch youtube videos of the whole process in order to even feel like I can attempt it. It is... to some degree... terrifying. If we had lots of money, I wouldn't think twice about hiring someone who actually know what they are doing and having them take on the big projects. But... no dough, so, here I go.

I need a sanctuary place for my mind to be at ease; someplace, that is organized and clean. It used to be my desk. It was off limits to people (Jenny) just stacking things there. Now, my desk is in my class and is accustomed to hundreds of teens throwing papers on it everyday that need correcting. Currently, in our house, my space is my downstairs work area. This is problematic, because the entire school year it sits down there kind of collecting dust and odds and ends that Jenny throws on it when she doesn't know what to do with something. (This about kills me, and is something that I think she takes secret pleasure in doing.) In short, it gets pretty scrambled down there, and I can feel it in the back of my head. Its like my head has some sort of connection to the place, and when it is messy, I can't seem to think as well.

Every summer, at the beginning of my "doing" phase, I have to clean it, top to bottom, completely spotless. Once its there, I can go. I cleaned it yesterday, and built shelves for the bathroom today. On to painting next. Then, well... then to consider the shed. Its the roof that's throwing me. I have built walls, and floors and even ceilings. I have framed doorways, and windows (all with the help of my dad of course) but the roof.... scary. Well I am sure there is somebody that built one on youtube..........

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