MY BOGGY BLOG: find your way through the murk

My Little Calvin

Today younger DS, a fifth grader, brought home a note from his teacher. She wrote: This is (DS's) answer to the question: Which is easier for you to use to measure angles, a half-circle protractor or a full-circle protractor? He had written: "I don't know. It feels like something was shoved up my nose I just don't know what."

He claims he hadn't heard that question and thought he was answering the question "what did you learn today." But still! I couldn't help myself and had to hide my grin behind my hand. Rudeness isn't funny, and this kid has been pushing boundaries since he was little. I would never even have thought to write something like that when I was a kid!

I know he reads and idolizes Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes. We had to have a stern talk with him about what is appropriate, and how you might think some rude answer like that but you need to make better decisions about what you actually say or write. That the man who wrote C&H wrote those things because those were the kinds of things he thought about saying when he was little and knew he couldn't say them. And we had him write a letter of apology to his teacher.

Perhaps it's time to put all the Calvin and Hobbes books away for a little vacation-in-the-closet. Sigh. I feel empathy with Calvin's mom right now!

I'm Insane

As I collapse into my desk chair tonight, I have to wonder, "why do I do this to myself?" It's been a busy week. I signed up to be the ML (Municipal Liason, fancy name for Local Volunteer Organizer) for the Twin Cities Nanowrimo group (that's National Novel Writing Month, www.nanowrimo.org). The 2 ML's from last year were stepping down, and when nobody spoke up, then I did, and then someone else joined me as a co-ML. Basically, as an ML you need to plan a Kick-Off Party (in a cafe), a Thank God It's Over Party, read the local forums to make sure everyone is behaving, and answer questions people might have. It didn't sound like much, but it's been more work than I thought. It didn't help that my co-ML and I decided to give away goody-bags at the KOP, so finding and putting together fun writerly things for people took a good bit of time. The KOP was last night, 3 hours in a St. Paul Cafe. We had a good 50 people show up, and it was a lot of fun, but draining to be one of the hostesses trying to talk to everyone and keep track of what was going on.

Then tonight, we are having a teen Halloween Party, since our twins are too old to trick-or-treat. We did this last year and it went very well, with the kids having fun with old fashioned games like bobbing for apples, eating donuts from strings without using their hands (hilarious!) and blind-man's bluff. This year we repeated those, and added in this game where you hang a sheet and cut a slit in it. The kids get divided into 2 teams. One team goes behind the sheet, and they take turns putting their noses through the slit and the other team has to guess who it is just by looking at the nose. Very funny!

We made good creepy food too, like slimy nachos (nacho cheese, chili and blue food coloring), bloody popcorn (red food coloring in the butter), axmans fingers (hotdogs with slivered almonds in the tip for fingernails, wrapped in crescent roll, looks like a severed finger), and blood and guts pasta (all different kinds and colored pastas with spaghetti sauce on it).

Now they are settled down to watching movies, and I'm just up here decompressing, feeling like I've been run over by a train. My bad cold from this week is at least dissipating. But all these things I've put myself through this week have been MY DOING. MY CHOICE.

I think that I like putting on parties for my kids that I wished I would have had when I was a kid. I want to make Halloween fun for them, even if they're getting older. Maybe I'm just trying to control life too much. I do get a kind of high from putting on a good party, like the KOP or tonight. But I pay a price for it too.

I guess no big answers from me tonight. Just asking myself questions. All this extra stuff does keep me from writing. Can it all come down to my fear of sitting down to write?

Amazing Music Weekend

We just got back from a concert--- Ann Reed singing at a benefit at our church, First Universalist. For $20 a seat, we got to sit in a church pew (I scored second row) and listen to this amazing accoustic artist, singer and songwriter entertain us for 2 1/2 hours. Her best known song is "Heroes" and she sang that, along with many other songs, some touching, some funny, some sad. Wow!

Tomorrow night we get to go to another church in town and see Emily Saliers of our favorites, the Indigo Girls. She is doing a small performance/talk with her father, a minister. They wrote a book together about how spirituality and music come together. That's another $20 show, and we are hoping to get to talk to her afterwards. These small venue chances to hear music and meet favorite musicians are just so rare. All I can say right now is Wow. Wow wow wow. (okay, so I'm not as literate at midnight after a show!)