road trip.

Last weekend Paul and I made a short (2 hour) road trip down to visit friends in Louisville (that's "loo-uh-vul" for all of you in California). After a stop at Ben and Kristina's apartment we piled into the car and drove down to Starlight, Indiana to visit the orchards and taste the best down-home cookin' I've had outside of Cracker Barrel (hello, best chicken 'n' dumplings ever!--where have you been all my life?). Despite the unfortunate heat, we had fun riding the pickup trailer out to the orchards to pick fresh blackberries and apples at our leisure. Bringing home farm-fresh blackberries, my favorite fruit, was a sweet treat for me; blackberries from the roadside stand is one of the things I miss about Orange County. As I noted how interesting it was that simply picking fruit on a farm was such a novelty, Paul replied that, yeah, I'm sure the Latino men walking the rows as we picked blackberries would beg to differ.

Along with the fruit, I brought home a few photos:

{tim gunn would be proud}

If you don't already know, "Make it work," is Tim Gunn's catch phrase on Project Runway.

Sure, Tim, I'll make it work. I tell my designers that pretty much every day. "You design the book to make it pretty, and I'll make the text work." I often find myself with a bunch of instructional photos, and scrapbook pages and words that don't work together, or don't explain things well enough for the reader, or don't match the concept of a book. Yesterday was no exception. But since rewriting the whole book and taking all new instructional photos was simply not an option, I spent the afternoon reorganizing, tweaking, and coming up with rather brilliant ideas to make the book even better than acceptable. I wasn't sure I could pull it off, so I got really excited about how well I was making it work (I guess that's why I do this editing thing), and it made me think of how Tim would be proud of me.

{lessons learned: Part 2}

I finally get it.

I have been surrounded by teachers for most of my post-college life; almost all of my friends are elementary school teachers, and most of those are early elementary at that. I've always felt pretty sympathetic to the plight of a teacher. With exception of summers off and long holiday breaks, I've never, not once, wanted to be a teacher. I have no illusions about teaching—I know it can be difficult work and frustrating at times (or more often than not!). I know teachers earn their pay and work really hard. At the same time, I have to admit--please forgive me!--that on occasion I’ve been known to secretly roll my eyes at the complaining about “low" salaries (um, hello, you only work nine months of the year), hours of work (um, hello, you leave school at 3pm), and difficult special-needs kids (um, hello, you have aides.)

Well, last weekend I gleaned a little bit of insight into what it's like to be an elementary school teacher. I finally get what my teacher friends were talking about--and I have to say that any complaining is totally justified!

If you read Part 1 of my Sunday School experience in this post, then you know in an effort to finally get involved at church, I signed up to help out with children’s Sunday School this month. This week, the kids were sent to drama class, an opportunity to--with the help of two teachers and myself--dress up and act out scenes from the story of Joseph. Sounds fun, right? Wrong! Well, not for me anyway. I ended up as the babysitter for an exasperating little boy with ADHD (or something like that). The teachers and I were content to let the uncontrollable boy do his own quiet thing with the bucket of costumes while the other kids acted on the other side of the room--at least he wasn’t disrupting or hurting anyone. But every five seconds he wanted to do something different—everything ranging from hiding under the table, sitting in the teacher’s chair, running in circles around the room, to yelling at the other kids, and twirling a rope too close to the face of classmates. And every time you even attempted to talk to him or take away the rope or whatever else, he would scream bloody murder and run away. I’m not trained for this kind of work! How does one deal with this? This kid should have come with an instruction manual. On the one hand, the range of bad behaviors was disrupting to the class, on the other the intense screaming was even more disruptive. Ugh. Anyway, I’m sad to say that over the course of the class, my heart was not softening toward this little boy at all, even though I knew he couldn’t probably control himself. I was angry that he was taking away from the experience of his classmates, and, frankly, taking away from my experience as well.

So, now I see I’m pretty clueless about teaching, but I will never roll my eyes again! I see how immensely hard it is to be a teacher. I only had 15 kids in my class—with three adults. Most kindergarten rooms have no fewer than 20 kids. Now I see why special-needs kids have assistants. And if they don't have help, how incredibly disruptive and difficult that is! With these conditions, I’m really amazed kids learn anything in public school. So, thank you, teachers. Hats off to you! You rock!

{backyard surprise}

Yeah, you don't find this in Orange County. So fun to discover them tonight!


See the bit of blacktop on the bottom right? That's our driveway. They came so close! And as you can see, there were two of them.


I followed this one followed into the woods of our backyard--which, I rarely venture into....except, apparently, to follow big animals that could conceivably hurt me. So very Artemis of me!

x

{lessons learned: Part 1}

(Sorry, this post is really long. I took the liberty of bolding the important parts for all of you who tend to skim.)

I've felt called to help with Sunday school for quite a while. It’s one of things that I’ve always been afraid to try because I don’t have any experience working with kids. And I have always felt like God has been leaning on me to try it out before I say, "No, that's just not for me."

In an effort to start getting involved at church, I took my first task to be signing up as an assistant in children's Sunday school this month. I felt really good about my decision...right up until the night before. The whole evening I spent dreading the next morning, and wondering what I had been thinking. Part of the problem was not having a clue was I was actually going to be doing, nor what exact time I was supposed to show up. I woke up several times during the night at the end of one anxious dream after another. I even had a dream that I planned to leave the house a half hour too late--which was actually a blessing, because I had actually planned to leave a half hour late and only the dream made me realize my mistake (thank you Lord!). That first Sunday morning, I arrived at church, stomachache and nerves tagging along. Though he wasn’t slated to help, a very sweet Paul stuck by my side that morning to help out and provide moral support for me. Fifteen minutes into it, while all the kids were gathering in one room for worship, I was fine though, and Paul went off to the worship service. At that point I was surprised to find myself in my element--directing lost families into the correct room, locating colored nametags, handing out snacks and ensuring that each kid was sitting in their assigned row.

God decided it would be "funny" to assign me the class of 15 almost first graders—you know, those adorable kids who have zero attention span for listening to boring Bible stories. While the teacher told the story of Joseph, I sat amongst the kids agonizing and analyzing what I should do—if anything—as the kids whispered, shook their snack cups, looked pretty much anywhere but at the teacher. Thankfully, our real task was to help the kids make wind socks. I did much better assisting the kids with a specific task...and a crafty one at that—than figuring out what appropriate course of behavior control was supposed to be. But even during crafts, I was forever on edge about what I was expected to do with wound-up Sunday school students.

Fast forward to this last Sunday, as the kids started to assemble themselves for worship. Somehow, I ended up as the only adult in the room that knew what to do. So without missing a beat, adeptly directed families, assigned colors, guided kids and wrote missing nametags. After a frustrating and disheartening hour with my first-graders, I felt confirmed in what I’ve always known--that my passions and gifts do not lie in working with a class of little kids. Not that I shouldn’t help out or get out of my comfort zone, but teaching kids—at least a class of them--is simply not one of my spiritual gifts. And I think that’s okay. But this wasn’t the lesson I learned. Those two mornings spent stepping up to the plate when called, organizing and directing and taking charge—that was so far out of my comfort zone, but at the same time came so naturally. I have the gift of administration. I can get the job done. I pay attention to details and notice when people need help. (Yes, you’d think I would have figured this out by now, but that’s a whole other issue.) Thank you, Lord, for enlightening me.


x

{if I had too much money...}

...and I was required to buy frivolous things with it, I would buy this handbag. Oh, how I love Orla Kiely. Her bags make me swoon. With the money, I'd probably also buy a few dozen things from the new Pottery Barn catalog and get DVR, too.

x

{three things}

A little fun courtesy of Elements of Style...

1. What are the last 3 things you purchased?
I purchase so much it’s hard to keep track!
*foam letter stickers
*an iron
*a blowdryer
(Yes, we had small-appliance issues last week.)

2. What are the last 3 songs you downloaded?
I don’t usually download songs, but I download lots of TV shows.
* Army Wives (totally hooked!)
* Gossip Girl (not a fan)
* The Closer (always a solid choice)

3. Where were the last 3 places you visited?
* Orange County
* Italy
* Chicago

4. What are 3 of your favorite t.v. shows?
* Grey’s Anatomy
* Project Runway
* October Road

5. What are your 3 most prized possessions?
* my wedding rings
* the Bible I got when I was 20
* my leather purse from Fiesole, Italy

6. What 3 everyday things can you not live without?
* tv
* Burt’s Bees chapstick
* coffee

7. What would be your 3 wishes?
* to know, love and worship the Lord as much as humanly possible
* for Paul and I and everyone else I love to have good health forever
* to get DVR for free

8. What are 3 things you have not done yet?
* give birth
* buy a house
* go to Canada

9. What are your 3 favorite dishes?
* Orange chicken from Panda Express
* Gorgonzola ravioli from Prima Vista (with a glass of Barbra D’Asti)
* Kroger brand rising crust supreme pizza (with a glass of Crane Lake Petite Syrah)

10. Name 3 things that freak you out.
* spiders
* thunder storms
* being in the house alone after dark

11. If you could describe yourself in 3 words, what would they be?
* artistic
* committed
* detail-oriented

12. Name 3 random things you are good at.
* throwing things in the kitchen together to make a tasty meal
* using punctuation correctly
* remembering names and dates (I get that from my mom)

13. What are 3 things you are currently coveting?
Only three???
* this chair from Pottery Barn
* DVR (and a flat screen to go with it)
* a gorgeous new bathroom with subway tile