momtourage

I guess I've read more than I thought...

Okay, here you go oneofhismoms.  I think you added Jonathan Strange.  Am I correct?

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights*
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice*
Jane Eyre*
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair?
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner (Except, isn’t it just called Kite Runner?)
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
Atlas Shrugged

Reading Lolita in Tehran: a Memoir in Books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian: A Novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World?
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange

Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King?
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray

Mansfield Park?
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
A Tree Grows In Brooklyn
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake: a novel
Collapse : How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an Inquiry into Values
The Aeneid
Watership Down*
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

To Read or Not to Read

I found this great meme-like thing at We are Fambly.  I couldn't resist it.  It was mostly fun for me.  I don't know if anyone else will care what I have read, or couldn't finish or hope to read.  But I do want to know the same of Lo, Danator, and my other momtourage friends.  Tag!

Now, I have simplified this from where I found it, by making a bulleted list.  The paragraph of instructions was too dense for my report-card-befuddled brain.  Remember when you see all the bolds that I was an English major.  I did have a good six years in which my most important job was to read long dusty novels.

1. Bold what you have read.
2. Italicize those you started but couldn’t finish.
   
3. Strike through what you couldn’t stand.
4. Add an asterisk to those you’ve read more than once.
5. Underline those on your to-read list.
6. ? for can’t remember if I ever tried to read it or not.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice*
Jane Eyre*
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma?
The Blind Assassin?
The Kite Runner (Except, isn’t it just called Kite Runner?)
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: a Memoir in Books
Memoirs of a Geisha*
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian: A Novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch?
Frankenstein*
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
A Tree Grows In Brooklyn
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake: a novel
Collapse : How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an Inquiry into Values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

PS I added a book to the original list. See if you can find it.  And tag someone else.  Or, if you don't have a blog, comment to me which one was your favorite on the list and which your least.

Dressing Down

I don't know what I was thinking, but I spent all day yesterday in sweatpants. And they were not sporty slimming ones but the slovenly, over-sized, 80s type. I also sported an old t-shirt - bright orange with a small grease stain - advertising a purportedly friendly pizza place.

I usually wear this particular outfit when I'm scrubbing the bathroom or washing the kitchen floor. I did neither of those things, though the house sure could have used it.

Unsurprisingly, I grew increasingly depressed as the day wore on. I even thought about going to McDonald's for a super unhealthy meal. And then suddenly I hopped on the subway to drop some film off at Spectra. WITHOUT CHANGING INTO SOMETHING ELSE. In Brooklyn, okay, there is a certain comfort zone for slobbiness. In Manhattan - forget it. As soon as I emerged from the subway (on Prince Street, of course - right across from Prada) I felt instantly conspicuous. I wondered if I looked like a tourist or maybe (optimistically!) someone trying out a retro look. I grew increasingly fearful as I hastened down LaGuardia Place. Surely I would run into someone I knew! And they would think I was fat and depressed and would feel sorry for me. I remembered a story a friend had told me about going on a blind date and being incredibly dismayed because the person was wearing - you guessed it - sweatpants. Surely it pointed to further slovenliness, we speculated. A grim apartment with dirty clothing lying about, dishes with caked-on grime piled in the sink, etc. etc.

Well, I didn't run into anyone I knew and I was relieved when I crossed back over the Brooklyn line. In the future I'll reserve that outfit for household chores.

Fear Not!

Last spring, I had the best idea ever.  I thought up my dream job.  It was so simple.  I decided to create the position of Performing Arts teacher at my school and be that teacher.  I've always loved drama.  Drama games, performing in plays, and a general state of being the center of attention have always appealed to me.  If I had this job I would do my favorite thing all day, share it with kids, and keep my salary and job security -- not to mention those summers off.  It was a dream come true.  I wrote up a proposal and gave it to the principal stating that I'd like it to happen, if possible, the year after next (2008-2009).

My colleague, D, loved the idea and said she'd teach an after-school enrichment Theater cluster with me to try my idea out.  Great. 

So today was the first day of "Story Theater Workshop."  I worked myself into a nervous frenzy.  Out of nowhere I got the idea that I would actually hate teaching drama and my dream job would disintegrate.  I worried.  I worried a lot.

Ummmm.  It was great.  I loved it.  The kids loved it.  I wasn't even tired afterward because I felt so invigorated.  I also feel lucky to teach at a school where I would be able to do such a thing.  The best idea ever is still the best idea ever.  Whew.

And Another Thing...

You all know about my love affair with public libraries, even though I did lose my fancy sunglasses at that one library sponsored book sale. I am a frequent visitor to the big library at Grand Army Plaza, and because they often don't have the specific book I'm looking for on the shelves, I manage to find unexpected alternatives. At some point last year I found How to Be Alone by Jonathan Franzen. (It's a collection of essays - lord knows what I was doing in that stack but the title is one of my all-time-faves. I sometimes quote it silently when I see someone standing on line, talking on a cell phone while ready to put their ipod back on the moment the conversation is finished. Whatever happened to just waiting and thinking quiet thoughts to oneself?!)

But I digress. There is a superb essay in this book about the terribleness of the Chicago postal system. Lost letters, mail hidden under a carrier's porch, sorters listening to the ball game when they should be at work etc. etc. I am often reminded of this essay when I am at the local post office on 7th Avenue, inconveniently close to where I live. I remember how happy I was to move so close to a postal branch after living in Cobble Hill, where the nearest ones were in Red Hook and at Cadman Plaza, respectively. HA! It was worth the walk to reach these (for the most part) well-run and pleasantly staffed offices. Here, I will often walk out of my way a good 10 blocks to go to the next nearest branch.

That is, unless I want a little entertainment. The staff at 7th Ave rotates, but they always seem to have had to obtain a sort of master's in sadism to work there. Well, there was that one nice lady, but she's long gone. Probably couldn't get with the program of extreme rudeness and incivility that pervades the place. The staff are fond of curtly sending customers to the table because something isn't filled out right or crossed out enough. They never have priority boxes or envelopes available. You pretty much have to go up to the window (interrupting someone else's transaction) and beg. Sometimes you have to do so for insurance forms, which you would be easy to keep stocked. And the stamp machine is often conveniently broken, forcing interaction with the surly stuff when all you wanted to do was put some change in a machine.

There are people (like myself) who are used to this branch. We wait quietly in line, NOT talking on cell phones, meekly trying to attract as little attention as possible. The postal workers are keen to refuse service to people who talk on phones near the window and are actually within their rights to do this. But then there is always someone new there too. Someone who has been sent to the table for a minor infraction and is wondering aloud at the injustice of it. Sometimes another customer will commiserate with them in a very low key way (don't want to screw up their own upcoming transaction...) but other times their fellow victims - I mean customers - will just look away, down at the floor, pretending it isn't happening and willing that person to stop, lest the staff take it out on everyone else.

The other morning the office was closed due to computer problems, so I walked with another customer to 9th Street. On the way she told me that her previous postal branch on the Lower East Side had been EVEN WORSE. Even after I told her about the checks and letters that have arrived 6 months late, and the frequency of other people's mail in my box, she still stood by her evaluation. I guess something in me must be craving abuse, because I sort of want to see if that can possibly be true. 

Asthma (and a million trees)

The bad cold that has been going around hit our family hard this past week. First Hank came down with it, then developed such a bad cough that he is back on his inhaler twice a day for an unforeseeable amount of time. The only one who seems to have escaped is Sam, who must have a much better immune system than the rest of us. My husband and I are on inhalers too, which is particularly angering to me as I have not had to use mine for well over 5 years - maybe even more.

The day I started huffing ventolin again I saw an article in the New York Times about 1 million trees to be planted in NYC. Starting with the Bronx, which apparently has poorer air quality than Brooklyn. After the trees are planted the air will be fresher, our spirits will be uplifted, and evidently the occurrence of asthma will take a hit. I hope so. If I was to make a list of reasons to stay in the city and reasons to move elsewhere, health issues would definitely figure in on the minus side. (And don't get me started about the hospitals - if you have ever spent an overnight in LICH you would immediately agree.)

  I feel badly for Hank, as he sits there patiently and breathes in the medicine through a 'happy bear' spacer. This is normal for him. The first time he was hospitalized with bronchial problems he was 9 months old. Then the next year, again.  We were watching the marathon on 4th Avenue  and all of a sudden he was struggling for breath. My asthma never manifested itself until I was in my 20s, in England, waiting to cross at a roundabout known for exhaust fumes that would make your head spin. What are we breathing in everyday here?

A neighbor's son has asthma too and she said whenever she takes him to visit her family in Puerto Rico, it immediately disappears. And Hank never has trouble breathing when we are up in Maine. What will the long-term effects be for these kids, as we cling to the many pluses of urban living while quietly pushing things like this to the back of our minds?

Readin' and Weep

Yesterday, I did not get enough sleep.  It was a combination of the end of a week-long stint of being awakened at 3am by my toddler because something in his room scared him and having to wake up at 5 am to be the first person at my doctor's office in Manhattan so I could get to work in Brooklyn on time.

Sometimes when I don't get enough sleep, I get cranky.  This was not one of those times.  This was a weepy time. 

I had brought my book club book on the train with me.  I had read it already, I think at least ten years ago.  So it hit me when I got about eight pages into A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, that I had forgotten entirely just how good a book it was.  Betty Smith had a gift for detail and a way of stripping human nature into tiny moments of action that, though tiny, extend out and wrap around the reader.  I sat on the train in Manhattan, but my head was in Williamsburg watching the children lining up as the trucks pulled into the discount bread shop.  My heart was with the protagonist, eleven-year-old Francie Nolan as she ironed her father's apron and listened to him tell her that he should never have had any children.  He was not worthy.  Aaaaaaand I lost it.  Weeping and weeping on the train.  I was weeping because Francie Nolan loved her dad more than her mom even though he said not-so-well-thought-out things in front of his child.  I wept for the fact that I hadn't read and re-read this book at all in the last ten years.  Yeah.  One of those days.

Flash forward to school.  I have this great little class.  They love books and even though it is only the beginning of  October, they have already written a letter to Yangsook Choi, an author, which actually got a response*--a first--an action which has resulted in the principal offering to pay an honorarium to the author so she can visit the school.  I should have known not to whip out The Old Woman Who Names Things, by my old favorite children's author, Cynthia Rylant.  Rylant pleases her young audiences with her stories of animals and her child-like humor.  She pleases the adults with her delicious prose and the way her stories all seem to encompass a sense of longing that never fails to move me.  This is a story of an old woman who has outlived all of her friends, so she only names things that she's sure will outlive her, like her house and her car and her chair.  She meets a puppy and eventually gives him a name.  I got to the end, in which the nameless old woman has to overcome her fear of the living. Aaaaaaaaand I lost it again.  Weep weep weep in front of the kids.

"This happens sometimes when I read a good book," I said through my sniffles. 
"But why are you crying?" 
"It is sad when you outlive your friends."
I pulled myself together and finished the book.  The kids actually burst into applause. 
Then one of them raised his hand and said, "Can we write a letter to Cynthia Rylant?  Can we tell her about how you cried?"

* Yangsook Choi is great.  Not only did she write back to my kids, but she wrote each of their names on the letter.  I let her know that she forgot one name and she sent me a special letter just for that child.  Please go buy all of her books, ok?

Playmo#!*#*!bil

In our family, I am the one who puts stuff together. Not always with the greatest success (that buggy board strap that I cut too short springs to mind) but usually I do okay.

That said, I have always considered Playmobil a great challenge. I have to clear a large space and set aside a substantial amount of time so I can get throughy it all in one shot. Otherwise, those tiny pieces end up who knows where and/or get confused in the general mess, resulting in needle-in-the-haystack like searches. The elements can be frustrating to assemble as well, requiring special tiny plastic bolts that come with a special tiny plastic bolt handling thingy. It is always worth it however, to see the finished airport or pirate ship looking just like the picture and to hear the delighted cries of the kids as they marvel at various Playmobil wonders. That is, before they decide that it is a better idea to just deconstruct and we find ourselves looking for the tiny pieces all over again. Every once in a while, I have to give myself a break from the constant clean-up and our playmobil toys take a little rest in the closet.

So when Sam informed me that "Daddy stepped on the airport and broke it." I chalked this statement up to childish hyperbole. I just didn't want to know. A few minutes later, I saw said airport and my heart dropped. Pieces were strew all over the room. Some had found their way under the carpet and the bed. The second floor was completely off the first. I informed my husband that he would have to put it back together. Just had to! And then I counted to ten and left the room.

I checked in after about 15 minutes to see him hard at work, although somehow he had managed to disassemble it further. Fighting down an urge to shout, and with much grumbling, I took over the process. After he searched on the web for directions "Lots of people seem to have this problem," he announced unhelpfully, he pulled up a thumb-print sized picture of the airport. The old airport, it turns out. They have changed the design - perhaps to make it more user-friendly? One can only hope. Luckily, some repressed memory from the original frustrating construction must have surfaced. I managed to get it back together in 30 minutes. 

God help me if I ever find it in that state again.

I Just Bought Rocks

Pebbles, actually.  Five bags of pebbles.

See, it was one of those days as a teacher when I fully expect to see a shock of gray hair on my head the next time I look in the mirror.  Ok, that's an exaggeration.  But it was a pretty bad day for the first week of October.

I usually spend the first few months of school team building and creating a respectful classroom community.  This year is no exception.  I feel like I'm doing all the things I usually do.  And I have a sweet group of kids.  They are sweet, but not to each other.  They've been tattling and putting each other down and even using physical aggression to address conflict.  What the?

It came to a head today when I was leaning over to address one student who had just put-down another's learning, when I heard a  ruckus  on the other side of the room.  I looked up to see what looked like two boys choking a third.  Again... what the?   So I called everyone to the rug.  I don't think I said anything helpful.  I pretty much said, "I know that you know how to behave.  And I know that  you are able to make the choice to do so.  So I don't know why we are choosing to be mean and unsafe to each other.  I'm going to go home and think long and hard about my behavior and if there is something I am doing wrong to make this happen and I would like you to do the same."  I'm sure it sounded to them like the grown up on the Peanuts.  Wahh wahh wah waaaaah waaaaaaaah. Like I said, probably not helpful.

After dismissal, I sat down, exasperated, next to a colleague.  I like this woman.  She's one of those people who seems calm and grounded all the time.  She probably seems that way when she's freaking out, too.  She was sitting on the front step of the school eating a crisp Granny Smith apple.  We both bemoaned our unusually nudgy students.  Then she said, "Did you ever have a marble jar or a rock jar?"  Now I've heard of people giving rewards to their kids, and I've never done it much.  I'm not good at follow through.  But Ms. N said basically, every time a student does something cooperative or helpful, you put a marble in the jar.  If someone does something uncooperative, you take one out.  When it gets to the point when it is so full, that a marble rolls off the top and onto the floor, the class has earned a party.  She said they all go crazy being nice to each other and helping each other.  She even saved one really big rock for when someone does something extraordinarily kind.  If any child tries to put a rock in him or herself, the teacher pours all of the rocks out.  And if they are getting disorderly, you just have to shake the jar a little and they all snap to attention.

Now I know there is no such thing as a magic bullet.  But I tell you I made a bee line to the nearest dollar store and bought myself a bunch of pebbles.  I am very excited for the peace pebbles.

I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks.  Let's hope it works...

Unexpected Treat

As the weather was gorgeous and the timing was right, our very nice next door neighbors invited the whole family to the Jersey Coast for the weekend. I tend to get in a rut in Brooklyn, so the thought of a last minute change of plans - leaving the state even - was startling and revolutionary.

None of us had been to that neck of the woods before and we were just blown away by how gorgeous and warm (the water was 72 degrees!) and friendly it was. We swam, flew kites, walked in the sand, built sand castles, ate tasty seafood - all of the usual beachy activities, made even more poignantly enjoyable by the realization that this was probably THE LAST nice weekend before fall starts settling in.

On the way down, we stopped at one of those roadside gas + food areas for a snack. My husband got all of the kids crowns from Burger King and for some reason Hank became immediately and intensely attached to his. He wore it every day and even to school on Monday, which garnered a few shocked looks in our neighborhood of wholesome eaters.

All in all, it was a perfect weekend and a memory to savor in the coming months.