This Thanksgiving I am grateful for a couple of new TV shows that I am enjoying: "Community" and "Parks and Rec," both on NBC. Good for good old NBC. It warms my heart to see that a major network can still do interesting work. Just like it's good to see Sunset magazine and The New Yorker still come to the front door periodically. I worry sometimes about these old modes that seem to be threatened with extinction. It makes me feel like I do when I drive by where the old Thiele's restaurant used to be on N.W. 23rd in Portland. I don't think it's a CPK anymore, although that was a weird slap in the face when that happened.

It is easy for me to get nostalgic about the good old days and the places that are no more and the toys that are long buried in landfills deep, deep down under forty years of flotsam. It is especially easy at this time of year, of course. Of course.

I want to curl up with a likely book and a soft blanket or comforter and fall asleep. But it's kind of late in the day, and it will be hard to fall asleep later tonight, and I just have to get up again to go do my job, which is a hard job.

Yes, it is. I have to come up with ways to help children who are struggling, and sometimes I feel pretty ineffective about it all. There are no magic wands to wave, no guarantees of personal happiness for every single child. There are hurt feelings every day, misunderstandings, transitions in friendships, experimenting with bullying, pushing people around for the fun of it. All the irritating and occasionally painful things people think up to do to one another, and it all happens in these middle school years. I mean I know it happens in preschool, but the edge can be honed in seventh and eighth grade in particular.

All I want to do is go back inside, go back in years, find a time when there was ease and comfort and safety and fullness and kindness and security. Wow, I wonder when the heck that was my experience...? There has been so much anxiety of so many different types through the years...

And to be honest it isn't really all that horrible right this second. I do miss my son, but we get to see him in just a few days... That will be nice. That will be something to be truly grateful for.

It is my turn to call in to the court system to see if I've been selected for jury duty this week. So far, no go tomorrow. I want to be called, and I don't want to be called. I'd like a break from certain challenges at school, and I will pay for a break from those challenges.

Life is full, again.

My niece is trying to remember what it was like to be thirteen, the age her son is right now. I try to do that periodically, to get in touch with what is going on in the minds of the students I work with each day. It's really hard to do!

It's Halloween, 2009. I don't care for this holiday much anymore. It used to be kind of fun with the kids, getting them dressed up and going out trick-or-treating, but now that they don't do that, and I am simply haunted by the candy I keep for the few neighbor kids, it just adds up to a rather tense evening.

Wow, what a bummer for me! I have got to lighten up here.

It was fun to watch the middle school students dress up for their costume contest on Thursday. Some excellent imagination and flair for drama there.

I think it's basically the candy that ultimately depresses me. I get depressed if I don't allow myself to eat it, and I get depressed if I do. No winning here.

I need a good movie to watch. Or a trip to northern Italy.

Another Sunday night. I wonder what this week will bring? Will students implode? Will parents flip out? Will the kids be so jazzed by the aspect of a four-day weekend that little real work will take place? Will I lose my patience? Will I get H1N1?

This will be the first time in six years that I am not actively sitting in parent/teacher conferences. I will try to help everyone move smoothly through their rotations, and I may have some shortish conferences for a few standout cases, but I am not sitting in the typical English teacher spot, talking to parents about their children's writing and reading and homework. Wow, that is actually kind of a big deal. I wonder if I will miss it, or if it will be a relief?

The antibacterial soap at school hurts my finger tips.

Yesterday was the kind of day at school that had me thinking biggish thoughts by 6 p.m. The kinds of biggish thoughts that kept me from my morning intention of going to see that Keats movie. The kinds of biggish thoughts that one thinks when one is considering one's life span and what matters most to one in that span.

Can you tell it was a tough day?

Student meltdown, parent meltdown, colleague critiques.

I read yesterday that problems are good, that problems are what make this all so interesting. I'm trying to shift my framework to that way of thinking to see if it will help me.

There is probably some Buddhist wisdom that would also help me right here, right now, but I can't remember it.

I almost spilled the beans today in my creative writing class and told my students about this blog.

It's not that it's a secret, really, but I just prefer not to share it with my students. Or their parents. Nothing personal.

It's the first week back in school, and I quaintly amused by how wiped out I am feeling right now. I'm not even teaching, really. Just doing the dean work is cooking my poor little brain. It got very used to being on vacation.

Poor, poor, pitiful me.

Does anyone remember that doll called Pitiful Pearl? My mom used to say I was acting like her. Lots. I was very sensitive as a child. Still am, in fact.

 

C prepares her vehicle with the help of incredibly generous friends and a few hangers-on.