Sitting 'round the kidney shaped table

Alondra- "Mrs. Cann, your hair looks different today."

Me- " Oh, that's because when I took a shower this morning, the steam made it curly and I didn't straighten it."

Isaac- "Do you get a shower every morning?"

Me- "Pretty much."

Isaac (nodding) - "yeah, 'cause old people have to take a bath a lot!"

ahh, those kids!

With the Fourth Graders

Time has been moving along at warp speed since school started. Here we are, already into October!

  Working with the 4th grade kids has been great. I love the kids I teach and get such a kick out of them!  Meeting in small groups, we sit around a kidney shaped table in close quarters. When kids sit that close to you, they get a close-up view as they, often unabashedly, study you. Last week one girl was looking at me closely and asked if I waxed my eyebrows. They often tell me I smell good. A couple of years ago, a student asked me what the bump on my lower eyelid was, prompting me to finally see an opthomologist, leading to its removal and a "not cancerous" verdict. I hadn't even considered cancer! Even from a distance, kids notice you. The other day, as I passed him in the lunch room, a Second grader told me he "liked my hair." On the other side of the spectrum, I was once told matter-of-factly that I had "a big tummy."
My job is intervention. The kids I teach are usually 2+ years behind their grade level in Reading. I see them for 30 minutes, working on mostly phonics and fluency, then I leave and go on to the next group.
 I have so much respect and appreciation for every minute their classroom teacher spends serving these kids. It is hard work, exhausting work, take home from school work.
You know how grandparents say, after spending a couple of days with the grandkids, "there's a reason you have your kids when you're young!", I think it's the same with teaching. My job is kind of like being a grandma. I don't have all 30 at a time. I'm not there, with them in the classroom, all day.I don't deal with the myriad of problems that come up in the school day. I hope that, by my small attempts to serve them, they know how much I admire and honor them. It really is, largely, a thankless profession.
The best thanks I get is when my students feel proud of themselves after presenting a Readers Theater to their class with all the giggly jitters of a broadway production, or recognize one of their vocabulary words in another book, or when one asks me why he can't come to be tutored in the morning, as well as the afternoon. After all, everyone likes to go to grandma's.
So if I complain, know that I love my job, that I'm ever grateful for it and that even with the frustrations, it is usually a great source of happiness, and purpose, for me.

Is my sandwich stale?

My good friend Red Shoes told me today, "your sandwich is stale."
"What?"
"Your sandwich is stale, you need a new post."
 Actually I'd been thinking about it on the way to school. I know getting new bras and a good samich will only carry an audience so far.
I know I need a new post but my thoughts are all over the place lately.
What I'd really like to talk about...are things I can't talk about. To let these thoughts out of their cage would open a window that I may never be able to fly back through, hurt the feelings of those written about, get me in trouble at work, show me for the judgemental, sarcastic person I am (deep inside). So, no deep revelations here, no snarky comments about other bloggers, no tell-alls about family or work.
I will say this:
I am too noisy. My husband complains that I'm "too loud" when I sleep. No, not "you snore." I BREATH too loud... Oh I'm sorry darling, I'll try not to breath. This, after all of the years I have put up with his horrendous snoring.
I am being asked to do more, for less, at work.
I am waking up with a start, around 4 in the morning, and feeling immediate anxiety for no reason. Well, we all know there's always a reason, but what is it?
I LOVE once again working with kids at school.
I am uneasy about my job and it's future, as in next year. Just a gut feeling, but still...
I need a haircut.
I have company coming from out of town and my stove is dirty, my new family room pillows are, as yet, pillow forms lined up over bolts of fabric on my family room floor. My sewing machine sits next to all of it, crying out for some action.
The desk chair is still not painted black and the shower curtain fabric is nestled amongst the "future pillows."
I have a crap load of things to do, but am not motivated. Carol, my visitor, won't care if I have a new shower curtain made.
I'm reading a terrific book, Half Broke Horses.
See? My thoughts are all over the place.

This one is for girls only.

After getting a couple of new bras, I had a craving for a Schlotzky's.
When I was pregnant with my caboose, I lived on these sandwiches and came out of the pregnancy 15 lbs lighter than when I went in! Sitting there eating my lunch took me back to those days, they were pretty darn good. All of my other kids were in school, I wasn't working then, (at least not for pay), I'd get up, pack lunches, cook pancakes (I was the uber homemaker), clean the house (I vacuumed every day!), put in some laundry, then go shopping, volunteer at school, work on projects, take a little nap just before the kids came home... yes, the good ol' days! Not that these days also aren't pretty darn good...
Speaking of bra shopping, there is not much I dislike more than getting half nekkid in a dressing room and trying on bras. You feel so vulnerable. So I don't. I bring a bunch home and return the ones I don't want. Ladies, is there anything that feels better than a new, well fitting bra! My poor girls were gettin' no support! They'd start off okay but after a little while they'd start the inevitable downward spiral, well not really a spiral, but definitely downward. You know the Cheryl Crow song "Are You Strong Enough to be My Man"?  My bra shopping anthem is "Are you Strong Enough to be My Bra?" I want thick straps, underwires, side stays, sturdy but smooth cups and as many hooks on the back as you want to provide! THAT is not an easy thing to find! But I found a couple at Penney's and they were 25% off, to boot!
So a Schlotzky's sandwich and well supported boobies...it was a good day!

15 Albums

My cousin just sent me a 15 Albums meme.

Okay, I'm thinking...

Let's start at the beginning.
My parents got me  little black tape recorder/player when I was 12.
It was accompanied by the latest Association cassette, with the song Cherish featured. You know, "cherish is the word I use to descri- ibe, all the feelings that I have, hiding here for you insi-ide"
While I was wild about the recorder, I wasn't, even then, a fan of soft-pop. As soon as I could save up my babysitting allowance money, I went out and bought Fresh Cream. I had a crush on the wildly red headed drummer,Ginger Baker. " I feeeeeel free!"
Deja Vu soon followed and Niel Young's Harvest, my folks said they thought Harvest was "a little too hippy.,"

During that same time, my parents were buying albums. Carole King"s Tapestry, The Tijuana Brass and Henry Mancini was always playing on the big stereo console as we readied the patio for a big family b.b.q.
1972, a boyfriend gave me Sticky Fingers for my birthday, you know, the one with the pants that unzipped and revealed a tighty whitey clad package!! Tea for the Tillerman,  Every Picture Tells a Story, Low Spark of High Heeled Boys and Summer Breeze was the soundtrack of that summer along with Let's Stay Together and Close to You.
Out of high school, Peter Frampton ALIVE!  Then the great period of California country rock began! All  Linda Rondstadt albums of the time and the Eagles, they count for 5, at least!
College years:
Homesick- listening to Court and Spark
Discovering Jazz- Touch, Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano
and I began my love affair with Steeley Dan.
I could go on and on, don't worry I won't!
What great memories these albums bring back to me! It's funny to think that this music still appeals to my essence. My tastes havent changed much in 40 years. As time goes on, I discover new sounds that I enjoy, none of them particularly "age appropriate". I really enjoy music and like to keep up with what's current. That will be harder once the last kid has left home.
Let me know what music soundtracked your earlier years!

End of Summer

I am mourning the end of Summer
 I am distinctly feeling the approach of it's demise this year.
I spend warm nights at the table out on the deck reading or on the laptop, savoring the lovely music of the fountain and the crickets, realizing that these are seasonal pleasures that will soon come to an end.
My favorite parts of Summer were
Spending time with friends doing things we enjoy.
Reading
Completing projects in the house and yard.
Taking my kids to lunch.
Seeing new, beautiful places.
Visiting my folks.
Learning to DVR and enjoying The Fabulous Beekman Boys, when the rest of the house was asleep.
Are these activities exclusively Summertime things? 
No. But part of what makes them so precious is that, I guess I reserve them for Summer.
Because once I'm back to work, I'm tired when I get home and Saturday and Sunday are so packed full of obligations, that the fun falls by the wayside.
I have to make a better effort to organize my time so that I can enjoy the fun all through the year, especially with my friends...
and the Beekman Boys.

My Happy Place and a sorta Summer 'Gift of the Magi'.

Therapeutically, we are often told to, "Go to your happy place". Everyone needs a "happy place".
For some, that place is hiking in the mountains, or sitting in a football stand cheering as your team runs on to the field or standing on a sandy shore listening to the crash of waves. It's different for everyone.
It's a place where you just...feel like you... a happy you. Know what I mean?

  My "happy place" is being outside, listening to live-music I love, sitting next to someone who "gets" me.

The venue doesn't really matter, although Red Butte Gardens Ampitheater is phenomenal, it's the breezes, and the black outlines of surrounding trees as darkness settles, dragonflies cruising over-head, clouds rolling by. It's the connection you feel with the artist who has traveled in a bus, albeit a very luxurious bus, overnight to come and entertain you, to share some of their most poignant thoughts with you in music. Heck, the thoughts don't even have to be poignant, I love a story about a honkeytonk  just as much as a sad tale of lost love.
I decided last Winter, that I needed to go to my happy place more often. I'm at an age and a place in my life where I am able to do more things for ME and I decided that it was time for me to start doing just that.
I watched carefully for the announcement of Red Butte's Summer concert schedule, bought a membership to get a leg up on other ticket purchasers and on the opening day, excitedly, bought 2 tickets to two shows: Mary Chapin Carpenter, a favorite of my mine and Shan's, and The Prairie Home Companion. Whoohoo!!
To make a long story short, at the end of May, I thought to myself  "Look at those tickets and see what the dates are for the concerts."
The tickets were gone. I looked in each of the three specific places where I woud have put them and they were not there. One of the places I had recently organized and I was afraid the tickets may have accidently ended up with the "throw-aways". Another place they could/should have been is where I keep the weekly grocery ads and they could have been gathered up to make room for the new ads and again, gone to the recycling bin.
Needless to say, I was devastated. The tickets were expensive and I also had the niggling, if irrational, feeling of, "Well, this is what happens when you selfishly spend money on silly things you love.." I know I am not alone on this one. Alot of us, especially moms of my age, just arent used to giving ourselves a treat.
I called Shan, sobbing into the phone, "I've lost the tickets." She could barely understand me as I was crying harder than I can remember allowing myself for a long, long time. She calmed me with a sympathetic ear asking me if maybe they could be replaced, but I knew that was impossible aside from buying more, all sales final, etc...
A couple of days later, she called to tell me that, "a friend told her that the things they send out aren't the actual tickets. You have to pick the actual tickets up with your i.d. at the ticket box previous to the concert."
"Are you sure!"
"Yes! that's what my friend said!"
I excitedly called the ticket office and, HALLELUJIA, it was true!!
NOW, for the Gift of the Magi part... I am crying as I write this...
The day after my hysterical phone call, Shan and Andrew put their heads together and decided that they would replace my Mary C.C. tickets, giving them to me for my birthday. They are a young couple without much money, but they wanted to sacrifice to make me happy, because they love me.
After buying the tickets and asking how soon they would get there, Shannon, not "her friend" was told it is a voucher that is mailed and that you pick them up with your I.D.
So, now Shan and Andrew were the proud owners of two expensive tickets AND my own two tickets were waiting for me to pick up them up.
I didn't know any of this, until she told me the story as we were driving on our way to the concert. Thankfully, they were able to sell their tickets.
Darling Shannon and Andrew, that was one of the nicest things anyone has done for me. Thank you for being so generous and caring for your old mom! I love you.

The evening was sublime and I can't wait for Prairie Home Companion!