Thursday, as I'm sure everybody knows, it was Valentine's Day. Everybody wore red and pink to school. It was also my son's 24th birthday. Gotta say, he was the best Valentine's Day present I ever got. No box of chocolates or bunch of roses can ever quite compare to the feeling of holding your first baby in your arms. Never mind that he had colic and cried nearly nonstop for the first three months.

I'd almost forgotten about how tired I was until I ran into David, a special ed teacher I work with. His new little girl, Ava, has been keeping him awake night after night. The other day, his wife asked him why he'd put the ice cream away in the cupboard. I remember turning off the shower because I thought the baby was crying only to hear nothing. I was so exhausted, I was imagining things. My husband, who teaches math, often wrote the wrong problems on the board, walked into walls, etc.. Being a new parent is a joy but not without its trials. Even when they're grown and on their own, somehow you never forget your first experiences as a parent.

February Blahs

It's February third and I've been feeling twitchy. Had a minor foot operation about a month ago that threw me off my running routine. I never realize how much I need to run until I can't. Running is hard, yeah, but like nearly everything that's a challenge, it's satisfying. Running helps me burn off my anxieties, to sleep soundly and keep my weight down. Today I took a brisk walk for the first time in a month and, even though it wasn't running, it felt good to work up something near a sweat.

The way I see it, people weren't made to sit in front of a box and veg out. Most of the teachers I work with watch tv at night for entertainment. I don't get it. In fact, one of the major topics of conversation in the faculty room is American Idol and who's going or not going to get cut. With the writers' strike going into who knows how many weeks now, some of them seem lost without a new show to tune into. Maybe we need a book club but right now, I just don't want to be the person running it.

After work, I write, read, browse the internet and usually try to work in some exercise at the gym or by walking or running through the neighborhood. On the weekends, I also paint. I rarely watch tv. The endless commercials bore me and for me, reality tv is cheap tv. Personally, I find the written word more intriguing than most of the crap and insipid trivia that dominates the airwaves. Unfortunately, a lot of that drivel is migrating over to print. How many stories does the average person need to read about Britney Spears and her nervous breakdown?

I love a good movie but last weekend my husband and I tried to go see Atonement. Unfortunately, it was sold out. Aaargh!

Anyhow, what do you do for relaxation after a day at work? I'd love to hear it.

And oh, yeah, GO GIANTS!

Book Lists

With the exception of one person I know, librarians are essentially book lovers. Most of them aren't drawn to the profession out of a love for computers. Sometimes you see them browsing through Borders or Barnes and Noble, salivating over the book-ladened tables and shelves. Now and then they take out their secret notebook and scribble down the title of something they want to order.

Librarians keep running lists of the books they want to order, the books they long to order if they're given the budget they so need and deserve to build a great collection. Like all the librarians I know, I too have lists. I used to keep my list on index cards in a small file box -- one title per card. These days, I keep a list online with Follett's Title Wave or Bound-to-Stay-Bound's online bookstore. They tell me right away if the book is available, out of print, the current price and what format it's available in.

When I'm ready to order, I simply print out my list, attach a P.O. and send it off. Over the summer, the books arrive and wait patiently in their boxes for somebody to open them, take them out and devour them.

My list keeps getting longer, of course, and I suppose at some point I'm going to have to cut it down. Anyhow, here a just a few of the books I'd love to order:

1. The Anansi stories, by Eric Kimmel
2. More Greek and Roman Myths
3. About 15 books of poetry, namely Good Books, Good Times; Behold the Bold Umprellaphant; Beyond the Museum Door; She's All That; Butterfly Eyes; This Is Just To Say; The Wizard; Bury Me In the Library and more.
4. The Spiderwick Chronicles
5. Many of the Caldecott and Newberys we don't have (The Spider and the Fly, Duffy and the Devil, Martin's Big Words, The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship, etc)
6. Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road. A really cool and funny look at the old joke.
7. Peter Sis's The Wall
8. Some Blue Boarder's book, namely: The Pumpkin Queen; Miss Spitfire; A Crooked Kind of Perfect; Cowboy Camp
9. Some great nonfiction, namely: Nic Bishop's Spiders and Nic Bishop's Frogs; Oh Rats; Steve Jenkin's Dogs and Cats and another by him called Living Color; Piven's books What Athletes Are Made Of, What Presidents Are Made Of and My Dog Is As Smelly As Dirty Socks; The Journey That Saved Curious George. And more!
10. This year's Caldecotts and Newberys that I don't have
11. A new set of From-Sea-To-Shining-Sea about the 50 states.
12. A set of books about the continents
13. More biographies. National Geographic has a great set I'd like to order.
14. Some more wonderful picture books. Here the list gets very long. I'd like some of the oldies but goodies, such as the Harry the Dirty Dog books, the Lyle books, etc. as well as lots of new releases: There Is a Bird On Your Head; Baby Bear, Baby Bear;
Dex, the Heart of a Hero; Diary of a Fly; Susan Jeffers version of The Nutcracker; Move Over, Rover; The Snow Queen; If I Had a Dragon; Where the Giant Sleeps; Snow Music; Pictures From Our Vacation; Armadilly Chili, and many many more.
15. Lots of great novels: Hugging the Rock; Shug; the Joey Pigza books, Jerry Spinelli's book, Eggs; The Seven Wonder of Sassafras Springs; Notes From a Liar and Her Dog; Framed by Bruce Cotrell; A Girl Named Disaster; A Dog Called Grk; The Secret Olivia Told Me; Paint the Wind; Edward's Eyes; Moxie Maxwell Does Not Love Stuart Little; Project Mulberry; Talented Clementine; The Hoboken Chicken Emergency; Jack Plank Tells Tales; some Rick Riordan novels and more.

These are just some of the books I'd order, if I had the funding I need. And deserve. Of course, it's hard to compete with technology which is where a lot of our district's funding goes these days. I guess computers and Smart Boards are the shiny new toys that school districts like to brag about. Then they can say that they're preparing the students for the 21st century. Technology is sexy and good PR.

Anyhow, there's hope. I recently wrote a letter to the administration detailing our library's shortcomings. It was, I guess, a passionate appeal with strong wording. They at least thanked me for telling them and said they'd try to help. So, I'm hoping for better funding next school year.

Wow, this must be my longest post to date. A record. I hope one or two people will read it.

Blogger's Block

We're all familiar with writer's block, but lately I've had blogger's block. How can that be? In an effort to break through the walls and get the old gray matter moving again, here are some random thoughts in no particular order.

My eldest almost has a job. He's doing some volunteer work for our local legislator and in a month or two it will become a full time position, complete with health and dental benefits. Yay!

My youngest son passed his New York State Certification Exams! He also graduated from college and did well on the Suffolk Police exam (gives him another option). Now he needs to find a job, too. January is a tough time of year to go hunting for a teaching position but he might get a leave replacement or do some subbing.

I wrote a letter to the administration detailing my library's many shortcomings and the need for more funding. I received a letter back from MJ, our superintendent of instruction, saying they discussed the library's plight at the budget meeting and will see what they can do to help improve the situation. She even thanked me for bringing it to their attention. It's not a promise but here's hoping. I told them that for the price of a computer and printer, we could have so many more books.

We've had an incredibly warm January. My husband saw a confused looking robin the other day. It's suppose to get pretty damn cold this weekend, though. I hope so. I like to see snowmen in January, not robins.

Bobby Fischer died. He was 64. I remember when he beat Boris Spassky in the early 1970s. How could so much time have gone by? And isn't Boris the quintessential Russian name?

I got a new car (a red Acura TSX) and I love it! I've actually enjoyed getting stuck in traffic on the Southern State the past few days. This is the first car I've had that isn't a mommymobile since I was 23. It may be a midlife crisis car but so what! Not that I feel I'm going through some sort of a crisis.

I want to say I'm sorry to the people I didn't send Christmas cards to this year. I tried getting them all out but just couldn't.

Anyhow, happy Friday everybody.

New Year, New Goals

When it comes to New Year's resolutions, I prefer to think in terms of goals. The word "resolution" has a heavy, burdensome tone to it. So I'll consider goals. What are they? I have a couple I'd like to keep in mind as I make my way through this year. Here they are:

1. Write at least one poem a month.
2. Finish writing my middle grade fantasy.
3. Put together enough paintings for a possible art show this summer (including the framing).
4. Lose that 10 pounds that keeps hanging around. That means exercising both more restraint and my body, no excuses.
5. Take either a portrait class or a figure class.
6. Submit more of my work, provided I have something worth subbing.
7. Attend a writing conference. I'd like to attend Chautauqua but only if it seems my novel is closing in on being finished. Unfortunately, by the time I know that it will be too late to apply. So, I'll probably go to the Long Island SCBWI conference.

There, that's enough for now. I'll be ecstatic if I can reach all my goals, but reasonably happy if I meet half of them.

Happy New Year everybody!

Family Ski and Snowboard Time

This week we drove up to Gore Mountain in the Adirondacks to squeeze in a little family skiing and snowboarding. We had a great time. It rained on our way up to Lake George but as we got closer the rain turned to snow. Yay!! The next morning we had four to five new inches of the white stuff. Good news! Unfortunately, half of New York State also decided to go skiing at Gore so the lift lines were long and the slopes crowded. We managed to have a lot of fun anyhow. Overnight it rained and then froze, just as it always does in New England, so the next day we had "fast conditions".

My son, Sean, who normally skis, decided to rent a snowboard for a day. Halfway through the day, his cousin, Teri (an accomplished skier), asked if she could try it. My other son, Derek, caught her first attempts on video and this is the funny result. My husband is in the yellow coat trying to help, even though he knows little about snowboarding.

I'm so grateful nobody captured my first attempts at skiing on video. That would have been high comedy. At one point, I think I fell between the ski instructor's legs.

Class Picture

Every year the kids have their class picture taken. Like every other kid, I have my own collection of old class photos. I found this one recently among my mother's boxes and boxes of pictures, old report cards and checking statements. It's a picture of my first grade class. The teacher's name was Miss Clink. My dad said she was a kid -- only 21 years old at the time and fresh out of the state college. The next year she was gone -- to marry her sweetheart, settle down in a split level house someplace and start her own little family.

Class pictures aren't something you appreciate until many years have gone by. You look back at them and wonder, whatever became of Stanley Lincoln who cried every morning? In the above picture, he's sitting to my left. Does Robin Rubel., in the second row, still have that idiotic grin? In ninth grade when we had to bring in a current event from the newspaper every morning, he brought in the obituaries each day without fail. I wonder if he grew up to become a mortician. And what happened to my good friend, Rhona?  She moved at the end of first grade. We hadn't yet acquired the necessary letter writing skills to keep in touch. She's sitting in the first row three seats to my left. Was Terry a little retarded? He never got out of the Blue Birds reading group. Maybe he just had a learning disability. Why did they put me next to two boys for this picture? Was I too chatty? And what about George sitting at the end of the front row there in his bow tie? He liked to catch garter snakes from the woods behind the school and chase the girls around the playground with them. I bet he had a good time in college.


It's fun to look back at these old pictures and remember the people you played with, envied, fought with, competed with on the playground for a turn on the swings or a chance to use that waxed paper you'd saved from your ham sandwich so you could zip down the slide at 100 m.p.h. (so it seemed anyhow). I don't know what became of any of the people in this picture. Except me, of course. Do you know which one is me? My sons figured it out after a while -- mostly because my son, Sean, has my smile. I'm sitting in the front row, third from the left. Missing a few teeth, too.