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All I Wanted

Last week I got the stomach flu. Not the fun kind, not that there is a fun kind of stomach flu but I want to make clear how awful it was. It was the kind that kept me awake most of the night with sharp pain and chills that would sweep over me right before I had to run to the bathroom again. It was the kind where I felt better if I was lying on my cold ugly tile floor of the ensuite bathroom that used to be a closet and I wished still was a closet until Kenneth was born and then I was grateful to have a place far away from his bedroom to pee. And then I only felt marginally better. It was a flu that marred any desire I might have to eat sushi again as that was what I had eaten for dinner. Sushi from Makomae the highest end sushi place in our general vicinity. It had been our eighth (that is strange word construction, eighth) wedding anniversary and we wanted everyone to have a nice dinner and Makomae is higher end than we can usually afford. It was perfect, then while watching John Ford
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Found in Pomona

Antique Row here in P-Town is slowly shutting down. Every year we loose a few more stores as dealers retire or owners pass on. According to friends who've lived here longer the real hey day for Antiques here was the 1980's and 1990's so when I moved here in 2001 I'd already missed out on the good times. Oh well, I've had a lot of great finds at the stores. Here are a few: 1. A brilliant blue Chinese vase. I am sure it is made for the tourist market, it is small with fake looking marks on the bottom, The color is striking and the form is very sweet. It is perfect for holding geraniums that bloom so plentifully here. Finding it cheered me up tremendously on a bad day. 2. A gold-tone beaded necklace with a small bird charm. It went perfectly with every outfit and I wore it almost daily until it broke and I couldn't find all the beads to fix it properly. 3. A Franciscan Duet coffee pot. Everyone loves Starburst, but the same molds were used to make two other d
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Happy Ruination Day!

On top of being Good Friday this is the day Abraham Lincoln was shot, the Titanic struck an ice berg and one of the worst storms in the dust bowl hit. Gillian Welch wrote about it . For various reasons this has been the year I have needed the Resurrection to be real, which means I also need Death to be real. One with out the other is cheating. Today is the Day of Death. I used to wear black every Good Friday from my Holy roller days in college to my moody contemplative days during my 20s. I made Holy Week play lists and contemplated the crucifixion. The one Holy Week practice I have maintained is reading T.S. Eliot's "The Four Quartets" every Easter season. This year I have found an extra measure of comfort in it as I have read it as a love letter to suffering. Everything is transient. Nothing really sticks around and to get better first we must get worse. I attended a funeral of a respected spiritual leader recently and the man who gave the homily read from The D
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A Little Bit Like Bread and Wine

During snack my son spent most of the time feeding me his Cheerios and grapes. He ate a fair amount, but about half were offered to me. Some he offered and took back, smiling, a baby joke. This is our usual routine before nap, but it occurred to me today was Maundy Thursday and what we were really having was communion.   Once I heard a woman share a story about having a homeless man bump into her tray of food at a Burger king as she was settling down to eat breakfast. He knocked her coffee onto her french toast sticks. She was mad enough to ask him pay for a new breakfast. She scanned the Burger King and saw the man sitting with a friend. As she got up she noticed the homeless man's friend wore a priest's collar, and that the homeless man had also knocked the priests coffee into his breakfast. The priest was sitting, eating the soggy breakfast acting like nothing happened. So the woman went back to her seat and ate her french toast ticks reflecting to us that they tasted &qu
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Happy 101st Birthday Beverly Cleary

Congratulations Mrs. Cleary! Ten things I learned from Ramona the Pest: 1. Henry Huggins can help you out and thats okay. Sure you walked into the mud puddle and got stuck and lost your boots, and you Don't. Need. Help. but actually it is alright if you do. 2. Attack should mean to stick tacks in people. It should, and words should mean what they say. And I should mean what I say too. 3. Ramona would not tolerate her sister's friend treating her like a baby. Being talked down to is never alright. 4. If everyone is dressed as a witch, carry a name tag. Letting people know who you are is fine. 5. Sit here for the present. The core of me feels I should be rewarded for simply doing what I have been asked. I want the present for sitting, standing, taking care of the baby, and doing the dishes. In truth I have received my reward. 6. Dawnzer Lee Light. Yep. I think I know what I am talking about far more than I actually do. 7. There is a mush pot and we all end up there
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Everyone Except Marcella is Wrong About Pesto

Seriously, grate the cheese and mix it in by hand at the end after whirring the rest in the food processor. The texture is markedly better and much easier to coat pasta with. Marcella also says to add a little softened butter at the end. Again, not wrong. Mercy she was the best. Here is a great clip of her bossing around April Bloomfield.
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The Shirt

I was going to write chronologically. Forget that. Memory is not chronological and to make it so would require me getting paid to do this. Also today I put on a shirt that is a loaded gun of memories about one student in particular. When he was placed I was told he was a major behavior. He didn't like female teachers, in part due to his own mother's erratic behavior. In fourth grade he practically lived in the office. I had a strategy with kids like this that worked about half the time, give them space. I figured if a student was having a hard time in me class it was my responsibility. With potentially explosive students I would make it my goal to be as non-reactive as possible. Sometimes this worked, but took so much emotional energy I ended up being super reactive with other students in the class. I would learn later how to be a non-reactive teacher in general, but this year was really a teaching class for me. This child taught me the most. I will call him Frank for the
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