Soccer Mom

After being a Mom for 22 years, I am finally a soccer Mom! We did sell the minivan last year, but still have an SUV. My oldest son played golf; he was never interested in soccer. Brodie is playing on the town rec team, and since Jill is too old, she is the assistant coach at practices and ball girl at games. I even made her a shirt. Brodie loves it and even got to try a penalty kick at the last game. 

Just sayin'

     There's this interesting new phenomenon in our language today. It's this small disclaimer that people put at the end of their statements that allows them to be a little braver in their assertions in a cowardly fashion. When one says Just sayin' it means that she has pointed out a fact that should be obvious to you, a fact that she is going to pretend you don't recognize. She knows deep down that you do recognize this truth and that it was being ignored for a reason, a good reason.  But “just sayin” gives the speaker permission to bring it up because, well, she is “just sayin” and- obvious truth, right?

     The line is often delivered with a tip of the head, sometimes a little shrug and a slightly raised eyebrow, and a Hey, don't kill the messenger kind of look.

     Interestingly, what she is "just sayin'" is actually left unsaid. It slithered silently to the floor between the two of you. It's a hidden snake, a tangled string of words at your feet. 

Example: 

Subject A complains: My leg really hurts from running (a new hobby).

Subject B replies: You may look 30, but you are 42. Just sayin'

Let's break it down:

Obvious fact: "You are 42."

Unsaid: You are too old to be running and I don't feel bad for you.

      Subject A cannot get angry at Subject B for pointing out a fact.  Subject A's only logical response would be “Oh right, I forgot,” thumps head with palm of hand, “ I am 42. Thanks pal. Know anyone who needs some slightly used running shoes?”

      If Subject A gets a little ruffled and asks “What do you mean?” the reply from Subject B is just too easy. “Just that you are 42. I didn't mean anything.” Unable to argue with fact, Subject A backs down. 

     Because picture this, if she did take it further: “That's what you said, but not what you implied.” The snake of unspoken words on the floor glances up, starts to wriggle over to the Subject B, winding its way up her leg. Subject A continues, “You implied that I'm too old to be running.” The snake of strung out words wraps around Subject B's neck. Subject B responses in mock surprise, “That's your interpretation. I was just sayin” The snake turns black and drops to the floor, disintegrates into a cloud of ashes.

     The impression left, but STILL UNSAID is now that Subject A herself must feel that she is too old to be running, since those words came from her mouth. The result of this language breakdown? Confusion, words left unsaid, retorts swallowed, and the general chaos and bad feeling that indirect language often creates.

     According to Urban Dictionary, this phrase originated on MySpace by a popular group called "Open Mind". It is not surprising that this phrase originated on the Internet where the disclaimer-wielding  coward doesn't have to see the hurt look on the receiver's face.

     And the dropped "g"? The dropped subject "I"? This gives it a sassy flavor. "I'm just saying" sounds a little preachy, like Mom-advice. The shortened version allows the speaker to take on a comedic persona. It's all in good fun.     

     But is it? Aren't the comments followed by "just sayin" often a little sharp, hurtful, something you might not say if you couldn't hide behind that clever little disclaimer at the end of it? So next time you are tempted to add "just sayin", think about what you are really saying. You'll save everyone a lot of grief.

Hey.

Just sayin'.

*I used the pronoun "she" here, but I believe both genders may be guilty of this snarky way of getting in a dig.

My power struggle with the Rite Aid lady

So this lady that works at Rite Aid, we have this thing, though I don't know is she is aware... when I pay with my debit card, I know I need to enter my PIN, decide if I want cash back, verify the amount, and press OK. And so, I try to do these things before she can tell me, but I am never fast enough. Just as I reach to enter my PIN, she says “Enter your PIN” and I snatch the little pen thingy and as my hand swoops towards the pad, she says “Cash back?”  The other Rite Aid ladies seem to trust that I've done this before and they just let me do my thing. I think this lady is on to me too, because sometimes she will almost let me win and at the last minute she will say her command. I have even tried to distract her with questions, she's just that good. I have NEVER beat her yet! Not one transaction, not one command!

A Friday afternoon detention

So I just gave a detention to "Susie" and a mint lifesaver 5 minutes later. She seemed befuddled by this, but  it makes sense to me. She didn't follow the rules, therefore I am obligated to follow my boss's instructions, which are to issue a detention for that particular infraction. However, I do not dislike this student because of her failure to follow the rules. And if I am giving mints out to the whole study hall, why would I skip her? Besides, her "detention" is 10 minutes after school with me. Maybe I'll give her another mint. :-)

My Dog Ate 5 Socks

     Well, I am up early on a Sunday morning, trying to get progress reports done, essays graded, and caught up on my online class. I think maybe I should have gotten up at 3:00 in stead of 5:30. It's nice and quiet; everyone else is still cozy and sleeping. Even the dog. 

     I have not run for 4 nights and it is killing me. I pulled a muscle somewhere in my upper thigh, kind of into my hip. It's not healing very quickly and I've been icing it. I ran anyway the first night after I pulled it and I really shouldn't have, so I am trying to be good. But I am afraid when I do run I won't be able to even go a mile without stopping. I tried to run a little in the back field last night, just to test it out, and it was painful. I think once I got going, it would maybe not hurt, but I'm pretty sure I would be doing more damage. Interesting that as much as I ran when I was younger, I never pulled a muscle. :-(

     It was been an interesting week. But in the back of my mind right now is the fact that I am writing this directly on my blog and I will probably get interrupted soon, and it will disappear, so I am going to pause my writing, cut and paste it to NeoOffice, and then continue... 

     So I had been estimating that I was doing about a 12 minute mile. Yesterday I measured my route (with the kids on the car saying,”Where are you going Mom? This isn't the way home.”) I thought I had been doing 2.5 miles, but it is actually 2.8; so on my best night, I did a 10:42 mile. Of course, by the time I finally run again, it will probably be a 20 minute mile.

     So not much to report on the running side of my life this week. The dog however....

Well, to make a long story short, Jake wasn't eating much on Monday, threw up a sock on Tuesday, threw up 3 more on Tuesday night, pooped out one last one on Wednesday night, and seems to be doing fine now. That's a total of 5 socks. I don't know what else is in that belly of his, but he does seem to be back to his old self, so we are happy.

     The kids had a good week. Brodie got Terrific Kid on Friday and I finally got a good picture of it. My camera takes horrible pictures in that gym, but I was up front and close this time. I will see if I can post the picture to my blog. And Jill spent the night at a friend's house Friday night and made it through the night. No midnight phone call to come get her, which makes me happy and sad at the same time. Kids have a soccer game today at 1:00. Brodie is playing and Jill is the “assistant coach”. She loves telling little kids what to do.

     Steve is well. Oh wait, I will cut and paste my Facebook status to give you a flavor of life with Steve (Of course this is going to be dangerous, opening my Facebook.....I may not be back for a while) OK, here it is:

This is what I heard this morning: Steve-"Good bye Jake". Steve in a dumb doggie kind of voice-"Yup, bye Steve. Have a good day. You're my best friend." haha, I love my husband and I hope he never grows up!

My online class is going horribly and it's my own fault. It's an incredible class and I am really messing it up. But I am going to go write my reflection assignment for that to try to figure out, as I reflect, what I can do differently.

Oh, one last thing, if I lose 8 more pounds, I will have lost a whole Brodie. And I bought a pair of pants on Monday that were the next size down. 

Have a good Sunday everyone!

Feeling the Sunday Night Blues

It's Sunday night and I don't have much creative energy. Not much energy at all actually, and my right thigh hurts in a place I can't stretch out. It's like it's deeper in my muscle. I did shave 1 ½ minutes off my time tonight. I knew when I was running that it felt good and felt like I was going faster. Now I want to start adding on to the distance, but I like my route right now. Especially going through the cemetery. My husband laughed when he got in the car because the odometer was set to “trip” and I have an old envelope in the car with a bunch of notes and numbers on it.

My ipod was dead the other night so I went running without it. I dreaded it because when I first started running a few months ago, I didn't use my ipod and all I could hear was my feet pounding and my heavy breathing (and gasping). But this time I was surprised that my breathing was pretty regular, my feet were lighter, and it was actually really nice to have a run with some quiet time. I may do it more often.

Brodie is playing soccer and Jillian is helping the coach out (it's K-3, and she's in 4th grade). After practice tonight Brodie wanted to come home and play more. He said “I like soccer. It's fun!!” He didn't want to play when I had first mentioned it. The new cleats we got yesterday helped too. 

As usual, this week end went too, too fast. I didn't get to make the apple crisp I wanted to for Steve's parents. Oh well, at least this week looks a little less busy than the past few. No Bangor appointments this week, yay!

I hope everyone had a great weekend!

Running pace

The three things that make me lose my pace when running:
1. Looking up and thinking about how much further I have to go.
2. The wrong song on my ipod.
3. The apples in the road that I can't run by without kicking. And kicking and kicking until they roll into the ditch.

Multi-tasking

So I have a window open in NeoOffice to draft my blog; I have my blogger page open; I have my Moodle open, with several windows going there; and I have the Article “Hypertext in 36 Nodes”open.  And this is when I get overwhelmed and feel like signing out, closing out of everything. This has happened a few times since I started taking the “Digital Writing” online class. 

I think of “Digital Nation” that I watched last week, and I have to say that I get overwhelmed very quickly by multi-tasking with technology. I know that for many of my students, this multi-tasking is second nature. They text and type and facebook and do homework. I found it very interesting that college professors are seeing students writing differently, more paragraph by paragraph than whole essay. I can see why.

So my plan is to read “Hypertext in 36 Nodes” and blog about it in NeoOffice, and for the moment, ignore all those other windows open in the background. Wish me luck. Forgive the choppy nature of this post, I'm multi-tasking.

Detention

So I have detention duty this week. We have this system, a teacher detention is for minor infractions and the individual teacher handles it (15 minutes after school usually). An administrative detention is the big one and we are open for business on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2:45 to 3:30. Each teacher serves one week of detention duty, which means, 2 afternoons.
To get a handle on the "no cell phones during the academic day" rule, our new principal has established that any teacher seeing a cell phone between 8 and 2:30 is to take it, turn it in to the office, and that student gets a "BIG" detention. So I realized this afternoon that when I took "Susie's" cell phone in period 5 study hall today, I would be seeing her in Thursday detention.
I don't really like detention duty. Last year I wrote a poem during detention that was titled "Why I Hate Detention Duty". I will post it if I can find it.
On the other hand, I only have 5 students and they are being really good. The angry one put his head down, the young one is playing with his pen, the freshman is reading his free read book for my class (yay!) and the two upperclassmen are both doing geometry. And I am blogging.
I just have one question. If the BIG detention is called an Administrative Detention, and it is assigned by the Administration, why isn't the Administration covering detention duty? I'm just saying...
I'm curious what the detention situation is like in other schools??

Some thoughts

    Since I would like to blog about teaching, writing, my kids, running, and my dog, I thought I would write a little blurb on each. I am writing this in NeoOffice, which I will save, and then cut and paste. 

     School is great. I love my classes, even my rowdy period 2 class of freshmen. I am disappointed that 2-3 of the students got suspended this week, because I was just getting to know them. Like this one boy, who is tall, thin, brownish-blonde hair swept across his forehead, you know the style. He wears a belt that is black and has metal studs all the way around it, and the belt barely holds up his faded jeans. I estimate him to be around 15, but he could pass for 19 or 20.    

     I announced that we would be going to the library to investigate the books there, choosing at least 10 titles they may be interested in free reading. He announced back to me that, “Oh, I don't read.” in a tone that implied that maybe I should have already known this.

     I informed him that reading would be a requirement for class and let's just go look at some books anyway. Our wonderful media specialist knew we were coming and had spread some great books out on the tables. The kids got to work browsing and jotting down titles. At the end of our 30 minutes there, I heard him asking the student library worker behind the desk if he could “check out more than one book at a time.” He had two books in his hands. 

     I really hope he comes back to class soon.

     My daughter Jillian is 9 and she has developed (to my dismay) a love of Ke$ha. If you don't know who she is, you can google her, but you may be better off not knowing. So there is this song “Tik Tok” that has an okay beat. And Ke$ha sings about how she's getting ready to go out and she brushes her teeth with a bottle of Jack. After singing these lyrics around the house for several weeks, Jillian asked me last night, “Mom, what is Jack?” I said “It's alcohol”. Her eyes got wide and I saw that Ke$ha had just gone down a few rungs on the coolness ladder. Then Jill said “I thought only Lindsay Lohan did alcohol.” It's tough sometimes, with a precocious 9 year old, knowing what to allow and what not to. And when she was 8 and asked if she could have 3 wishes, her very first one was “I wish I was a teenager.”

     Brodie shared with me the other day that “My teacher has a mad face that looks just like yours.” I still hold firm that I do not have a “mad face”. 

     I didn't go running last night because I got home late, and really, I was cold and it was raining. But I will not get wimpy. It was really hard to not go, but I had been 5 nights in a row, and I'm going tonight. My dilemma is that even now, it ends up being dark by the time I get home from my run. How am I going to fit it in as the days get shorter? I may have to look in to a babysitter, since my husband doesn't get home until 5:00. 

     Oh, for any runners reading this, I have a few questions. 1. What should I get for clothing for fall/winter running? I have 1 pair of  Nike capris, 3 tee shirts, 1 thin jacket (with a cool ipod pocket), a very thin NorthFace shell, and that's about it. Any suggestions for brands or layering strategies? and 2. I looked on itunes for songs to run to and some of them have bpm (beats per minute). How do I measure my bpm running speed? And do other runners get songs that match their bpm, or do they just run to songs they like? I definitely change my pace based on what I am listening to, and I'd like my pace to be a little more even. 

I think that's all for now. I realize I didn't get to writing about my dog. He's been a good dog and a perfect fit for our family. Two nights in a row he has slept out of his crate at night and he is doing well with that. Yay Jake.

I am still struggling with what to make my blog "about". I don't want it to be a diary of daily activities. I like to write about teaching, writing, running, my kids, and my dog, so I probably will focus on that. I plan to watch Digital Nation this afternoon so I will post on that, looking forward to it. I thought I was following all my classmates' blogs, but my lists says I only have 2, so I am going to go back and check that out. And then onward to investigate RSS.
Hope everyone has a Happy Sunday!
Andrea

Running

So I guess I could blog about running. I used to run in high school. Not really like, on the track team kind of running, but more like, I'm outta here kind of running. And I could just go and go...
Well, I continued to run in young adulthood. When my ex-husband would come to pick up my son for his week end visit, I had two choices: I could implode or I could run. Don't get me wrong, I ran on other days too, and enjoyed it.
Well, life got busy, and....you now how it is. But I would often have dreams about running (actual dreams, where I was flying, feet barely touching the ground) and I would wake up disappointed that I was no longer a runner.
So this summer, my husband was going to buy me an outfit as a birthday gift. I never did pick one out, so several weeks later we were in Dick's Sport Shop and I decided I wanted new sneakers. We had a new puppy; I had a good reason for getting out and walking. The tough part was: did I want walking shoes that I may possibly start running in? Or running shoes that I could also walk in? So I got my running sneakers and still LOVE THEM.
I walked Jake a few nights, and then decided to see if he would run beside me. He did pretty well, but we were a clumsy looking pair. We would mostly walk, but then run a little. I would focus on the next telephone pole and make it to that....SO out of shape!!
One night I decided to go without him. I couldn't even run to the funeral home (fitting, huh?) that was about a quarter mile away, I had to stop. So I did walk/runs that eventually led up to runs. I got my sneakers on July 30th. So I would say I officially started running around August 4th or so. I went every night because I was so afraid if I stopped I wouldn't go again.
I am now doing 2 miles without stopping and I'm amazed how quickly my body got conditioned. I feel okay taking a night off now, because (knock on wood) I know I will go the next night. The thing I worry about is that life gets so busy, and the kids have so many appointments, and homework, and there's just so much "stuff" to do....and it's getting dark earlier and earlier now. When will I do my running??
Well, I have some questions for anyone who runs....like how to find music that matches your pace. Should the songs be in synch with your running? Or do you just run and listen, know what I mean?  I have found that when my feet fall in rhythm, I can get into a better groove. And on itunes, I saw songs for running and they had "beats per minute" for each song. How do I know what my beats per minute running pace is? Or even better, any suggestions for good running songs?
Well, that's all for now. I would like to write about my olfactory journeys while running, but I'll do that on another night.

Testing

Well, this is my first post to my blog and I am a bit intimidated by my classmates' blogs. I'm also a little confused about the whole "subscribe" thing but I guess I'll figure it out. Man, oh man, am I flying by the seat of my pants.
My husband is working on the upstairs closet, my youngest son is at a friend's house, my oldest son is on his way here for dinner (what to make??), my daughter is bored, and my dog is eating the screen door, or at least a little black strip of something from the door. So I am going to go walk the dog with my daughter. Then I will come back and see what else I can do to this blog-thing.