Guided Fantasy

I like teaching: it's creative, it feels important, and I'm never, ever bored. I don't talk about teaching university writing much here, but I love my job. Here's a quick activity we did the other week in our class if you want to try it...I claim it shows how sometimes writing can reveal things we didn't realize consciously, although I really do it just because it's fun. And it worked for me when I did it in a class. Let me know if it works for you if you try it!

So. You start out by pretending you're walking on a path. You walk and walk, and soon enough you see that your path goes into the forest. What is the first image for the forest that comes to mind? How do you feel about the forest? (This is the first question I ask my students, and I have them write a brief description of their answer).

You go into the forest (no choice on that part!) and walk for a while. Then you come to a clearing. There's a lake in the clearing. What does the lake look like? How do you feel about it? What do you do there? (Question 2!)

After your lake escapade, you go back on the path. You see something shiny on the side. What is your shiny object? What do you do with it? (Question 3)

You continue on the path until you see a house up ahead. What does your house look like? What do you do there? How does it feel to you? (Question 4)

You go back into the woods, and you meet a bear. What is the bear like? How do you respond to it? (Last question!)

If you survive, go back past the house, shiny object (if it's still there), lake, and out of the woods in your mind. Hooray! Done!

Leave your answers in the comments if you dare! (Question 2 is potentially the most embarrassing, so you can skip that one--but it's not THAT bad:). I'll go over the answers in the next couple days.

It'll be fun!

Mmm...I love forests. I could go for a walk like this right now.

I'm alive!

Quick note. I'm alive. The ear infection turned into two ear infections, strep throat, and double pink eye. It passed from three-year-old to six-year-old to one-year-old to me. I graded hundreds of essays. I revised and made my book so shiny that it made me cry at the sad parts, and survived the everyone-throws-up-but-me party the week after everyone recovered from strep.

I will start writing here again, promise! For now I leave you with this video, because accordian:

And this picture, because cute!

Yes, the small Sith Lords are mine. It was adorable on the Dark Side that day.

Grading zombie

My three-year-old has an ear infection.

This may not seem like much, but for him it is a world-shatteringly big deal. He needs medicine at night, and snuggles all day, and we watch lots and lots of Cars (and Cars 2).

I also teach every day for the next few weeks. If you see a full-time teacher, give them something nice--cash, maybe, or a chocolate that can give them a bubble bath and a massage, because they work so hard.

Worst thing, though, is the grading.

The 6-8-page argument essays nearly killed me. I'm pretty sure that the 27 analyses on Thoreau's "Walking" that I picked up today and have to finish in a single weekend will finish the job. Hopefully I'll come back.

Because if I do reanimate at the end of next week, the madness will be over! Well, probably. Once three-year-old's immune system finally wins the siege. And I catch up on sleep. Until then...

THIS is pretty accurate. At least I still know the letter B, right?

Wedding!

Today was a super-busy teach-lunchforkids-school-write-shopwithkids-wedding kind of day. But in the best possible way.

Here's all the boys on my husband's side of the family. (My husband's the one with the most facial hair right now--but they can all grow some impressive beards when they want to!)

Here's the girls, plus my little shadow (I'm on the far left, and that's my three-year-old, who was being the cutest I-can't-let-go-of-you friend of all time)

Good food, good friends, good family. Hopefully it's worth getting our six-year-old to bed a couple hours late on a school night...

Joke

I shouldn't post jokes I made up with my six-year-old. But I'm tired, so...

Knock, knock

(Who's there?)

Doctor

(Doctor who?)

Hee hee!

From here. I like this show, even though the episodes vary wildly in quality. Science is Magic, dinosaurs can rampage across space ships, and  Charles Dickens meets alien ghost-zombies (that's when I got hooked). Hee hee indeed.

Spring Break!

My husband's not working. I'm not working. The kids ARE in school.

It's the best holiday I've had for a while.

Sure, I still have to grade three essays a day (blah), and there's some lesson planning to do, and I need to clean my whole kid-riddled house before my younger sister's baby shower next Wednesday, but--and this is important--when my kids start chucking cars down the stairs or smearing peanut butter on the walls, it's not always me they yell for.

And if they do yell for me, sometimes it's my husband who goes and cleans up the toothpaste, or the marker, or the STOP PLAYING WITH THAT DEAD SPIDER! corpse.

I should be writing. I'm excited about my fourth book, and today I'm making a final choice between first person and third person point of view, but I just thought I would share what it feels like to not be the only one at home with a one-year-old, three-year-old, and six-year-old.

It feels something like this:

A Joke

My six-year-old came home from Tae Kwon Do and said "Mommy, I have something to tell you."

I looked at him.

"Knock knock," he said.

"Who's there?"

"Irish."

"Irish who?"

"Irish you a happy St. Patrick's Day!" he finished triumphantly.

Happy St. Patrick's Day indeed.

He's wearing a green belt here, so he can't be pinched. In case you wanted to know.