My House When I Sit to Grade on Sunday

A Sunday Sampler:

I have told my children that I NEED to get grading done.  I haven't brought a lot of grading home in the past several weeks because what is the point?  I can't get it done with my husband out of town most of the time now.  But quarter grades are this week, and parents and students want to know where they stand.

Keep in mind I was required to respond to all of the below.  Keep in mind this is highly fragmented because I should be grading right now and I don't have time to write down all my response. This all began around 12.  There was more before that...

Kid: "Mom, I did it!  I did it!  I got the gold!"

Kid: [Long long explanation of the way other kid got the gold out of the leprechaun trap]

Kid: "Mom.  Look at how much money I have.  Look!  Do you wish you had all this cash?  How did I get all these 20's?  Did I cash them out?  I wonder what I should do with all these ones?...."

Kid: "Hey mom?  Could you cash anything out for these ones?"

Kid: "Mom.  Do you like to have higher bills in your wallet at once?  Isn't it easier than having all those ones?"

Kid: "Mom, do you have like a normal, plain box for my leprechaun trap?"

Kid: "Hey, mom, a shoebox would work, right?  Roxy's kennel might work, but...  Ooh! a garbage can!

Kid: "I'm going outside with the hose..."

[Me, yelling: "You don't have ay clothes on!  What are you thinking! Put on some clothes!"]

Kid: "I need underwear."

Kid: "Is it lunchtime yet?"

Kid: "Mom, can I go outside on my bike?"

Kid: "I'm bored.  Ooh! Mom! Mom! Mom! Can I go on that computer uncle Bill gave me and see if I can get it on the internet? So what do I do? Plug it into the router?  Let's see, where's a USB..."

Kid: "So I plug this into into the net here?"

Kid: [dressed and wearing my sunglasses] "Mom, is there a certain kind of soap to wash trash cans?"

Kid: "Mom, can I buy a Minecraft account?"

Kid: "I'm going outside to do something."

Kid: "But why not?"

Kid: "I'm bored!"

Kid: "Can I walk the dog around at least?"

Kid: "Where's her leash?"

...

allofasudden a kid is standing in a plastic tub full of water with the hose on in 63 degree weather and a tank top and another kid has the drill plugged in with the wire crossing the path of the wet hose and he's got another plastic tub upturned to make a planting container but it's too shallow of a tub but the tub he wants is full of water with a little girl and a dachshund in it and I ask where his original tub went from when he was shoveling clay-heavy soil into it at the back of the yard a moment ago, but he's cleaned it out and filled it with christmas decorations so that he could use the other tub which is now filled with water and a little girl and a dog.  Aftermuchyelling we sort all that out and then the holes are drilled and  kids are off to the alleyway to gather gravel.  The neighbor tells them to watch out for transients gathering scrap metal and they bring their rock-lined tubs over for my inspection.  I remind them about the extra sand outside our wall.  That's wehre they are now, but the dog's collar is off and the flimsy temporary fence is taken down and an x-wing fighter, two little boy ties, nine socks, a blanket and assorted debris and a still-half-packed backpack from Camp Cooper litter the living room and can I get up a sec to check out the sand they shoveled?  A pile of laundry goes in and the dry stuff out of the drier first and onto my bed which has no sheets because I had to wash them because the dog peed on them really massively for no particular reason earlier in the week and the bed is also piled with about two weeks of clean laundry which we keep picking over to find our outfits for the day.  I think the dog is lonely since we had to put Markey to sleep. I call to refill prescriptions, the insurance is terminated and the pharmacist wants me to set up an online account for my son because there are no customer service phone hours on the weekend and he's out of his pills that help him focus at school all week.  The dachshund just jumped into the bin filled with water, ran through the dirt, ran inside, jumped on the couch, shook herself and slunk into her kennel when I started yelling.  Meanwhile I've been trying to clear off the table so I can sit upright instead of in an easy chair and spread out my grading so the kids don't htink I'm just messing around on Facebook.  I'm hoping it sends a message, but I've been trying to grade for 3 1/2 hours and have finished absolutely nothing, though I've started several things.  The recycling pile is out of control and needs to be taken out to the bin.  I'm about to give up and do dishes, mop the floor and collapse and have a good cry.

5:15 p.m.  So much for grading this afternoon, I guess.

8:20 p.m.  Note:  The piles on the right are "to be graded." My "finished" pile is that tiny pile above my computer.  Also about 40 more essays in Googledocs.  Ay, ay, ay.

 Of course, blogging is more fun, and I'd lose my mind completely without this outlet.

Halloweening In Progress

Serious grading-time crisis.  No time to read papers.  I started five online communities in the past three weeks, though, and students have posted writing about neighborhoods, podcasts about themselves, book reviews. A group of students has voluntarily come together to write and talk about writing once a week for an advisory period.  Today we took a cue from Maurice Sendak and the illustrations where Max's room transforms into the forest.  We wrote about a familiar setting, and then transformed it. That was fun.  And I'm encouraged, because they want to sit all in one circle and have in-depth critical workshopping of their work. Yea! I'm excited.

Meanwhile... very little gets graded.

Because the other priority is making Halloween costumes. G's Steamboat Willie costume is coming along. He's going to be Steamboat Willie in black and white. How cool is that? We made him a plaster mask, and just have to paint it. The rest of the costume is ready to go. Except the shoes-- Goodwill Crocs covered in white felt, somehow. I will blog about that costume in detail when complete. I am so excited.

This is actually my daughter showing off the unfinished mask
 (with her bridal Minnie ears from the summer trip to Disneyland)

O is going as a vampire princess. Really, all princesses are vampires, because they suck the life's blood out of any other form of imaginative play a little girl might have. For example, look at the mouse ears she picked out. Princesses are all-consuming. So a princess vampire is fitting. I talked her into a sort of Victorian bustle, and she has a short train on the dress we got from Goodwill.  It'll almost be a sort of a steampunk vampire princess, if I can make the short little cape work over the bustle. I'm not much of a seamstress, so we'll see. I do better in plaster-maskage as a medium. But her veil with a red and black rose and a homemade papier mache/glitter tiara should be cool.

Me?  Athena.  In honor of kicking off Homer's Odyssey with my froshies.  Sneak peek... (I still need to fashion a helmet out of something somehow.  Cereal box and duct tape? Bubble wrap and papier mache?  We'll see.).  I also need to make a spear and shield.  I ordered an owl. 

I have to figure out how to attach the "cape/drape" to my shoulders, and shorten the fabric. 
Then on to making a helmet, and figuring out my hair.  Not bad, though!  Yea!

Blarghety Blog #2

Blarghety.

I'm tired, spaced-out and avoiding grading.  What's new.  I wonder what it's like to relax without thinking about what I'm supposed to be doing.  My strong Puritan roots coming out in the DNA I guess.  Actually, I don't know if there are any Puritans in my family history, but I know I have ancestors that go back to the Revolutionary War, so it's possible. I wouldn't be surprised, what with something hanging over my head in my head all the time.  I think of it as my heritage, as much as the land stolen from the Apaches that we own in Southern AZ.

I admire Quakerism.  I wonder... do Quakers have this whole youshouldbedoingsomethingusefulbecauseidlehandsarethedevil'sworkshop thing?

It's almost bedtime.  I sent my children to get ready.  They are currently content to be smacking each other with damp towels and rolling around knocking the clean laundry off my bed, but five minutes after bedtime they'll be howling to be read to.  Then they'll lie in their beds and read to themselves.  Older one, son, "Nononononoonono!  I need to finish... just finish this... argh!" when I tell him to turn out the light at 9:30 or 10:00.  Younger one, daughter, every two minutes: "Mom?  What does f-r-i-e-n-d spell?....   Mom?  What does s-u-r-p-r-i-s-e spell?"  In order for me to get enough sleep and really have enough time to do everything in the morning, I should be asleep by 9.  When do I get grown-up time?  WTH?  Go the frick to sleep!!  Reading is grand and all, but come on.

And actually, I have an impossible amount of grading to do tonight.

In reality, I'm bragging because my kids are readers.

Also in reality, I'm going bonkers spelling words every three minutes at the end of a long day.

Can't win.  They're awesome, and pushy and spoiled.  And they just can't help it. 

The Daffodils in the Pickle Jar

I'm grading, reading student course reflections on writing, and the scent of flowers wanders by.  I can't remember where it came from, that half-scent of sweet and half-vegetable succulent green air. 

I look up and remember the handful of closed daffodil stems I picked up at the grocery store when I needed to pull cash and had to buy something and didn't want any chewing gum, candy or magazines.  Stacks of boxes of daffodil stems stood by the doorway. 

And now, every single stem of them is open, full and yellow, bursting pert yellow stars with slender green tongues inside; the water in the pickle jar with the half-torn label refracts and magnifies the firm stalks, the papery shells that held the folded flowers pushed back at their necks like futuristic-shaped starched Elizabethan collars. 

In a few days that faint plumpness in the petals will fade, and the whole flower become frozen withered tissue.  The water will turn fetid.  But for now, what a surprising respite from the work of the day.