Thing-a-day.com

My goal for the thing-a-day project was to create something every day of the month, or to spend 20-30 minutes a day working on something creative. Some of my projects were familiar things (cooking, writing, taking pictures to illustrate my blog); some were not daily events (making cards, organizing my new cabinet, making other things with paper, and my bulletin board at school). Some days, it was hard to get in a creative place and some days it was easy. I liked the challenge of getting myself to think in a new way, though sometimes the daily requirement created anxiety…..not exactly conducive to creativity. But, as I predicted when I started out on the 1st of the month, being mindful of creativity is a very good thing for me and even without the thing-a-day element, well worth holding on to.

JT and I sat down for supper tonight with a sheet of paper and we made a list of the things we’d like to do for spring break.  Last year, we spent a week at Disneyworld and that’s hard to top.  But the beauty of being 8 is well, that you are 8 and so he was full of ideas.  So far, we’ve agreed to go see a movie at the theater in town (the one that serves pizza for the kids and beer for the mamas); invite a friend for a sleepover; spend a day playing games on the Wii (read:  Mama takes a drubbing); rent a Davy Crocket movie; and a visit to the Natural History museum in New York.

It’s nice to have a plan…….now I just hope we can score some warm weather.

I’ve been thinking about some ways to creatively wrap packages, using some of the charming tags I scored from etsy. I like the slightly old-fashioned and simple look of brown paper very much. Yesterday, when I had some free time to think, I settled on what I wanted to do. After school today JT and I stopped by Michaels’s to see if they had what I was looking for. Bingo.

I am a sucker for stripes and polka dots. Put them on $1 ribbon and I’m in. So tonight I made a card and wrapped up a package with my new supplies. The picture doesn’t really do the package justice; I think it turned out very nicely.  And everyone loves to receive a package in the mail, so I’ve got that in my corner.

I had a crummy day today, but one of my students had a worse day because she slipped on the ice in the morning and fractured her ankle. Just writing it makes me wince.

Lately, my student K has been showing me some terrific color collage art work she’s been making. So it seemed fitting that I share something I made with her. I laid out my supplies and got to work.

To combat the icy cold, I picked out some spring paper for her get-well-soon card. I went with a yellow gingham background and a second layer with a green floral print.

Then some white daisies added good cheer.  Clearly, I wasn’t looking to be subtle.

It’s out in the mailbox waiting for the postman to deliver it to her.

There is a back story to today’s project. I found this brown bunny appliqué on etsy, and I had to have it. When I asked JT if he wanted me to make him a t-shirt with the bunny on it, his response was immediate. “I will not wear it to school,” he said.

As I know no boundaries of good taste, I made myself a bunny t. And I plan to wear my bunny t-shirt to school. So there.

Here in central New Jersey, we got our first decent snow of the season and JT was delighted. He’d been waiting all winter for a day such as this and he was determined to enjoy it in full. Snow boy was out the door at 9:30 for his first tour of snow play. Bad guys were slain, snowballs were made (and eaten!), and then he sledded down the hill in the front yard.

It is a universal law of winter that there are never enough dry mittens, no matter how many your Mama has washed and has at the ready.

By 12:15, with all of his mittens sopping wet, the boy was ready for a break. He brought his pink cheeks into the house and shed his snowy clothes.

While the snow gear dried and warmed in the dryer, lunch was devoured and the boy warmed up under the fuzzy blanket.

Round II found Mama joining the fun. While I shoveled the walk and the driveway, JT made snowballs for throwing.  Uh oh.

The snow ball arsenal was unloaded on Mama, who reports that JT’s aim is getting better.

Neighbor Tom got to work with his snow blower, helping all of us to clear the snow from our driveways.

We made a snow monster with his very own snowy mountain.

JT ate more snow.

And there was more sledding.

After hot baths and supper, cookies were made (peanut butter and snickerdoodles).

Finally, after it got dark, we had a walk in the snowy night. We call it creeping and for me it’s the best part of a snowy day. I always hope that it will be a quiet stroll but JT entertained himself by throwing his body in every snowdrift along the way.

Not surprisingly after all this fun, the boy was sleepy.
It was a very good day.

Without a doubt, the best part of teaching American Government to high school students is the three weeks we spend studying the evolution of civil rights and civil liberties.  Walking our way through the incorporation of the Bill of Rights to the states is, I hope, enlightening for the students.  I know that it is amusing for me.

I always find that the first amendment is chock full-o-fun for kids and grown-ups alike.  I explain that students may wear black arm bands at school to protest the Vietnam War (Tinker v. Des Moines) but may not carry posters that read “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” (Morse v. Frederick) as it contravenes the school ’s anti-drug policy in Juneau, Alaska.  I threaten to line them all up for a mandatory urine drug test a la the ruling in Hazelton v. Kuhlmeier.

Then we move on to freedom of religion and I get to tell the story of the woman who founded a religion whereby she was a goddess and worshippers —- all men —- were required to pay her to have sex with her.  She called it a spiritual odyssey.  The state called it prostitution.  High school eyes widen and then they laugh.

The prep school kids always get a great big laugh out of the idea of student-led prayer before football games in Sante Fe, Texas.  The Supreme Court was not nearly as amused when they ruled against that practice in Santa Fe v. Doe.

Soon after that, I spend nearly an entire day defining obscenity as did the Supreme Court in their ruling in Miller v. California.  Yesterday, one of my students announced that conversations with his little brother ALWAYS lack spiritual, literary, scientific and political value.  He wondered if that made them obscene.

And today, I patiently explained to dogmatic E that cross-burning didn’t qualify as symbolic speech, while the rest of the class just begged me to suspend E’s 1st amendment rights.  They’d read the precedent, you see, and were eager to give it a try.

Today’s creativity was a little chalkboard fun that JT and I designed in my classroom after school. It’s a lot of color swirled together to make a wavy design that runs all the way across the chalkboard in the back of my class.

JT celebrated the creation with a lollipop while I made his picture. Day 20 is complete.

I re-arranged my bulletin board today. It’s nice to have some new things to look at. I’ve gotten to the point that I’m now looking at things and thinking, “hmmmmm, this will look good on my bulletin board,” and then setting aside the item. I’ve enjoyed it so much that I think that I will continue to change-up the display even when my one month creativity experiment is over.

Blogger is feeling uncooperative tonight……picture to follow soon.

For months now, I have been talking about getting a cabinet for my dining room to store homework supplies, plug in my laptop each night, and otherwise hide crap in a neat and easy fashion.  Today, my mom and I went out looking and finally settled on the right cabinet.  I bought some new knobs to fix it up and tomorrow I will clean it up and get it organized.  I feel tidier just thinking about it.

I also went to www.flor.com website and ordered up 6 samples for the rug I want to get for my living room.  I’ve been intrigued by flor for a while now.  The carpets are module and so they can be moved and re-arranged (and cleaned!) with ease.  Plus, they’re all environmentally friendly, which is also pretty darn happy.  My samples will wing their way to me in 72 hours and within the week I will have decided on a carpet for the living room.

On top of it all, I made a first-class supper for the family:  garlic chicken cutlets, roasted brussells sprouts, garlic-smashed potatoes, and homemade biscuits.

Martha Stewart’s got nothin’ on me.

One reason that I chose to participate in the Thing-a-Day urge to creativity is that it happened in February. February is the month in which my son was born, and though it’s been 8 years, I still remember the feeling of pregnant waiting in the first half of the month, the joy of his birth on the 17th, and then the trial-by-fire back half of the month, when I was a boy’s mama for the very first time.

Perhaps as a result of this experience, I regard February as a transformative month: everything in my life changed in February 2000. February has been good to me and it seemed like a good idea for me to be good to February. Today’s creativity is a few thoughts about my life as a parent.

When you’re a kid, birthdays are great fun and so exciting. You don’t really think about what the birthday means to your mama. JT’s birthday means so much to me. It’s a chance to celebrate my son and also to think about my first few weeks as a mama, when I was alternately joyous and anxious. I worried about EVERYTHING. These days I’m (mostly) more relaxed about things, more confident in my ability to know what my son needs, more able to trust my parenting instincts.

I think of February 17th as the best day in my life. I know that I am the person that I am today because of my son. He makes me laugh and he reminds me of what truly matters in life. I know that he keeps me strong, even when I don’t want to be strong anymore. He reminds me of what matters most in this world.

Happy Birthday, sweet boy.  Your mama loves you very much.

Tomorrow my boy turns 8. Tonight, there are 8 boys sleeping in my house. We’re hosting a sleepover and though I’m pretty sure there are only 8 boys in the house it sounds like a thundering herd of something fast and irrational.
Which, come to think of it, is exactly what they are.

The birthday party preparations continue at Sassafras House. We are in the full-court press to prepare for the all-boy sleepover. The ice cream cake was secured this afternoon and tonight we went out to get the party favors. When we came home, JT put the treat bags together. Getting him to fall asleep was a bit of a challenge, calling up all of my powers of creativity.

Today’s creativity was finishing up the projects I had gotten started earlier this week.

Grandma and Grandpa flew into town today. I made soup for supper (I had completed some of the prep work last night) and there were tiny Valentine’s treats for everyone at the table.

Then, we got out the sprinkles and the chocolate icing. The cupcakes are now ready for JT to share with his classmates.

This is my entry for Day 13.  I tried to post last night, but the site was down (admittedly, it was 11 pm when I sat down to post…….I totally feel like one of my students with excuses for my late homework).  But here it is:

My parents arrive in town tomorrow. They are here to help celebrate JT’s 8th birthday and we’re both pretty excited. The plan for this evening was to finish up some last minute preparations for the visit —- a bit of cleaning, a load or two of laundry, washing the boy, making a few more cards, starting the prep for tomorrow night’s supper.

But first we went to watch the school’s last home wrestling match (that’s a sport I still don’t understand…..I spend the whole match experiencing one of two very distinct emotions…..Emotion 1: “oh, please don’t hurt one another” or Emotion 2: “crack some bones.”)

Then we came home for our chores, all of which were temporarily put on hold with the discovery of water in the basement. We had snow last night followed by rain all day today. Frozen ground is just not so good at sucking in the water and so……..my basement took on its share of the responsibility.

Happily, the water wasn’t more than 60 gallons and the fill rate is pretty slow, so my 12 gallon shop vac could handle things.

And since one can’t stand around all night waiting to fill the shop vac, I got to work on my list of chores. I made some more cards.
And did a little prep for tomorrow evening’s supper (tortilla soup……a taste of California in New Jersey…don’t want the parents to get homesick)
And there’s always some laundry to fold.

All is ready, more or less. And I’m tired, so I’ll tuck myself into bed with my book and my Tylenol PM.

Today’s thing is a little post about my son and his linguistic habits.  Though we live in New Jersey, neither of us is native to the state (or the region) and so we sometimes speak in a manner slightly different than the locals.  These differences always amuse me and today brought this gem of a moment.

My years living in the South imprinted one thing on my brain: all soda is called Coke. From there, one distinguishes as to what kind of Coke, as in the following conversation:
Question: “Would you like a Coke?”
Answer: “Yes.”
Question: “What kind of Coke?”
Answer: “Dr. Pepper.”

So it is that all soda in my home is called a Coke. And, in fact, mine is a Coca-Cola household so, when you ask for Coke, you get…….Coke. All of this was made perfectly clear as JT and I drove to school this morning.

Just past the first Dunkin Donuts on our 8 mile drive (there are 3 directly in the way to school…..you gotta love Jersey), a Pepsi truck pulled out in front of us. It was giant with PEPSI written all over it. And what did my son say?

“Mama, do you think that Pepsi truck will just drive on over to our house and drop off some Coke for us?”

“Maybe so,” I responded with a smile.

I made pancakes for supper tonight. That might not seem creative to most people, but it’s creative for me.
Ever since I became a single mama, my sister has been steadily advising me to lower my standards. In the (obviously imaginary) ideal world of Sassafras Mama, a tasty homemade supper is put on the table each and every night. As the Sassafras Sister and any number of reasonable people have often suggested, it’s perfectly acceptable to fall short of this bar.

There was a faculty meeting after school today and it ran a bit late. Then JT’s homework sucked up more time than usual (geometry is kicking my bootie). It is true that I could have skipped my workout and made the planned supper (homemade pizza) but that would cause the earth to spin off it’s axis and so…….pancakes it was.

They were tasty and the boy was most delighted by this turn of events.

So I guess that everybody won.

Today was a busy day, creatively speaking. Each year I make JT a card for his birthday and I got that completed this afternoon. I always enjoy making that card and writing him a note. I hope that the cards and the notes will be a nice memory for him when he grows up.

This evening, the birthday boy and I got started on the birthday cupcakes (chocolate, of course) that he will bring to school share with his classmates on Friday. We made a lot…….because if you bring extras to the other teachers in the lower school, you get treats from them. So JT has cupcakes for all of the second grade and then some. They went into the freezer tonight and on Thursday, when Grandma comes to town, we’ll frost and decorate them.

JT and I finished the geometric shapes for his school project. I had been annoyed with his other mother for not getting this done when the assignment came her way…..though not surprised that she dropped the parallelogram (as it were). But he and I had great fun finishing up the project, which he regarded as something magical. As the flat cut-out paper shapes were folded and taped and made three dimensional, he was delighted.

When we finished, I took this picture of the boy and his shapes. And when I saw that smile, I was happy that this assignment was mine.

Between the upcoming Valentine’s Day and JT’s 8th birthday, there is a great demand for homemade cards around my house. So I got started on some this afternoon and I expect to be in heavy production mode all weekend long.