Oh, the insanity!

I'm breaking my tradition of posting once per month. You are probably all beside yourselves with joy. What prompted such an occasion can be summed up in two words: school lunch. Ah, the glory days of mystery meat covered in slop that jiggled in a disturbing way! I know all of you wish you could go back to those days.

Well, I have....sort of. I do eat school lunch everyday. Admittedly, I often grab a salad at the salad bar because of a) time and b) my picky eating habits. However, the origin of the pickiness isn't what you think. Here is this week's lunch menu (hopefully you can read it):


This is a typical lunch menu. My school is crazy.

Things Not to Say to Teenagers

There are definite reasons why I am not and never will be a politician. For one, I am an abominable liar. The second reason was driven home to me just a couple of days ago. Sometimes, especially when I'm nervous, I'll say things before I realize the full potential meaning. The words just come out, and the egg begins to bake on my suddenly-red face.

As many of you are aware, I am now about two weeks into my first teaching job. You could call my position a "filler" because I help fill in some of the scheduling gaps. I teach the sixth grade art classes, a ninth grade art class, and two tenth grade English classes. I teach in five different classrooms. So, with my newby status and weird schedule combined with my naturally-nervous temperament, it may be understandable that I have been a little flustered at one point or another.

Here is the set-up: I'm in the middle of one 10th grade English class. The students have been discussing various aspects of the book Lord of the Flies for the last two weeks. During the first part of the class's discussion, I mentioned that I had a conch shell that the other sophomore English teacher gave me. The first question that popped out of the students' mouths was, "Have you tried to blow on it?" After all, at the beginning of LOTF, Ralph blows the conch, calling the boys together and cementing his position as a leader.

Here was my thought process: "She had that conch for a while, and someone even had tried coloring on it with green marker. Ew, gross! I wouldn't put my lips to such a thing. Who knows where it's been?" I'm guessing some of you may get where this is leading.

"I wouldn't blow on anything whose full history I didn't know."

Oh, goodness. I could see the boys starting to sway back and forth in their chairs, overcome with the giggles. My brain started screaming, "Back peddle, back peddle!" There was no going back however, and I knew it would be best to just move on. So I tried.

Tried was the operative word. The classroom was muggy from the rain outside, and bodies had filled the room all day long. I was wearing a cardigan, but my face was turning red and I could feel the perspiration rising.

"Oh, goodness, it's hot." And I take off my sweater.

The laughter redoubles.

I told my teaching roommate my story after school, for which I received a resounding, "That's fantastic!" Yes, yes, but let's just say I didn't repeat the mistake when my other class asked if I had blown on the conch.

5.03

Forgive me my weakness. I usually try to avoid gushing on my blog as much as possible, but I just can't resist. My husband is wonderful. We celebrated our one year anniversary this last week, and I couldn't help but marvel at what a blessing this year of marriage has been. While I am seriously tempted to list out all the things I love about him, I'll just stick to one. He supports me in achieving my personal goals, in this case running.

Inside me there is a kinda pudgy asthmatic which is amazed at the fact that this morning I ran 5.03 miles (as per the calculations of mapmyrun.com). And I felt good at the end. This stands in stark contrast to the junior high "fun runs," which for me were not fun nor involved that much running. I don't remember if I ever made it through the 1.5 miles without stopping to walk, and, despite coming in towards the last, I sometimes had to whip out my inhaler. Yeah, I was cool.

Now things are a lot different, and my dear husband helps keep me motivated. I have a photograph of our running shoes framed in our front room because a good part of our courtship was spent running and walking together. Although in the last few weeks he hasn't been able to go with me, he always shows a genuine interest. He lets me know he is proud of my progress, and I have accomplished something: last month I hit the 300-mile mark on my running shoes. And I know he'll be my cheerleader for the next 300 and beyond. Thanks, sweetie!

I'm all grown up...

It's no secret that I abhor clothes shopping, but, as a young beginning teacher, I would like a little more to distinguish myself from the students other than just a few extra curves. For goodness sake, my 6th grade students will be as tall as I am! So this weekend I sifted through my wardrobe to see what still fit and what I couldn't stand to wear again. All my student teaching clothes got the boot because they were about three sizes too big. Unfortunately, this made shopping a most necessary evil.

After dropping off three swollen garbage bags of clothes to Goodwill, Ben and I set out to take advantage of the holiday weekend sales. The first stop was Kohl's. Ben's parents sent my a gift card for my birthday months ago, and I was determined to use it. Imagine my delight to find that the store actually had a petite's section! The variety of colors and fabrics encouraged me, too. Maybe, just maybe, I could actually find something.

Yes, I did find something: very portable single-person tents. I wouldn't have to run away to the circus, I could just carry it with me! Apparently the definition of petite small at Kohl's is "approximately-three-times-the-fabric-needed-to-make-Elizabeth-a-shirt." After two large armfuls of shirts, all I had thought was "This would be really cute if I were five months pregnant." Not good.

I stood dejected beside the now-brimming reject rack outside the dressing room. The frustration mounted as Ben patiently inquired about what I wanted to do next. Sure, what I did next was a little rash, but it makes a certain amount of sense. If I was too small to fit even the smallest clothes in the small adults section, then I'd just have to try the little girls' section.

It turns out I'm a large or an extra-large. Yes, after striking completely out with the adult clothes, some of the first clothing I bought to begin my professional life was purchased from the kids' section. *sigh*

Home is where your library is....

I'm officially home and back in gear. Or should I say, I'm back in gear as much as I can be given it is summer. Either way, I am home. It's a relatively new experience to say that I'm home considering one practically needs scuba gear to go outside with this humidity. Yup, this definitely is Missouri. I still tell people that we're "going home" to Utah, but it doesn't mean quite the same thing any more.

The quality of this visit to family was different. William was not there for the first few days, and a good number of my friends are across the country and the world. And my room is quickly becoming not my room. When we arrived, paperwork and mail was piled on the night stand and bookcase. Artwork from high school and college was scattered on the floor under an empty bed frame and shoved behind every piece of furniture in the room. The bookshelves were full. Everything (minus the purloined mattress) was as I had left it before Ben and I got married (almost a year ago!).

We decided to organize the chaos since we were packing some of it up to take with us. A lot of stuff was crammed: more love letters than I'd like to admit to, brochures, and notebooks with angsty poetry written late at night. If the laughter was any indication, Ben enjoyed going through some of this more than I did. A lot of incriminating evidence was trashed, although the poetry will provide comic relief for years to come. Now the drawers lie empty, and the artwork sits neatly packed into portfolios in one corner. Three-hundred pounds of books were shipped across the country. The bookshelves there are empty.

As the airplane descended into Saint Louis, the realization hit me. I am no longer a student. No longer am I just going to school here, but I live here. Many people assumed that when I graduated Ben and I would flee as soon as possible back to Utah. One lady in the ward of Ben's family told me that we were "breaking the rules" by staying in Missouri. If so, cheating feels good; we've been very blessed. And our bookshelves here are full.

"Oh, well, in that case it's fabulous!"

I found this clip through the blog of a gallery owner in New York. I thought it made a great follow-up to my last post, where I touched briefly on the question of what makes something art. I'm totally involved in the artworld, and even like many artworks that are made of mundane or ridiculous materials. In fact, the highlight of my trip to L.A. at the end of February was going to Ace Gallery and seeing Lauren Bon's work. The show included pieces with live bees and jars of honey, and even a fountain dripping honey on a preserved lamb carcass. Yes, a lamb carcass. But the show was incredibly powerful. On the other hand, I do believe that there is a lot of nonsense that gets covered by a veil of fancy words so viewers can't see how ridiculous they really are. "This is the materialization of the psychotic's dream deciphered by...." *snicker*

Singing Thaddeus Strode

I'm almost done with my MFA, and what has my almost 20 years of education made me qualified for? Well, other than teaching art, I'm not quite sure. Perhaps not much. While I'm open to other options, I have tried to start preparing for teaching again, so I signed up for an art ed. workshop at the university's museum. Little did I know I'd be singing Thaddeus Strode.

The workshop's central idea (of which they scraped the surface) was how to approach teaching contemporary art. I'll be the first to admit that, compared to the traditional great masters, some of contemporary art is...extreme. Canned human excrement, an entire shark carcass floating in formaldehyde, and gnawing on a 600 lb. cube of lard are all art according to today's art world. All have been displayed in museums. Whether these are "good" is debatable, but they nevertheless are "art." A lot of people understandably have a hard time with contemporary art, and there are many reasons why teaching it can be a challenge.

The workshop didn't answer many questions, but it did give the participants some things to think about. I liked some activities, while others I have had to think about for a while. One of these was the aforementioned singing. A museum educator from the L.A. Museum of Contemporary Art had us in the gallery making up noises to match different lines in the drippy, graffiti-like paintings of L.A.-based artist Thaddeus Strode. We were her bizarre symphony. "WEEEE--woooo--bzzzzzz...."

Now, before I go any farther, I'll state my opinion baldly. I don't like Thaddeus's work. The show, Absolutes and Nothings, does absolutely nothing for me. It didn't the first time I saw it, and it didn't when I saw the work in the artist's studio (although it makes more sense amongst the mess). Singing the work didn't necessarily change my mind.

Before any art ed. buddies get their undies in a knot, I'm not going to say that making up a sound to match the painting enlightened me about the painting. It didn't. I don't think this activity helps you learn anything if you stop there. What it has the potential to do is help you see the parts that make up the whole, and more importantly makes the work more approachable. How can a work be intimidating if you've just proclaimed it makes farting noises?

Anyway, to end this rambling post, I'll give you guys a laugh. Here's a picture of the workshop participants using their bodies to make a shape from a painting. I'm smack in the middle, looking like I need to use the bathroom, dancing Thaddeus Strode.