Vote For Pedro

My blogspiration, SarahK, mentioned what she had heard in the sermon this morning at church:

this morning the preacher was talking about how Christians are supposed to be different. but then he said that doesn't mean we're supposed to be weird, kooky, or strange.

uh, oops.

I'm going to give this dude the benefit of the doubt and say that he was comforting the poor souls who are hopelessly UNkooky by telling them that it isn't a REQUIREMENT for Christianity. Heck, John the Baptist was downright freaky. I think Jesus takes us the way he made us. He made me a little odd, and it took me thirty years before I realized that it was okay to be who he created me to be. If he had made you quiet and cautious and timid, then it would be a shame for someone to tell you that you had to be somebody different in order to make God happy.

I went to a little start-up church this morning, and while I'm sure that everyone there is totally and completely nice and sincere and even committed, I wanted to conk my head against the wall. My husband and I made the fifth couple there... but next week they're moving their services into the local movie theater. Huh? I know the reasoning -- it's to attract attention and hopefully get people to come. But I've been doing that for nine years now, and I'm tired because putting the cart before the horse just don't work. Why not have the small Bible study until it grows big enough that you have to move out of the community center? I don't understand where this notion comes from, because I've never seen it work yet.

Nope. Can't do that anymore.

Anywhere but here...

Des Moines is a dismal place beginning about this time of year and running all the way through, say, JUNE. I grew up in Texas and Oklahoma (YAY SOONERS); my sister lives in Arlington, TX and my parents live in the northeast Texas town of Paris. My birthday (November 14) was always a beautiful time of year, with all the sweetgum trees brilliantly aflame... but here, by the time it's my birthday, it's usually already snowed and all the leaves are gone. Think Simon & Garfunkel's "Hazy Shade of WInter" here.

Every summer I travel to a small village on the southern coast of Haiti to teach music for a week at a music camp. Although Haiti is definitely NOT Club Med by any stretch, I've come to crave the feel of the Caribbean sun.

I often travel to Nashville, Tennessee as well, because I write for a Christian publishing house there (Lifeway). It's such a COOL place, with so much to do.

Then I come back to Des Moines and think... man, can I just be anywhere but HERE?

I love my new job, but mainly because it's so completely DIFFERENT than anything I've been doing since I moved to Des Moines nine years ago. Maybe God knew I was getting sick of this place and gave me a Monty Python "And now for something completely different" moment.

My husband, who's been on staff at a church here since we came, just recently resigned (I heartily approved the move -- more about that some other time). He's been on staff in a church somewhere for thirty years (he's in his early 50s, I'm in my late 30s). Now we're just kind-of drifting around, visiting different churches. The publishing house I write for requires me to be a member of a particular denomination, so I'm sort-of wedged in. I'm still pondering all my options...

Collateral

Just went to the bargain theater (by myself, thank you... my beloved gave me the night off) and saw Collateral with Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx. It was actually rather interesting. I thought that the concept was very original. Neither Foxx nor Cruise were directed to their potential, however. Plus, Jada Pinkett-Smith's character wasn't well-enough developed. All three of those actors are top-tier, and this could've been a seriously good movie with a little tweaking here and there. As it is, however, it's somewhat disjointed and unsatisfying.

AARGH

The OU-OSU game is a high-scoring one... nail-biting, nerve-wracking. I'm just gnashing my teeth because the plowboys have brought the score to within three points (38-35). It's on ABC, if you're watching.

Pathetic

Even though I have not once voted for him, I am still embarrassed beyond description that Tom Harkin keeps getting re-elected to the Senate from my state. He is a slithering creep. And a raving lunatic, to boot.

Please don't blame me for this man. I'm ashamed of my fellow Iowans who obviously did vote for him. Lightfoot *should've* beat him back in '96. Ganske *should've* beat him in '02. The man is absolutely reprehensible.

Get the Nuts!

That's the title of the book my son just read to me. It's the first book he's ever read all the way through. [sniff] My baby is growing up. It's a Clifford the Big Red Dog reading book. He was SO proud of himself.

My beloved OU Sooners are playing our hated arch-rival the osu plowboys. We're already up 7-0. Heh

Lunch today is sloppy-joes. Later I'm taking my crew to Chuck E. Cheese ... horrid place, but the kids LOVE it, so it's handy as a treat. Their pizza is abysmally bad, so we usually try to go in mid-afternoon and just play games rather than order pizza. Tonight is Beggar's Night, which is what Des Moines does instead of Halloween. I guess there were some unpleasant Halloween night things back some years ago, so now they have "Beggar's Night" and they have it the night before Halloween. At any rate, we don't celebrate Halloween in our home (due to the anti-Christian themes of witchcraft, etc.), so we try to plan something fun for the kids that doesn't involve sitting at home while all their friends are dressed up and going door-to-door. I think Rick is going to take them to a church festival later tonight, and I'm going to take advantage of the time and go to a movie. By myself.

Friday Night Fun

Being stuck at home on Friday nights is rather dull, generally. Because my husband works from 4 PM to midnight on Monday through Friday, it means I've gotta be at home with our three kids all evening long. I get to have time to myself on weekends, sometimes, although not always. Anyway, we're stir-crazy tonight so we're making popcorn balls. This should be interesting.

So it looks like ol' Usama bin Laden really *is* still alive. I figured him to be a greasy spot on the back of a cave wall in Tora Bora. I'm thinking that al Qaeda is up to something here in the US again, just in time for elections... because don't they usually release some type of video or audio just before hell breaks loose? [shrug] Anyway, I wish we could just find the creature and vaporize him.

My oldest daughter just asked me if UBL was going to hell. "Soon, I hope," was my reply.

Carnival of the Recipes!!!

My blogging inspiration, SarahK of mountaineer musings, is in charge of the Carnival of the Recipes this week. I have TWO -- count 'em -- TWO recipe entries. First, and easiest, is my Snickers brownies... which isn't really mine, and which isn't really hard. All you do is use your regular brownie recipe, minus any add-ins. Chop up a couple of Snickers bars into good-sized chunks and add in. Bake as usual. YUMmmm

The other is my mom's recipe for Crawfish Etouffee... and let me tell you, this stuff is WONDERFUL and EASY. Go visit mountaineer musings and scroll down to find my Etouffee recipe, k?

Breathe!

I can breathe! My observation (the first one, at least) is done, and I feel good about it. I wasn't perfect, but I feel like I covered the issue well and got good feedback from students.

That particular class is in a classroom which I share with another teacher. My administrator wants to set up another observation in which I'm actually in my own classroom. I'm much more comfortable in that setting, but I think I managed this morning's situation well.

My lesson was on the media and public opinion polls. We talked about polls -- the difference between "scientific" and "unscientific" ones... their effect on candidates and voters... what a "sound bite" is and why candidates use them... etc. I am rather passionate and fairly in-the-loop concerning polls and stuff. I'm thinking about introducing them to blogs and their significance in this year's election. Perhaps next week. I may see about getting them to start their own blog.

And speaking of blogging, I'd like to know where my favorite Floridian blogger has been this morning... he promised us a new cartoon.

First Class Nerves

I have waaaaaay too much swirling around in my mind & heart tonight. Observation & evaluation tomorrow morning, first thing... that one's consuming all my mental powers right now, but I have a few other long-term thorns in the flesh as well. I sure did need this past weekend in Nashville. It was nice to get completely and totally away from everything, and for a while rest my brain from thinking about school and friends and problems.

I'm teaching the lesson tomorrow morning on an election theme -- the media and public opinion polls. I've got a few more things I need to print out, but I could easily overkill this. I could teach an entire course on this, but I have to condense it to a low high-school level and make it interesting for them.

There's just too much in my head. I need some mental and emotional relief. It would be great if school were all I had to think about, though -- I like school very much and I feel like I belong there. The crowd is a rough one; only a tiny percentage of my students are from intact two-parent homes. A great many of them have parents, brothers, sisters, or other relatives in prison. Drugs, gangs, sex... it's everywhere and it's in your face. Few of them know how to submit to anyone's authority, how to trust an adult, how to speak respectfully. It's strange to say this, but it's a relief to be there and dealing with it, truthfully. It's a completely new world, away from the heart issues that strangle me and keep peace far away. At school, it's just raw and real and blunt and THERE. I'm not soaking in lies and deception, in false spirituality, in anger or in fear. I feel at peace amidst them; they don't really know me or have pre-conceived notions of who I am, so I have the opportunity to be exactly who I really am.

I really, really, really want to do a good job there. I want to do it right. I want my administrators to respect me and trust me. I want my students to succeed. I want to feel comfortable knowing I did the job that the public expects of me. I feel keenly responsible and too small for the task. Just too much in my head.

Bribed and coerced?

Will anyone ever wake up about this stuff? LGF has posted about a nice, big, fat cache of weapons stashed near a base in Afghanistan that's been sitting there for TWO YEARS.

Weapons Cache Stuns Canucks


Get this, people:

Canadian soldiers attached to the Afghan National Army (ANA) have stirred
up a hornet's nest in Kabul by being too efficient.
They've "discovered" a
huge Soviet ammunition dump a few kilometres from Camp Julien with the potential
of obliterating the camp, as well as most of Kabul.
That may sound like
hyperbole, but I was with the Canadians who discovered the cache -- soldiers
(mostly Princess Pats and combat engineers) who are training and working with
the ANA and consider themselves to have the best job in the army.

In the dusty foothills, 10 minutes drive from Camp Julien
(population 2,000), 82 buried bunkers, each 20-
metres long, housed
thousands of Soviet FROG missiles (one step down from Scud missiles), and every
variety of rocket and mortar shells.
Some of the FROG missiles were still in
their original cases. Some heaped in the open. Some stacked to the roof in the
unlocked, open bunkers. Much of the ordnance had warheads removed to collect the
explosive for homemade bombs -- or for blasting at a nearby quarry.
"Unbelievable!" was Maj. Brian Hynes' reaction when he saw them. "We (troops
of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)) have been here some two
years, and no one knew this was at our back door. Unbelievable."
In truth,
the Soviet bunkers were well-known in an area supposedly under control of the
Afghan Militia Force (AMF) -- not to be confused with the ANA. The AMF is paid
by various warlords and so their loyalty is to them.
The hero of the
discovery was combat engineer Sgt. Mike Mazerolle of New Brunswick, who has run
the observation post for eight days with ANA soldiers. They watch the valleys
leading to Kabul.
He saw people to his rear so he investigated and found the
82 bunkers "loaded with ordnance, and here I am sleeping next to a FROG!"
He
informed his boss, Maj. Hynes and -- eureka -- the cache was discovered.
Many of the rockets, missiles and shells had been pried open for the
explosives, which are used peacefully to blast mountain rock into gravel, and by
those who want to make bombs that disrupt Kabul.
"These bunkers have been
known for two years but no one bothered to check them," said Maj. Hynes.
"To
me, that's incompetence."
"To me it's criminal," said Sgt. Power, who works
with the major in training the ANA.
I've never seen anything like it. The
feeling is that AMF soldiers were selling access to the dump or permitting
friends to enter it.
Littered with burned out Soviet military vehicles, the
whole area is a junk pile strewn with every sort of live ammunition, fuses,
unexploded shells, rockets, etc., all supposedly under the authority of Belgian
troops (at the moment), who ignored it.
In the midst of examining the
bunkers and taking photos, a Swedish UN guy, a French major and a German colonel arrived to make a fuss and order the Canadians to leave. The French major
insisted his government had a deal with the Afghan government for the area, and
ISAF had no business being there.
This cut little ice with Maj. Hynes, who
is responsible -- not to the commander of Camp Julien, Col. Jim Ellis -- but to
the ANA, which has now moved in to secure the site.
The French major was
clearly bluffing, hadn't checked the bunkers and got a classic Canadian roasting
from Maj. Hynes -- who was supported by a German general who was also appalled
at the laxity.
"Now we've stirred up the hornet's nest," grinned Maj. Hynes.
"Good. Now we may get some action."
"I feel foolish that for eight days
we've been watching our front, when at our back all this was going on and nobody
cared," said Sgt. Mazerolle.

Nice. Can anyone legitimately continue to pretend that the French aren't in complete collusion with our enemies?

Scrutiny

Tomorrow morning, first thing, I'm having my first administrative observation. I haven't taught high school for ten years, but I remember quite vividly how I felt while I was being observed and critiqued. I've got the next hour and a half to get my game plan finalized. Back during my first stint as a public school teacher, I really trotted out the dogs and ponies for the show, but I've mellowed in the intervening years and I'm not sure what my style is anymore. I'm certainly not the same person I was then.

The other major difference is the school district. I am in a completely different world here!

One thing I've had to deal with most is the emotional factor of very recently becoming estranged from several of my closest friends. I'm still reeling from that, and sometime soon I may talk about it. Or I may not. Ever.

A little grits with that whine?

Is it just my curse that I have to listen to whiners ALL DAY LONG? Okay, sorry. I'm whining. Anyway, I spend my days in a high school classroom, then I come home to a tyrannical ten-year-old daughter. [insert eye-roll here] Kid for rent, cheap. Impossibly gripy and petulant.

Hey, I made some kickin' cheese grits tonight. I don't normally eat grits, having grown up in Oklahoma & Texas where oatmeal and Malt-O-Meal were more commonly found on breakfast tables. In fact, I never even heard of grits until I was in high school, but I still didn't know what they were until I was well into adulthood. [shrug] Call me sheltered, I dunno. I'm just sayin'.

Anyway, last weekend I was in Nashville, Tennessee at a writer's conference. The hotel (the Union Station in downtown Nashville -- UBER-COOL) serves the absolute best hotel breakfast you'll ever dream of eating. Monday morning I sat down to a plate of cheese grits, as well as some homemade baking-powder biscuits and gravy AND two slices of ultra-crispy bacon. YUM. The grits were so good I could hardly believe it. I personally make better sausage gravy, but that's to be expected -- my standard of sausage gravy is impossibly high. Theirs was certainly not inedible... I'm sure it would be nirvana to the unwashed. Nonetheless, I came home to Iowa with a craving for cheese grits, so tonight I made some for myself.

I love Nashville... especially the abundance of musicians playing live in every restaurant on every corner, hoping to get discovered by the music biz. Add in the fact that I have YET to have a bad meal in a restaurant there, and you've got the makings of a fab-OH vacation (or business junket). Places I ate this time around:

The Mellow Mushroom (in Franklin, south of Nashville)
Elliston Place Soda Shop
Swett's
Tabouli's

Cindy (my best pal) and I always eat at Elliston Place when we go to Nashville. This time, we're adding Swett's to our list of must-do restaurants every time we're in the neighborhood. Holy Cow, that food was amazing. So amazing, in fact, that we went twice. We went there for Sunday lunch; I had meat loaf, mashed potatoes and turnip greens, and a white roll. Cindy had the country fried steak, greens, taters, and the fried cornbread. On Monday at suppertime, right before we left town to head back to Iowa, we stopped there again. This time I had pork ribs and barbecue sauce (the sauce was home-made and incredible) (none of this ketchup crap you normally find), taters again, and green beans. The flat kind, like I always prefer, cooked with pork fat. And this time I got the fried cornbread because it was unbelievably awesome. I don't remember what Cindy got this time, except that she got the boiled cabbage and it was pure heaven. To top it off, their iced tea is smoooooooth, and their ice machine makes perfectly crunchy ice that's easy on the teeth for us ice-crunchers.

Someday I'm going to tell someone I'm blogging, but until then, I shall remain incognito. I still don't know for sure if this is going to fit into my life. I'll give it six more days.

New Classroom

I've been back in the classroom, teaching again after ten years of raising my babies. I just sent my youngest off to kindergarten this year. I'm now teaching high school special education classes again.

When I taught before, it was always in rural school districts in Texas. Now I'm in a northern inner-city school with a little bit rougher crowd than before. Interestingly, I like it better. Most of these kids are true underdogs, who need an advocate, and who have little or no home support.

I just got my classroom switched around; I like my new room very much. The kids don't like it as well because it's a much smaller room with no windows... but I reminded them that if I put up tropical travel posters & stuff like that, maybe for just a little while we can all forget that we're in Des Moines... and if we still had windows, we'd have to see the nasty weather. Hey, it's a trade-off. In the other room, I had to share with another teacher. Here, I can be by myself.

Plus, I just got a new suede leather jacket and it is making the room smell wonderful. haha

Interesting link of the day. Enjoy this one, it's funny!

FIRST!!

I'm going to give this a few days before I let anyone else in on my venture into the blogosphere. In the meantime, I'm going to practice my severely limited and rudimentary HTML skills.

My favorite links:

Lileks

mountaineer musings

IMAO

National Review Online

Little Green Footballs

There will be more to come in subsequent posts.