news.

Dear [Musicboy],


We are pleased to inform you that you have passed your audition for admission into the [Collegetown U] School of Music.  


[blah blah blah you're amazing so we're placing you in this class which is exactly where you wanted to be for music theory blah blah blah we have no money so we can't give you a scholarship blah blah blah you'll be advised about registration at the summer preview session blah blah blah send us back this letter so a spot will be reserved for you in trombone studio]

Sincerely,

The Head of Collegetown U's School of Music.

it came after a week of waiting, after a week of wondering, after a few days of worrying, after some praying, and after decisions were already made.

i got the mail in the sprinkling rain, almost shocked that what my mom told me was absolutely true: when we made the decision, when we followed the spirit, we would get the news. 

we signed the lease yesterday to our new place. 

she was right.

when i saw it, it was another testament to me that the Lord is mindful of us and knows when we need to exercise some faith.  when we desperately need to put our hand in His and do what He says instead of what might kind of make sense to someone else. 

musicboy was at work. i texted him to ask if he wanted me to come there so he could read it.  he didn't answer.  i called.  straight to voicemail.  i left to do some errands, calling again 15 minutes later. he had only just gotten the mesages.  by then, as i sat stopped at a red light, i had tried to read through the envelope and had seen word combinations that only meant one thing.

i fistpumped, yelled, and then quickly cried a little, overwhelmed with an odd mixture of gratitude, relief, and a great deal of pride.

when musicboy and i finally connected, him sitting in my car in the rain and opening this letter that means so much, i was so happy for him.  he's in. 

and he turned to me and thanked me for helping him get in.  i scoffed a little and said "how?" but in that moment, i knew.

i've been thinking lately that maybe the work that i do, the volume of which sometimes paralyzes me with a claustrophobic weight, is more important than i give it credit for.  we all know that the work that mothers do is important, that the work of some jobs is essential. yes, teaching is important. i know that.  but i mean more than that.  i mean maybe everything that i do--the effort that i put forth, the dishes that i do, the laundry that i hate and yet grit my teeth and do anyway--means something more than the money it earns.

maybe it's more. 

as musicboy said that to me, i realized that it is.  and when i said "then it's all worth it," i meant it.  and i headed off to the laundromat, laptop in hand.  i washed everything we own and graded response papers with a lighter heart. 

our little family is on a roll. 

wordless wednesday: count 'em up.

i have a to-do list as long as my arm and not enough spring break left for me to truly get everything done, but this is how i feel.  i am overwhelmed by my blessings and how much i don't deserve most of them.  so i'll keep stepping, one foot in front of the other, and make the most of every day i have.

may your day be full of spunky joy and moments of pure gratitude.

tales from my convection oven.

i love to bake.  this is not news.  it is probably the single most logical reason for my recent weight gain and the reason that, despite working out a lot and redefining my shape a bit, the weight really isn't coming off.

being domestic makes me want to bake things. the fact that my husband likes the desserts doesn't help with that. 

but lately, i have been experimenting.  and by experimenting i mean i am taking recipes or mixes and doing other stuff with them. the first successful execution of this "by gosh and by golly" attitude was valentine's day, when i made a sour cream devil's food cake just by sort of winging it. 

it was delicious.

also for valentine's day, i made musicboy chocolate chocolate chunk cookies which are his favorite.  then we started watching gilmore girls and saw this:



right before they start singing the best song ever, lorelei asks rory why she's carrying a bag of rocky road cookies, since she hates them.  behold, the seed was planted.  the next time i made cookies, i decided to give it a whirl.

i really just took this recipe and tossed in some mini marshmallows that i had in my cabinet.  funny things happened. number one, they were AWESOME.  but the marshmallows didn't stay intact as i thought they would.  they melted and got hard and at first i was like NOOOOO but then i ate them and was like YESSSS.  word to the wise: use a VERY non-stick pan or grease that bad boy up.  the marshmallows will cause megastickage if you don't.  the way i make them, this recipe usually makes about 48-50 cookies (making them about 100 calories each).  they're worth it. 

also, i realized the following:

• jiffy apple cinnamon muffins are MUCH better if you use applesauce instead of the egg, a splash of milk, and toss in some extra cinnamon and nutmeg. when they're baking, they smell like apple fritters.  seriously.
• baked apples--the easiest treat ever and not at all unhealthy.  granny smith apples.  a bit of transfat free margarine and cinnamon sugar (you can use splenda if you'd like, but sugar isn't that calorically dense if you use it wisely).  i throw nutmeg in there and it is YUMMY.
• 100 calorie brownies: i'm sure most of you have heard of these (devil's food cake mix and pumpkin) but did you know that a) you can split the cake mix into two and it makes a loaf-size cake? and b) you can use 1/2 cup of pureed sweet potato as a substitute? i was dying to make these, as they are sometimes the only things that keep me from diving face first into musicboy's cookies, but the Great Pumpkin Shortage of 2009-2010 continues.  the grocery store had NONE.  i was sad, but then remembered that i had some purees left.  it worked as well, if not better, and i think it might be healthier anyway.  sweet potatoes to the rescue!

i'm very excited about my newly discovered ability to make junk up and have it not taste like yuck.  that was always what i aspired to be.  when i have more time, in some distant unrecognizable future, i may start trying it with more adventurous things.  like side dishes.  and vegetables.  but for now, baking will do.

choose your own adventure.

on thursday, musicboy and i went on what can only be compared to a frustrating yet ultimately awesome treasure hunt through collegetown to find our next home.

while i dearly love the little one bedroom that we have made into our home this past seven months, complete with the ancient oven (teachergirlmom got us a convection oven for christmas that sits on the counter because ancient oven seemed out to get me with its lack of consistent temperature level and its desire to always burn me.  i am in love with our convection oven.) and the little tiny brown ants that periodically pop up to look for water or something (they come out of the walls, i think, through old phone jacks or really wherever they want. i used to be completely skeezed out by this, but now i use the awesome power of poison and take joy in my triumph over nature.  thank you teachergirlmom for buying us ant poison also.). 

i shouldn't be lame.  this is an awesome place. it has incredible closet space (like INCREDIBLE. like as in three FULL closets for a relatively tiny one bedroom. unheard of.) and it is incredibly cheap.  the neighbors are nice, we've only had one night of a party next door that made us have to go to sleep with cspan to kill the bass, and it has a good vibe.

that's really how we chose it. the price was awesome and the location was fine, but it was when we saw it and visited it that we knew it was home. we both knew it. at the same time. it was an incredible moment. 

so when we knew that we were growing out of this place, i started scouring the internets for leads. i usually stay far away from established apartment complexes because, in my previous experience, they are insanely expensive for 1 and 2 bedrooms.  this little place we have now came through a realtor.  so that's the direction i went and i had a list of drive-bys.  the way this little process works is that you drive by the place first, to weed out the "ohmygoshiwillneverliveheres" and only bother the realtors with the ones you're actually interested in. 

so we had an appointment with one off of craigslist for 4.  musicboy got home at 345. we left shortly after, and hit EVERY red light, traffic jam, stopped school bus, and pedestrian gridlock in collegetown.  we were 15 minutes late, and no one was there when we got there. no worries, because it was in sketchland and i didn't like it.  bad vibe.

we proceed to drive by every other one. and none of them feel right. door slamming after door slamming. one or two weren't bad, but the prices weren't great either.  then, in the middle of all of this, we happen to drive by a traditional apartment building with a sign for large 2 brs for 595.

say whaaaat?

after our frustrating afternoon of drivebys, musicboy suggested that we circle back to that apartment building.  we drove in, and there it was.

that feeling.

we walked into the office, surprised that it was open.

they had one unit.
available exactly when we wanted it.
we got approved on our own.

one thing after another, it seemed like the right place at the right time.

it seems like home, even though we haven't seen the unit yet. we've seen pictures and we felt that feeling.  it feels like home.

but we still haven't heard about musicboy's admission yet.  even still, we feel like collegetown is where we need to be, where we should be. 

our next adventure will be amazing.  it will still be here, come what may about collegetown u's decision, and it will involve a little townhouse with a patch of grass and a spot for my planters.  it will happen in a home that has a washer and a dryer and a dishwasher, which were my criteria for feeling rich.  it will happen together, in a place we've come to love.

as uncertain as some things are, i've come to recognize the sure signs that we are home. 

i am so excited to make it so.  i see paint swatches and curtain making in my future.  it will be so lovely to have a separate office/music room for a while, where i can dump all of my teaching stuff and where i don't have to look at it all of the time.  it will be so nice to have a living room large enough to have the loveseat facing the tv. 

i'm very excited.  july can't come quick enough.   :)

gender schmender, right?

when i began teaching, i was an undergrad working with middle school students in a summer program.  the authority i had to develop didn't really, in my mind, have anything to do with my gender.  girl or not, i just had to fake like i knew what i was doing or they would eat me alive.

(it's true of most middle school jobs--it didn't get any different when i became a full-time middle school teacher a few short years later.)

in fact, the most powerful, organic connections that i had with students seemed to happen with young men.  i communicated with them more easily and seemed to impress/win them over easier than i did with the young women. 

(this coincided with what i knew about girls, that we compete with each other far more than we like to admit. and we judge. i do not exclude myself from this, nor do i ignore the fact that it's a blanket stereotype.)

when i went back to school, and thus began teaching an older population, the distinctions between students based on gender seemed to fade away.  students were students--some of them brilliant, hard-working, and insightful and others distinctly annoying with a penchant for loud complaining. 

my authority issues then became more of a knowledge issue--the way that i convinced students that they should take me seriously was through my preparation and my knowledge base.  they knew enough to see through a snow job, and i took pride in the fact that i was prepared more often than i wasn't and that, as my career continued, my knowledge base continued to be enough to impress and maintain my intellectual authority.

of course, until this past year, i have taught exclusively in large university settings. these sorts of environments, for better or worse, weed out a certain facet of the population. many of those, for whatever reason (income, location, career aspirations, grades, etc.), are then funnelled into the community college system.

i began teaching at rural cc this past fall.  it wasn't until today that i realized what one of the primary conflicts i have there stems from.

until today, i didn't realize that most every day that i teach there, my authority is being challenged (often imperceptibly, but sometimes vocally) by the male students that i teach. 

even when i am giving them terrible grades and asking them to perform up to higher standards than they are accustomed, the female students seem to stick with me.  they show up, they do their work, they ask questions, they participate in activities, they engage with the process.  even when they are annoyed, enough that i can tell, they don't challenge me in class.  they may email me, they may do it behind the comfortable barrier of binary code, but they don't do it in person or in class.

the male students feel no such compunction. 

today, i was explaining a paper assignment, telling students that after they had the chance to work on the first portion of their paper in class today, they would submit a rough draft of the 1 page argument on the tuesday after spring break.  in theory, if they had worked quickly during class, they would have had nothing whatsoever to do before tuesday. i would have taken their draft as they had it and made comments. 

one of my male students, who always sits in the back (as all of them do) and often answers questions quickly and without much thought (i had a student just like this last semester, too), said "we get to write a paper during spring break? sweet." i took this to be a sarcastic comment and said, perhaps shortly and/or sharply "that's not what i said."

and he proceeded to act as though i had snapped his head off, saying "i just asked a question. sorry."  and then he continued to complain to his neighbors "man, i just asked a question." and then really didn't do anything for the rest of the class period.

i didn't respond to his complaints, feeling that he was painting me into the bad guy corner and assessing, in my mind, if i had done anything to deserve that. in no way did i think his comment was an actual question, nor do i think he intended it to be so.  i think he intended it to be exactly what i interpreted it to be--a snarky, veiled attempt to challenge what i was asking them to do.  when i called him out on it, when i stood up for what i said, the situation was turned around on me.

perhaps you think that i am overreacting. perhaps i am.  but as i was texting musicboy about what had transpired this morning, i realized that this kind of back-into-a-corner, challenging, disrespectful attitude is what i get from most of my male students.  i walk into every class hoping to find allies quickly, to find the pair of eyes that i can land on as i'm lecturing that will help me gauge how students are responding.  many of my male students seem to begin the course as these allies--they participate often, they answer questions, they seem engaged.  they are often the loudest voices in my rural cc classes. 

but those same male students, about halfway through the semester and regardless of their performance, seem to turn.  they stop offering respect and start challenging.  they behave as if they are too smart/cool/busy to be bothered by actually doing the activities that i ask them to do.  they group together, making jokes in the back of the class like a couple of 12 year olds, radiating a kind of holier-than-thou attitude that drives me nuts.

until today, i figured it was just part of the deal.  it's not as though i have never experienced a student disengaging before. it's not as if i haven't had classroom activities flop.  i have, and i do, and i recognize that gender doesn't really have anything to do with either of these things. 

i hadn't realized, at all, that gender could be PRECISELY what this is about.  i work in a rural community, a place where trucks and guns are common and where, though i hate to admit it, attitudes may be more...traditional?...than in a university community.  and here i am.  young woman, married, highly educated, who leans on intelligence and hard work as authority makers, not a demeanor of intimidation or formality.

it works everywhere else.  i'm not sure if it works there.  well, it works, but it leaves me open to consistent challenge from my male students, challenges that thus far i have dealt with by trying to be a better teacher.  i am on my game this semester. i have met the students where they are at, and still asked them to meet my standards.  i'm not sure how much better prepared or thoughtful i can be about my teaching.

i'm not sure what to do about this.  gender has always been an academic interest to me, but i've never experienced these issues in real life, in practice.  i don't know how to fight it. 

the letters, they're back.

dear random big haired woman who sauntered into body combat 45 minutes after it started,

you just walked in on track SEVEN.  as in WE HAVE DONE SEVEN SONGS WORTH OF AWESOME before you walk in.  you may have noticed that we were all sweaty beyond what is acceptable in normal society, breathing harder than ought to be legal, and yet still moving with conviction. 

and yet you walked in.  at first, i thought maybe you left something.  or maybe you were there obscenely early for the next class--and instead of waiting outside like everyone else decided to come in.  okay.  fine.

but do you know that's annoying? distracting? can possibly lead to INJURY?

do you also know that you look sort of...well...to put it bluntly...idiotic trying to join into choreography that you CLEARLY DON'T KNOW?  don't think i didn't notice that you couldn't hack it with the plyo pushes and jab/uppercut/hook combinations. 

i did.

here's a thought: body combat is awesome.  come.  BUT COME ON TIME.

good heavens.

sincerely,

i've been here for five weeks.

--

dear jell-o,

you are insanely good marketers. i don't know if you actually have a deal with the keebler ready-made graham cracker crust people and the cool whip folks, but your cookies n creme pudding singlehandedly made me purchase that as well as hot fudge to make ice cream shop pie.

it is TASTY.  it is awesome.  it isn't too terribly many calories (or at least, it's worth it). 

you are very good at what you do.

many thanks,
dessert-making girl.

--

dear grading,

thanks for the break. it was too brief, but i appreciate it.  i'll be back at it full force tomorrow, whether or not my brain and will wants it.

yours truly,
teachergirl.

i'm looking toward the future!

in something like three months or so, i will be for all intents and purposes done with the dissertation. i will also be facing a six week or so break, one of which will be spent in the nice north with mama going to see wicked and probably sleeping a lot and thinking nothing about dissertating.

or swimming in the idea that, other than revisions, i am DONE.

i was reading on another blog about this whole list of goals that a blogger had, one of which was reading a book a month.

and i suddenly thought.  hey. i want a list of things i want to do once i'm done with the dissertation.

so here's the beginning.

1. read books only for pleasure.  i want to begin with pride and prejudice and zombies.  i might think it's fabulous. i might think it's awful.  oh well.  it will be a lovely option.  if you have things you've read in the last, say, six years that you think i should read (oh! that guernsey potato peel society book! i want to read that! and the friday night knitting club!  these may not be the right titles, but i know what i'm talking about...), leave them here in a comment. i'm open to suggestions.

2.  start a scrapbook of our wedding.  i have so many memories of that day that are evoked by the pictures, but which are sure to fade if i'm not careful. at the very least, i'd like to tell the story of that day somewhere.

3. do couch to 5k. start to finish. 

what else should i do?