I did a writing workshop with 3rd, 4th and 5th graders yesterday morning. 
It was at a lovely school with the most enthusiastic principal, teachers and librarians, all of whom seemed to think it was important that kids belive writing can be fun! Isn’t THAT a novel idea?

We had such a good time together, the kids and I did, talking about metaphors and similes and making things vivid. I had them do one of my all-time favorite exercises:

1. On one little slip of paper, each student writes down an emotional state (lonliness, happiness, jealousy, worry…) 
All of these get popped in one basket.

2. On another little slip of paper, each student writes down a noun (and I got everything from tennis shoe to mountain, tree to xbox 360). All of these get popped in another basket.

3. Each student picks one slip of paper from each basket and, voila, you’ve got the makings of metaphor. 
They have to tease out how lonliness is like a tennis shoe, or jealousy is like a tree. 

There are always a few writers who raise their hands and say, “My two words don’t work together.” (And this is even — or especially — true if I do this exercise with adults.) But after we work together to think of everything we know about lonliness and everything we know about tennis shoes, they’re almost always able to find some lovely little meeting spot — the center of a ven diagram. And therein lies the poem. It’s a beautiful thing. And, dare I say, fun.

So today, in honor of all that, here’s Metaphors by Sylvia Plath. I’ve always loved this little ditty:

Metaphors

I’m a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils. 

(Read the rest here…)

 I spent the day polishing up a villanelle.

One of my wee ones was home sick so she heard me do my ‘read every line aloud ten thousand times’ thing.

If she thought I was a little off before, it’s now been formally confirmed and set in stone. 
I heard her tell her sister, “Mama talked to herself in poems today. Even in the bath!”

Reading aloud is part of my process, to be sure. Good thing I don’t work in a cube where the protocol is to put your phone on vibrate and think to yourself. I really can’t see what works and what doesn’t — I can only hear it. 

And it turns out that’s especially true with form poetry. 

OK, first of all, I’m a glutton for punishment. I committed to writing an ekphrastic poem (a poem inspired by another piece of art) about a piece in the permanent collection at The Blanton Museum of Art. But it could have been anything! A haiku, for goddsake. A prose poem cut-and-pasted straight from my journal. A list of words that came to mind as I sat there soaking in the image. 

And also, how hard could it be? 19 lines, and a bunch of them are repeats. 

Well, the thing is, if you’re going to repeat an entire line it’s got to be, well, good.
And also, there’s a rhyme scheme. So once you pick your first couple of lines, you’re stuck with two particular sounds.
Or I guess ‘blessed’ with two particular sounds if stars are aligned. 

And then, to top it off, I received the invitation to write this poem months ago. Not weeks. Months.
But when did I get cracking on it? This week. This week. 
It is some crazy dysfunctional relationship I have with deadlines…

Wrap all that up and Mama’s talking to herself in poems. Even in the bath.

1. Y’know how little kids call blonde hair “yellow”? I just realized my 9-year-old still does. I love that.

2. How is it that after a 9-mile training run, the next day’s 3-mile recovery run still feels hard?

3. I just discovered Rhymezone.com, thanks to Laura. I’m just gonna put this out on the table as a potential addiction, right here and now.

4. This year’s science fair projects are (drum roll, please): lead testing toys (taller one) and comparing the fat content in various fast foods (smaller one). These are sure to transform the face of healthcare in America. I mean, just in case Hillary doesn’t get to that.

5. I am seriously, compulsively enjoying Kingsley Amis’ The King’s English. Here’s one (of about a zillion) reasons why:

Thankfully

Not an illiteracy in sentences like, ‘After my long walk in the sun I thankfully put down a glass of shandy,’ where the walker/drinker is thankful. But a stark illiteracy in, say, ‘Thankfully, the shandy is well chilled,’ where nobody in particular is thankful. A word like luckily is required instead. 

The use of thankfully in a dangling position, however, as in my second example just above, is not a politician’s use like that of dangling hopefully. It makes no attempt to smuggle in more than it says, even though it is a warmer sort of word than luckily. In any case, this is a use that looks likely to catch on further with or without the approval of honest writers, who will go on avoiding it.

So, the other day I got kind of haughty about how clairvoyant I am and, as a result, I was dared to predict the Caldecott, Newbery and Cybils awards.

Well throw down the gauntlet. 
Far be it for me to ignore a good ol’ fashioned dare. 
(And yes, if all my friends jumped off a cliff I would, too.)

Coming up with these was a tall order and totally intuitive (if you don’t count my crystal ball from the dollar store) so there will be no reviews or explanations. Just wild guesses. (And I should say, these aren’t necessarily my absolute favorites. I just think they’re gonna win…)

Caldecott and Caledcott Honors:
The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Brian Selznick 
The Incredible Book Eating Boy, Oliver Jeffers
Pssst!, Adam Rex
The Apple Pie that Papa Baked, Lauren Thomson/Jonathon Bean
Pictures from our Vacation, Lynne Rae Perkins

Newbery and Newbery Honors:
The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Brian Selznick (I mean really — where does this one fit???)
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie
Edward’s Eyes, Patricia McLachlan
Me and the Pumpkin Queen, Marlane Kennedy
A Crooked Kind of Perfect, Linda Urban

Cybils:
Poetry — This is Just to Say: Poems of Apology and Forgiveness, Joyce Sidman
Picture — Pssst! or The Chicken-Chasing Queen, Janice N. Herrington/Shelley Jackson
Middle Grade — Crooked or Emma Jean Lazarus, Lauren Tarshis
YA — Deadline, Chris Crutcher or Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend, Carrie Jones (and if I get this one right, promote me to queen because the finalists haven’t even been announced yet.)

So what do you guys think?
On the money?

Addendum to the previous post…

11. Scooter races at the city park.

12. A stuffed animal gymkhana.

13. A Littlest Pet Shop election, during which nobody (er, nobody’s pet) wanted to be Republican.

14. A ranty email written to a local magazine that purports to speak to and support women but that is filled, cover-to-cover, with ads for cosmetic surgery, breast augmentation, skin peels and other ‘services’ designed to correct our hideous imperfections.

15. The previously-mentioned homemade pizza, which my husband actually cut into shapes (heart and starfish) at the request of his delighted audience. That’s the sign of a good guy, don’t you think?

16. An impromptu musical recital by all four kids.

17. A reading of Leonardo the Terrible Monster — a book that still delights two 9-year-olds, a 7- and a 6-year-old.

Still, though, no nap.

1. Ratatouille (the movie, not the food — although that does sound like a really yummy Sunday night supper).

2. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (good, but not quite as good as Ratatouille. And why is it that ever since turning forty, I cannot stay awake for an entire flick? Even if it’s like 100 minutes long. God forbid I try to watch some epic in a single sitting…)

3. Hall closet, bathroom cupboards and one big fat kitchen cabinet — check! We no longer have medicines that expired in 2005 or flip-flops fit for a toddler, and every single laminated placemat (with maps of the world and the alphabet in sign language) has been wiped clean. I’m pretty sure Sara inspired this activity, ’cause when I read about her coffee cup gunk it occurred to me that our gunk is not localized over here. It’s more dynamic — a slow creep, an insidious evolution. But no more! 

4. Husband home repairs, including small one’s bedside shelf. This is especially sweet for two reasons. One, her water has spilled off the previous rickety shelf onto her bed approximately 1,000 times. And two, he used some of my granddad’s old tools to fix it and I’m all sentimental about that.

5. Fresh fruit smoothies and peanut butter toast and a really fine decaf latte. 

6. Three newly published books, one talk show and a live reading. (We’ve got four girls in house this weekend instead of two, and it is, um, what’s another word for chaos that doesn’t sound as bad?) During the reading, our youngest took the directorial role. I heard her say, more than once, “OK, I’m gonna stop you there. Let’s do that page again.” Y’know how people worry that their second (and third and fourth) children may shrink in the shadows of their first-born siblings? I’m not worried.

7. Discovered erroneous charges on our MasterCard, to the tune of fifteen hundred bucks. One of them was to the Christian Coalition of South Carolina, which particularly cracked me up. 

8. Finally finished putting away all Christmasy items ’til next year. Isn’t it funny how when you pull out those mugs in early December you get so nostalgic and happily anticipatory and by January you are just sick to death of the dang things?

9. Listened to Car Talk and Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me. I mean, seriously folks. What WOULD we do without NPR?

10. Decided to go grab sandwiches at the deli rather than make another meal. Tonight is homemade pizza, but that’s my hubby’s expertise.

And how is it that it’s just past noon on Saturday?
Here’s hoping that number 11 is “napped”.

OK, you  guys. 
Don’t freak out at my astonishing powers of prediction, but I forsaw every single place in the Iowa caucuses last night.
I kid you not.

We had a couple of friends over for dinner last night and when the kids retired to the bedroom to practice singing the Sound of Music soundtrack, we sat at the table and tried to figure out how the darn thing in Iowa even works.  Leave it to the midwesterners who act all straight-forward and bread-baskety to come up with the most complicated set of hoops a person would ever hope to jump through. 

When we finally realized that true and thorough understanding was futile, we moved on to punditry. This is especially fun when you live in Texas and nearly every race is a forgone conclusion. Which isn’t fun. Especially when you’re not all that keen on the foregone conclusion. 

So we wrote down the top three places for each party as we thought they might come in. 
It was sort of like betting at the Kentucky Derby, only nobody was giving us odds or mint julips.

And I chose, for the Dems:
1. Obama
2. Edwards
3. Clinton

And for the Republicans:
1. Huckabee
2. Romney
3. McCain

Yep, I even got it that Edwards was gonna sneak by Clinton for second. Is that uncanny or what? So, my post can’t be lengthy this morning because no doubt the national media will be calling for interviews soon. In the meantime, it’s Poetry Friday and I think today’s the day for Seamus Heaney’s poem Doubletake. In 381 days we’ll have somebody new in the White House…

Doubletake
By Seamus Heaney

Human beings suffer,
they torture one another,
they get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
can fully right a wrong
inflicted and endured.

The innocent in gaols
beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker’s father
stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
faints at the funeral home

History says, Don’t hope
on this side of the grave.

(Read the rest here…)

Our girls got The Daring Book for Girls for Christmas, and we’ve had some interesting discussions about double-dutch jump-roping and Bloody Mary (Queen of Scots).

But my favorite moment so far has been this: 

Yesterday I stumbled upon a frenzied craft session, in which they were making badges to recognize various accomplishments — everything from scooter tricks to a duet on the piano and violin.

“We got this idea from the Daring Book, Mama,” said one.

“They said we could download badges,” said her sister.

“But why download them when you can make ones that are way cooler and more about you?” said the first.

Pass the construction paper.
Who needs the book?

This morning, our girls devoted themselves to their money and their Moonjars. 

Moonjars aren’t actually jars, but rather funky little geometric cardboard banks designed to help kids divvy up their money into categories of spend, save and share. 

We gave them each one for Christmas with promises to finally get our acts together, allowance-wise. 
Because, I’ll admit it right here, we’ve started an allowance routine twice and both times we just kind of… well… we forgot to pony up the dough. The tooth fairy at our house has forgotten to visit on more than one occasion, too. 
This is a weakness, I know.

So. It’s a new year. And the Moonjars are going to snap us all into shape.

It was a really great morning — both girls emptying their old porcelain pigs and then figuring out, with our help and a handy-dandy calculator — how much should go into each segment of the Moonjar. Percentages that they’ll apply to any future deposits, too. (If we were this organized about our money we’d probably be featured in E.F. Hutton ads or something.)

And then, to complete the circle, we had these really vivid discussions about what they’d use their money for, what they were saving for, and to whom they planned to give. Small one is determined to find an organization devoted to the protection of otters (let me know if you’ve got an inside line on this), tall one is going to divide her donation between the food bank and Heifer International. And the money that’s theirs to spend or save? There are elaborate calculations being made, for everything from bubble gum, to a rabbit and a rabbit hutch, to a trip to Brazil. Or Peru. Or Tawain. We like to think big over here.

In the end, it jump-started our own discussion of the great remodel of 2008 (we’re all sharing one teeny-tiny bathroom at our house, folks) and it even kicked off a little friendly fitness competition between my hubby and me. (Wish me luck…)

Sheesh. 

It’s a good thing that New Year’s Day is only 24 hours long and we’re sleeping for a bunch of those, because I can only manage so much forward thinking and fine intentions before I pop. 

(Feeling grateful for tomorrow when I’m not going to look ahead AT ALL.
Just hoping to finish the laundry and write. Write, write, write…)

One of my Christmas gifts this year was a raku pottery sculpture called The Optimist. 

It was done by my cousin Flossie (who doesn’t have a web presence but I’ll let you know when she does — you will want what she makes) and it is, as we speak, moving around the living room trying to settle into the appropriate resting spot from which to bless our new year. 

Lots of folk are busy today, making new year’s plans and resolutions, cleaning the house, cooking black-eyed peas. 

We are busy, too, unpacking duffle upon duffle of snow gear and dirty socks. Adding new wheels to old scooters. Opening bills and Christmas cards that arrived while we were gone. For some reason, in the midst of this, the organic pest control company showed up for their biannual visit and the girls decided they needed to paint lots of things with acrylic paints.

It is warm, under a bright blue sky, and we are happy to be home, but we’re in a muddle of overwhelm. 

Which, by the way, is not exactly what I want to carry into the new year. 

Overwhelm? No thank you. 
Optimism? OK. Yes. That I can do.

It used to be that I let January 1st come and go with a simple glass of champagne and a kiss or two. September 1st always felt like my new year — I love the academic calendar and there’s something about new pads of paper and pencils that kickstart my sense of resolve. But lately, I’ve grown fond of this new year, too. Maybe it’s that I need more fresh starts than I used to. As a mom, a writer, a partner, a friend — in a body older than it used to be and with fewer decades sitting open ahead of me.

But regardless of age or logic, here we are. On the doorstep of another year. I do not have big plans (yet) nor have I made big promises (to myself or other people) — although I admire those of you who do and have. 

For now, today, I’m sticking with The Optimist. I’m looking forward into this next year and actually expecting delight. Glasses more than half full, pages more than half full, arms more than half full, a home more than half full, a world more than half full — of love, peace, surprise, wisdom, ideas and delight.

Happy New Year. I see great things in your future, too!