There is so much good stuff out there, I’ve got to tell you about some of it:

First off, the charming Ms. Jama of Alphabet Soup is celebrating her 30th wedding anniversary with a contest! If you’re like me and you grew up in an era when "Disco Dancing" was a unit in P.E., you’re gonna want to get in on this. We’re supposed to guess their song! Go on… go wish them happy, happy and take a gander.

Next, on a more serious note, if this isn’t an eloquent rant, I don’t what would qualify. I’ve got two daughters and I don’t need anyone leaving them alone in the dark, that’s for darn sure.

And speaking of political, our very own witty writer Ms. Carrie Jones has a thing or two to say here.

OK, and onto something lighter: the new Babymouse is out!!! My girls are gonna flip, ‘specially Tall One, whose favorite color is orange. (That’s a hint; the latest B.M. looks different than the others…)

Also, Rick Riordan’s announced his fifth and final Percy Jackson book and it’s going to be a long, cold time ’til May, don’t you think?

So, if your kids are just sitting around twiddling their digits until then, maybe you should get them crafting! Look-see what my buds Bernadette and Kathie have cooked up. Saving the world… one stitch at a time.

And speaking of saving the world, Cynthia Leitich Smith does her part. She is a connector and a teacher and a cheerleader and a giver and a mover and a shaker and a darn hot writer to boot. And this week, she was recognized with an Arte y Pico Award, for hosting a blog that inspires others. No kidding. And then she coulda knocked me over with a feather by passing on the same honor to me, among other fine and intimidating folk.

Whoa.
So.
Along with trying to live up to Cyn’s praises, I need to do the following:

1) Pick five blogs that you consider deserve this award, creativity, design, interesting material, and also contributes to the blogger community, no matter of language.

2) Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.

3) Each award-winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award itself.

4) Award winners and those who give the prize must link to the Arte y Pico blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.

5) Show these rules.

OK, then.
First off. Thanks, Cyn. I’m humbled.
You inspire me, times ten.

So do the following:

Sara Lewis Holmes, poet… thoughtful heart… wry wit… and whip-smart author, blogger and pal
Kelly Fineman. Dang. Ditto.
The always wise, funny and provocative Robin Brande, for keeping it real.
And Cynthia Lord, Ditto.
And finally, the exquisite eye of Shannon Lowry for her beautiful, positive, picture-perfect posts.

I could go on. I am inspired constantly and all the time by so many people. But I’m following directions today and sticking to five.

Carry on, folks. I’ll stop now…

Over the years, I’ve gotten rid of all the onsies, the high chair and the tricycles, most of the board books and lots & lots of toys.

My girls are 7 and nearly 10; plastic stacking cups and big-piece puzzles are in our rearview mirror.

Still, there were a few favorites I couldn’t bear to part with, and those are in big plastic bins waiting eagerly for babies and toddlers to come by for a visit.

Last week, one did.

So out came the Fisher Price barn, complete with hayloft and moo-ing doorway.
Our little visitor toyed with them all and then promptly fell asleep for the evening.

The barn was left to rest in its big plastic bin… for a bit.

Then, my 7-year-old — fledgling 2nd grader, reader of thick books and memorizer of big facts — pulled it out.
Every day for a week, in fact, she nonchalantly sauntered up to that barn and settled in next to it, talking quietly as she moved the farmer and friends from place to place. She was enchanted, and so was I.

It made me think about how long there is youthfulness inside each tall and competent body.
How long there is playfulness inside each student.
How long there is whimsy inside all these learning minds.

It made me think about how we rush things.
How we pack up the toys to make room for equipment and gear.
How we swap free time for lessons.
How  we stop reading aloud.

It made me think that we oughtn’t.
Really.
What’s the rush?

Once a year in Austin, the yoga community hosts a free day of yoga.

I have a regular practice of my own, but I like to use the free day to try out a new space, style or teacher. Twenty-some studios participate — most of which I’ve never been to — and I figure what better way to close the labor day weekend than a little union (of body, mind and spirit) on the mat? 

So yesterday, I gathered up my girls and headed off to Kula Yoga where, lo and behold, children and adult classes were being offered at the same time. Win-win. And did I mention they were free?!?

In their studio, the girls roared like lions, fell like rain and turned their downward dogs into a tunnel.

In mine, we went through an hour of very slow and attentive hatha.

Now, I gotta tell you, slow and attentive is not necessarily my style.

I regularly practice Astanga, which requires presence and attention but also, often, blood, sweat and tears.
Which is good because it’s partially that hard work that keeps me present and attentive.

Straight-forward, silent meditation just about kills me.

I often say that my yoga practice has not made a peaceful guru of me — it’s just prevented me from being a complete depressive-neurotic, and driving myself and my family around the bend. True enlightenment’s still a long way off.

So yesterday, I found myself in the midst of slow and attentive, and my first reaction was to speed it up and roll my eyes.
I wanted to Move. Sweat. Transcend.
Afterall, I’d paid for this class.
Oh, wait.
No, I hadn’t.

OK. So.
Slow and attentive.
In I went.

A long series of spine rolling postures took me through a meditation on New Orleans and how those levees would hold and streets would dry and houses would stand in the face of Gustav.

During the forward bends, laying one half of my body along the other, I felt the relief and tenderness I’d been yearning for since the night before when I ran Nike’s Human Race through the hilly streets of Austin in 96 degree heat. And believe me, I use the word "ran" rather generously. It was bru.tal.

My mind was clear during the sun salutations, and my body was on automatic.
I was pretty much all breath.

As we twisted, I began to free-associate!

And by the time we were on our backs for savasana, I was in the ultimate open dream state.

And you know what my first thought was, at the end?

That it wrapped up a little too quickly.
Seriously.
I wanted to slow it down.
I wanted to stay immersed in what I’d been avoiding 55 minutes earlier.

Sound familiar?

Namaste.

My brother-in-law lost his pop this week.
So did his brother and sister.

Hank wasn’t young, and he wasn’t well, but death still knocks the wind out of you
 when it jumps from behind a corner like that.

Hank was an effusive, eloquent guy who still wrote old fashioned letters.
The kind that require a stamp and an envelope.
I have a feeling he’d like old fashioned poetry, too…

Now When the Number of My Years
— Robert Louis Stevenson

Now when the number of my years
Is all fulfilled, and I
From sedentary life
Shall rouse me up to die,
Bury me low and let me lie
Under the wide and starry sky.

(Read and listen to the rest here…)

Thinking of you all, sweet family…

I tend to occassionally lose things.
OK, slightly more frequently than occassionally.
One winter when I was a kid, I went through three parkas.
My parents were not thrilled.

Nowadays, I emphasize sunglass loss — that’s my specialty — but I’m not above the classic car key snafu, the coffee mug mysteries and, still, the occasional outgarment slip-up.

This summer I lost my camera case. 
Which is, needless to say, better than losing my camera.
Except that the little battery charger was IN there. So when my batteries ran down, that was the end of vacation snaps.
Sigh.

I used to freak and search and freak and search and chastise myself and freak and beat myself and freak whenever I lost something.
Finally I decided that I must have a little loose wire in my brain, others are tighter, what’s a gal to do.
I give it an honest look for a few days and then I move in.
In some cases, like a nifty little fleece vest I lost a few years ago, moving on means hoping that someone just my size (and a little chilly) found it.
In others, I head back to Target and buy yet another pair of really cheap sunglasses that I won’t weep over when the inevitable occurs.

I’d been about to order a new handy-dandy little battery charger for my camera, in fact, when my mom emailed to say my camera case had been found!
In Wisconsin!
Right where I’d left it!
Hurrah!

I vow, I will love and appreciate the power of that perfect little piece of equipment more than I ever did before.
‘Cause the truth is, I never really appreciated it at all. It’s just a lousy battery charger, after all.
Except that I can’t take a flippin’ picture without it!

So, now I’m thinking about how losing things is about not noticing them. 
I mean, how much attention do we pay to cheap sunglasses or one-of-a-thousand coffee mugs?
Or, for that matter, the occasional idea that nags just slightly from the wings of our minds, on the brink of sleep or in the middle of busyness?
We don’t pause.
We don’t listen.
We don’t write down.
And before you know it, it’s gone.
And it might have been just as perfect as my little battery charger.

I’m thinking of paying closer attention to my things.

So to speak…

I don’t know how to put this into academic-speak, 
or how to make it map neatly to a grading rubric, 
but what I think I want to say is this:

This Semester, You Can Expect

Some fear
Some titillation
At least one full week of writers’ block

Some pride

Some jealousy

Some satisfaction

Some despair

Some clunkers

Some more clunkers

At least one whole page of clunkers

Some strokes of brilliance

Some overwhelm

Some overconfidence

Some doubt

Some determination

Some good ideas

Some flattery

Some criticism

Some questions

At least one good answer

Some ego

Some attitude

Some humility

Some headaches

Some sleeplessness

Some exhaustion

Some thirst

Some drought

And that drought, combined with at least one good lightning strike, guarantees a little fire.

If you’re lucky.

If we all are…

OK, OK. I get it.

Summer’s over.

September is drawing nigh.

I get it, but it ain’t easy. 
I love the pace and the sunshine and the mandated fun that is summer. 
It’s hard to hang up the swimsuits and move on. 

That said, I also love a fresh start. A clean sheet. A blank page.
And — January 1st notwithstanding — there is no fresh start like a new school year. 

I worship the academic calendar for its intuitive sense of when we need a breather and when we’re ready to kick it in.
(Well, maybe not ready-ready but, um, willing to get ready. Like, um, now.)

Here goes. 
I’m jumping in. 

Back to blogging on a nearly daily basis. If you haven’t all given up on me by now. I had no earrthly idea that I wanted or needed a break from blogging until this summer when I just pretty well stopped. And it turned out to be a relief. Go figure. That said, I have three big ol’ purple post-its here with all the things I’m eager to post about so consider yourselves warned.

Back to teaching new students who come armed with new words and new questions that make me think. Nothing keeps me on my toes more than teaching. Well, okay, parenting, I guess. But for the same reason. I often have a plan — a good plan, I think to myself — and yet there is always the unanticipated loop that gets thrown when humanity and creativity are involved. I love that loop. When it doesn’t drive me to the brink.

Back to packing lunches, signing papers and biking the girls up to school in the mornings. As of yesterday we have a 2nd and a 4th grader at our house. Which is staggering to me, but they don’t seem the least bit flustered. They could not stop stepping on each other’s toes afterschool, so eager were they to tell me about their new teachers and tablemates and the surprising thing that happened to so-and-so over the summer. I might have to implement a buzzer system if this giddy greek chorus keeps up.

Back to my desk. September is like Christmas for me. I get to unwrap the ideas I’ve been gifted by the muse these last few months and I get to try ’em out. I get to see if they spin, fly, hold water and laugh & cry like a real baby.

Happy New Year!

When I was a kid, we didn’t have TV until I was about 9.

We lived way up in the mountains and there weren’t yet the radio waves or satellite signals necessary to reach us. (Which was, of course, a blessing in that my sister and I had to entertain ourselves with hokey throwbacks like books, board games and playing outside.)

But then, all in one fell swoop, television arrived.
And so did the Olympics.

This was back in the day when the Olympics were every four years — both summer and winter — rather than the alternating two year schedule we’re on now. Meaning: it was a very, very big deal.

At our house, we not only got a TV — we got TV tables.
We ate our casserole dinner and drank our milk and watched Dorothy Hamill take the gold.
We thought we’d died and gone to heaven.

Then, a couple of weeks later, the Olympics wrapped up and suddenly (shocker!) there was nothing on TV.

We’d been duped.

We thought TV was dramatic. Thrilling. Heart-wrenching. True.
But it wasn’t. 
It was just a big, black box with too many commericals and a lot of flat-looking shows we weren’t allowed to watch.
We felt the agony of defeat, to be sure.

That was a little over 32 years ago and I still feel pretty much the same way:
TV is a lousy con game, but I love the Olympics.

Really, they’re more like a good book, a good board game or playing outside.
They’re compelling, competitive, exciting, unpredictable. 
They’re real, true human drama, which is what the reality TV folks have been trying to fake for the past 5 years.
They’re inspiring, which I’m a sucker for.

So, I’ve got my eye on the prize. 
This weekend.
Beijing.
A place that’s really too polluted and too controversial to be hosting.
But the Olympics are the great equalizer.
They can be held in Sarajevo or Salt Lake.
Jamaicans can ride the bob sleds and 41-year-old moms like me (well, okay, not exactly like me) can go for broke.

This weekend there’s finally something on TV…

In my day-to-day life, I’m surrounded by an amazing abundance of good people — people I’ve chosen and people who’ve chosen me. 
Honorary aunts and uncles, sisters and brothers.
Honorary children I get to mother with my own.

I am lucky to have this family, because I live a long, long way from the family I was born to.
Most of them live half way across the country and some live half way across the world.

This summer I am with lots of that distant family, the family I grew up with.
We’ve come together to do the things our moms & dads and grandmothers & grandfathers did when they were our age. 
We’ve come together to teach our kiddos to swim and eat sweet corn and talk.
We’ve come together to see stars and hear crickets.
We’ve come together to choose each other.

I am lucky to have this family. 
Miles don’t seem to matter as much you’d think they would, so long as we can come together every now and again.

It helps to have a rambly old wooden cottage with a long sleeping porch and a deep lake.
It helps to have favorite foods and funny sayings and old family card games.
It helps to have a little vacation time and some frequent flier miles.

That’s what’s summer’s for, if you ask me.

But come September?
Blogs and books.
Puttin’  the time/space continuum to shame.

I’ve missed ya’ll, and I just spent the last hour or so catching up on blog reading.
Another fine, fine way to come together… 

I am lucky.

Hello, Friends.

I wasn’t exactly planning to take a blog vacation.

It just sorta happened.

I’ve been on the road.

My wireless went out.

And when I got it up and running I needed to devote my computer time to communicating with my students.

And when I wasn’t doing that I wanted to swim.
And water ski.
And play with my kids.
And play with my husband.
And play with my sister.
And play with my cousins.
And go to the farmer’s market.
And fish.
And sail.
And kayak.
And read.
And even, occasionally, nap.

Blogging went by the by.

But it seems I worried a few folk since I didn’t announce my departure.

So today I’m checking in to say that I’m alive and well and tucked into a rambley old cottage on a tree-ringed lake in Wisconsin. The hummingbirds empty the feeder every other day, the sky is blue and there are no motor boats allowed on Sundays. 

Really, you don’t need to worry about me…