One Big Anomaly

Anomaly.  Irregularity.  Difference.  Variance.  Glitch.  Inconsistency.  Aberration.  Contradiction. 

However you want to slice that pie, you end up with a bite of chocolate in one forkful and a bite of vanilla in the next forkful. 

Anomaly happens to be my favorite from the list.  And there are plenty of them happening around me. 

Like snow on the ground on the first - second - third and quite possibly fourth day of May, surrounded by a vivid bed of green grass.

Like a soccer ball in my yard and I do not have children nor do I play soccer.  I love my neighborhood with its kids who play in the street.  Makes me feel all fuzzy inside.   

But there's also more than a fair shake of the whole anomaly business going on within me.  Like...

Wearing gold and silver jewelry at the same time.  Mmmmhhmmm.  I'm not afraid.    

Being a morning person and also a night owl because they are both the times when I function best.  The in-between part is what gets me at times.  I think from now on I shall refer to myself as a morning owl.   

Having a house that is organized ridiculous clean and a car that is an absolute sh** pit.  The way my car looks is me airing out my dirty laundry.  House on the other hand, neat as a pin.  To the point of obsession.

Not believing in picking music from the jukebox to be played for a crowd in an establishment, yet totally believing in voicing my opinion on every aspect of their individual lives.  Maybe even doing some bossing.  Picking their music though, I don't believe in that.  It feels like I'm stepping over the line. 

I'm an absolute fussy about grammar and sentence structure with myself and the chicken wings.  I believe in red scharpies people.  Unless I'm texting.  Then all bets are off.  I will throw in a "u" and an "r" and spell "nite" and never use a comma or an apostrophe nor even dream of using a semi-colon and it's all dandy with this fussy because for some reason, I believe texts will not carry on.  It's as if they don't exist.  

Possessing the need to be around people and with people but talking on the phone drives me batty.  Just do not enjoy it.  In person?  I'm all over that.  And you do not even want to get me started on voice-mails.  Eww.  

Living and breathing by a planner, a blue planner with a cute bird on it, but tending to run approximately ten minutes late.  I never used to be that way.  It kind of drives me nuts that I am now one of those people.  The late people.  Momma D. even texted me on Easter morning with, "Hey.  Don't be late.  It's going to be a short service."   

Pairing brown and black in the same ensemble. Granted it has to be just the right shade of yellowish-mustardish-dirty-goldish brown and not chocolate brown, but I do believe there is a way to make the duo compatible.  Sister Pister whole heartedly disagrees with me on this. I keep right on doing it.

Do you want to know another synonym for anomaly?  Abnormality.  But I just can't agree with that word to describe the above.  Rather, I choose to believe it's the vision of normality. 

Maybe. 

For the Love of Words

This week, the chicken wings, myself, and my practicum student from the college have been studying figurative language.  More specifically, my favorite kind of figurative language...IDIOMS.  I tell you what, they are the spark of writing and the spice of life.  

The chicken wings are coming up with idioms left and right and doing research on them at night and using them when they speak and writing them and all of this makes my heart very happy.  Because just like I try my darnedest to get those chicken wings to become real readers who read for personal connections, I also am a bleeding heart for having them become real writers who write for a purpose...that purpose being their reader.  All year long, I run around the room waving my hands and clutching my chest yelling, "Your writing needs to make your reader FEEL something!"  Otherwise, there is no point in writing.  The purpose is out the window as no one will read the words.  We are at the point in the year now, when the chicken wings talk about their writing with each other, I actually hear them say things like "I don't feel anything right now.  You need to use stronger words."  And at those times, I actually pause and have a moment.  My thesis was all about my philosophy towards my own writing and teaching writing.  Passion is necessary when you have to write upwards of two hundred pages!  

Anyways, idioms this week.     

Here are some of our favorite new ones we have discovered...

Chickens come home to roost. 

Means that your words and actions will come back to you full circle.  

A leopard can't change its spots.

Means you shouldn't change who you are. 

There's no need to make a storm in a tea cup.     

Don't make a federal case out of that. 

Both means that you are making a big deal out of something you don't need to.  

Trip the light fantastic.

Means that you are doing well...more specifically, we found it means you are being a good dancer.  

Don't throw a bird. {very similar to -Don't have a cow!} 

Means to settle yourself down. 

Now, I'm going to talk about a funny moment for a second.  Yesterday I was sitting on a desk popping out idioms to the chicken wings and explaining that some idioms become cliche' and we were all laughing and having a good ol' time.  Then one chicken wing yelled out, "You make up idioms all the time!!  Like when you say -it's time to come back to Earth- you don't actually mean that we are floating around, you just mean we need to get our self control back."  Then I said to him, "That's right.  Your teacher will one day be famous for making up idioms.   And they will not be cliche'.  Now, get yourself back to Earth please."  

A face full of swing.

Means having something take you back...throw you off your game so to speak.  A girl chicken wing made this up when she was telling a story about her weekend at the park.  I like it.  We use it.  Maybe one day she'll be famous.  

The diamond does not make you happy. 

Means money can't buy everything.   

All around Robin Hood's barn.

Means taking the long way to get there.  

Use your loaf.

Means use your head.  Think smart. 

He's just talking through his hat.

Means nonsense is coming out his mouth. 

Get down to brass tacks. 

Means to become serious about something. 

We've been watching fireworks on the 4th of July this week while being submerged in the land of IDIOMS.  I sure do love my job.  I sure do love figurative language.  Next up is personification; maybe we'll talk about the grid roads breathing for the first time during the spring thaw after being locked up all winter.  

A twirl and a foot stomp for that!   

If you are wondering what a grid road is, you probably are not spending your days with a Canadian like I am.  My practicum teacher from the college comes from the land of the maple leaf and she says that gravel roads are grid roads.  I told her I would be stealing that.  Grid road.  I like it. 

These pictures have nothing to do with idioms, they are about another love of mine.  Jewelry.  Momma Debi bought that little birdie necklace and tree bracelet for me last Saturday during the crazy busy day and I'm digging them.  I feel as if I have been wearing roots on my wrist and wings next to my heart this week.  

Symbolic about jewelry even?  Someone please help me. 

No Frame

The book I finished yesterday is titled Strength in What Remains. It's an account of the will and perseverance of a man from Burundi, Africa who survives genocide and civil war. Deo, in a turn of unbelievable events, makes his way to the United States and fights his inner struggle and holds those inner demons and remembrances at bay while learning to function in a foreign world.

Throughout the course of reading the book, I highlighted several passages. Maybe it's in reading words like these, that the feeling of contentment finds me as I realize my life is oh so very good and that I do not know true struggle.  Not even close.  I don't even have a half of a frame of reference.  My life is ridiculously easy.  These words serve as a vivid reminder of that fact...

"He peered out the train windows, at station signs that came and went too quickly for him to study, at blue and yellow lights flashing by in the tunnels, at the reflection of his own frightened-looking face in the glass. He told himself he didn't care if this pointless journey never ended. What seemed like another voice was saying this was a catastrophe, he might be lost forever. Then he began to feel too weary to argue with himself. This weariness was strong. It was like something outside of him, like the clangings and screechings of the train, of the rocking rolling train. 'No one is control of his own life,' he told himself. The thought seemed to comfort him. He dozed off for awhile."

"He imagined the other staff thought he was dim-witted. That was what so many assumed when you didn't speak their language well. So many people, he thought, don't listen to the content of what you say but only to the noises you make."

"Sometimes Deo would come home from school, thinking, 'I'm learning things my parents don't know.' Sometimes he'd hand a textbook to his mother and ask her to read it, and she would hold it upside down. But she forgave him. She told him once, 'If I can send my children to school, then no one is ever going to tell me that I didn't go to school. If my child went, I am educated, because I have an educated child.'"

"It was easy here to forget how to 'appreciate the moment,' how to 'wait for the right time.' And this applied to the development of people. One shouldn't expect anyone to be complete at any given time. Everyone was 'on a pilgrimage.' She had wanted to understand Deo's and to help him on his way."

"'I have a theory,' she replied. 'I remember thinking long ago, 'We're loved infinitely for however little bit of time we have.' And it's not ultimately tragic to die at any age. Whether we're talking about being blown into little pieces or what is ultimate tragedy, I just think there isn't ultimate tragedy except for evil, and God doesn't will any evil. And we're surrounded by--I tell the little kids about the Good Shepherd, I think it's a great image for them, but the vine and the branches is great, too--but whether we feel it or not, we are surrounded by this tremendously loving presence, and that covers every second of every day. Of everybody.'"

"'Distracting pain with pain,' Deo called this practice. It was common among peasants in Rwanda and Burundi, who had little access to pharmacology but a lot of experience with pain. It was a gruesome and harmful form of palliation, and for Deo it expressed a psychological truth with broad application--that pains exist in layers, with the most excruciating at the top obscuring the pains beneath. So many years of paying attention to the topmost pain of war, he felt, had left many people numb to all the rest." 

"She told an art critic years later, 'I believe it is human to hope to find order and a connection between one's soul and the world outside.'"

"Crossing a sunlit, tiled floor, we passed a sleeping bag, Emmanuel's bed.  'That's how Emmanuel sleeps,' Deo told me.  'I asked him how can he stay here.  He told me, 'This is my home.' And his wife died here and his children, and he's still here.  And he's still here, you know?  I mean, that, as pain goes, that has no word.  And he stays here.'"

The written word, the messiness of language and communication, is a cherished part of my every day.  Reading is my avenue for reflection and when the chicken wings leave me every spring, one of my greatest hopes is that somehow through all of my craziness of reading aloud the parts of Because of Winn Dixie that literally take my breath away while bringing tears to my eyes and all of our questioning, predicting, connecting, inferencing, and thinking while they read real books, that I have instilled in them some sense of the true power of words.  Instead of simply ingesting the letters and the phonics, I want each one of my of my students to truly "get" reading.  And when I meet with my little book clubs every day, one of the first questions out of my mouth is, "So, what did the words make you feel like this time?"

It's amazing what they say back.

I have a saying outside of my classroom that states, "And when you read, she said, 'The world is your oyster.'"  Not an original of mine, but surely a keeper.      
   

Because They are Pretty That's Why

Sometimes they just speak to me.  Call my name from where ever they are sitting.  And, I just know.  I know that I need to experience them...read them.  Books.  Sometimes they just speak to me before I even pick them up.  At those moments, there is no other explanation or way to explain it other than that.  Other times, I pick them up simply because they are pretty.  Simply because they will look fabulously at home on my shelves.  At those times, I really do judge a book by its cover.   Or its spine.  I'm all about a good looking spine.  It's an odd thing.  Yet another quirk in the ever growing quirk file.   

Yes, I buy books because they are pretty and then I secretly hope because they caught my eye, which is a very shallow assessment, that somehow that shallowness will lead to a deeper connection with the book.  

My secret hope is maybe the book will teach me something or make me ask myself hard questions or the language will make me want to eat it with a spoon because it's just that well written.

It has worked out for me more often than not.  Which just goes to show you that when authors choose a presentation style for their work, they know.  They know what it takes to protray the theme to the wanderer in a book store.  I've said it before, but this exact reason is why I can not stand when the original cover of a novel is changed to the movie cover.  Makes me cringe.  Anyways, the whole buying books because they are pretty and will look at home on my shelves works for me.    

Here are a few of my recent {pretty} favorites.  

Little Bee crafted by Chris Cleave.  First let me say the only, and I mean only reason, I choose this book was because it was pretty.  The orange cover and spine.  The beautiful, artistic loopy writing.  The style of the whole cream tag.  Seriously. 

Then, I started to read it and by the time I had devoured the first chapter I knew that this pretty book would quickly become one of my all time favorites.  The language in this book will make you wonder how any one person could ever be graced with such a gift of words.  It stops you and makes you go back and reread and then maybe even reread a passage one more time.  And, on top of the syrupy language that I wish I could pull off the page, Little Bee is a work.of.art that made me think about how far I would really go to help a complete stranger.  Made me think of the injustices in our society tiered world more than I ever had before.  Made me  irate that it's a story that actually could have happened...maybe even has happened in some way, shape, or form in the modern "civilized" world we all claim to be a part of.  Moved me.  A case when my extreme shallowness led to deep.   

 

Same Kind of Different as Me crafted by Ron Hall and Denver Moore.  I must admit I did not buy this book.  Momma Debi had it at her house and I promptly told her I would be taking that book home because it would look lovely on my shelf.  The font choice is what first caught my eye.  And then, upon closer inspection, the railroad tracks sign.  I liked the sign set against the tan.  I feel the need to say right now, "Hi my name is Amy and I notice strange things."    

Momma Debi told me I could have the book for my shelf.  She knows how I am.  But, she also told me I should read the book before I placed it to sit pretty.  She wouldn't tell me why though, just that I should read it.  It was early last spring.  About the same time she was diagnosed with cancer.  I cried many times while reading this true story.  Many times.  And remember, I'm not a crier.  My questions about faith and spirituality were brought to the fore front of my conscious.  What makes a person a Christian?  How do you have a close relationship with God in this crazy world?  Can a person really ever change who they are at their core?  And, then, there was the cancer.  The reading about the cancer.  Reading about someone going through a cancer battle right when I knew my mom, one of my lifebeats, had...well, I can't even go there. 

This is Where I Leave You crafted by Jonathon Tropper.  I picked this book up because of two things.  The title.  Seriously, that's a perfect title.  This is where I leave you.  Love it.  And, the colors.  The colors are exactly what my current aesthetic leans toward.  That's it.  It was as simple as...I'm in love with this title and on top of that, these colors are right on.  The only two reasons I brought this book home.   

Hilarious.  This book is hilarious.  Raunchy.  But, hilarious.  The voice of the story is a middle aged man going through a divorce.  The character's wit and way of viewing awkward situations made me literally laugh out loud.  It is a tad "manish" in its style...it can be high school boy raunchy in places, but still hilarious.  Not only are the words funny, but the plot also has some valid lessons about moving on and forgiving; knowing when to let go for your own self-preservation and for your own soundness of mind.  Funny and a tad meaningful, that's always a winning combination.

Lark and Termite crafted by Jayne Anne Phillips.  The color of the spine caught my eye when it was on the shelf at the book store.  Then, when I turned it over in my hand, the little clothes on the line won me over...right there.  It didn't stop there however, the title was intriguing.  I knew I would buy it.  And, I did.   

It's a book that is written in a flash back style...at times, you are in a war with a young soldier and at other times, you are in a small town with a high school aged girl and her younger brother.  It's an interesting book as the little boy in the story has a disability.  I took it be some form of autism, but the story is set in a time period when that wasn't even a word so you never really know for sure what it is.  No one in the story seems to be concerned with having a name or a label for whatever it is and that speaks volumes.  I will admit this was not my most favorite story of all time, but still a book that is well crafted.  And, the love that exists between the sister and brother will remind you that kind of love...non-judging, true, loyal...can exist.   

Horse Boy crafted by Ruper Isaacson.  This book actually doesn't have a home on my shelves but rather, it lives on my coffee table because I like the front of it that much.  The photograph on the cover makes me want to have the ability to capture a moment that profound.  I mean seriously, even the horse is feeling the happiness!  The photograph is perfection.  One could only hope that at some point in his or her life, there will exist a picture of themselves living a moment like this. 

Horse Boy is a true story written by a father who conjurs up the idea to go on a conquest to try and heal his son from autism.  Turns out, the whole family goes on this unbelievable journey to see Mongolian shamans...in Mongolia.  The journey to simply get to the location is crazy in itself.  The story is not boring that is for sure...it's told with unbelievable description and imagination.  Your heart beats right with the father's as he just won't give up on his hope that his son will be healed.  The magic of the shamans is interesting to say the least and it will make you question your beliefs about Western medicinal practices.  Overall, it's inspiring.  Makes you want to go and do something.  Really do something.  

Choosing books because they are pretty is probably not the best literary method for selecting your next great read; in fact, it's really an odd thing to stand in the book store and think about what will look the best on your shelf at home.  But, it works for me.  Most of the time, I end up with a story that makes me feel something.  And, I truly believe that's the whole point of reading.

So, I actually recommend it.  Go to the book store and see what catches your eye.  You might be surprised at what you find.  And, really, even if you don't end up loving the story, you end up with a pretty looking shelf.  If you are anything like me, that in itself will make your heart happy.