Gesso Sundays

Room Re Arranged!

MUCH happier with the new layout!

Christmas bounty

New Lens

school bipolar

Some days it is so low and hard. Yesterday, we had an assembly for a dead 8th grader... stabbed during a gang fight on Friday. My kids were bad all day, my room a disaster.

Today, we got supplies donated by very enthusiastic big wigs at a fortune 500 and my 8th grade girls were so excited by the knitting they learned they sat through a basketball game crowded around me knitting.... then they took it home for "homework".


I can barely keep up. My head is spinning.

Room's and paint

My Art room:




....it's true love.

Artsonia

http://www.artsonia.com/schools/school.asp?id=38800

Check it out! My kids have worked pretty hard so far and I am proud of their efforts.

of course, we can take 6th grade out of that particular remark.....

What's this?

new work? Can it be?

School Daze

It is probably the most challenging thing I have ever done....this teaching in D.C. I knew going in, of course, that it would be difficult, that D.C. is the 2nd worst district in the US but somehow that did not percolate. Now, however, I am faced daily with groups of children who have been trained to 'get by' not to ' do their best', trained to believe ( 8th grade told me this straight out) that to get their respect I must shout at them like animals, trained to react in anger and violence and give in to fits of rage.

Daily, I hold myself together and ask for their attention, daily I wait and wait and wait until they begin to yell at eachother for quiet. It is progress but it is so slow that I fear the time I have with them will be over before we get any art done.

8th grade, however, has really produced some excellent examples of fine drawing. I am proud of them and the work they are begining to do. Once they realized that getting by isn't enough for me, they buckled down. Now, I sitll hear " this is too hard" at least 20-30 times a day but they are doing it and redoing it when I ask.

Progress.

Slow....slow progress.

Still A Beautiful Life

Art teacher?

I am cleaning and sorting and painting and trying not to lose my mind in the SEA of trash and plaster that is my classroom and a contractor pokes his head through my door shouting," Art Teacher?" I look up all blown out and say "yes??"
"yea, How do you make black?"


I smile.
" It's all colors"

He shakes his head." oh i thought it was purple and green."

So then i explain that that IS mixing all colors and he grins and runs out shouting like a ten year old, " I KNEW IT!"

Beautiful Life

Now...

My morning and day is this: cereal and coffee and endless lesson planning. I forgot all the BS that is involved in a lesson plan, you must justify everything you are doing in minutia. You must plan out your every minute of a class period and explain why you are using it that way. This is good for the students, it's just a total P.I.T.A. for me.

oh well, I wont' lie, i love it. I get a thrill out of imagining the kids doing these lessons.

AND, i reconnected with a dear friend from college and serendipitously she passed a neat website my way. This.It's a connection between two women who have never met and they post an image a day and the image blend together into this awesome record of their twin paths. I am SOO teaching that to my 7th graders. oh yea.

WOOOOO

An ARTICLE on me!!

Sunday Morning

It's sunday, we are laying about in a state of total lethargy, feeling as though this is our right after weeks of travel, work and other busy time away from each other. Yes, it may be one in the afternoon but damnit, if we want to be laying around naked reading Cat Fancy and Twilight....so be it.

Suddenly at the door comes knocking and doorbell ringing. Insistent doorbell ringing. I am scrambling around trying to find clothing as the bell rings and rings and rings, in my panic I start to run downstairs in a t shirt and underwear, to which ( over her laughter) HH hollers "NO! Keziah! you're still half naked!"

When I finally get to the door dressed, sweaty and fully blown out, who do I find but Mary. Now, Mary lives next door. She is an elderly lady and apparently the sister of the man next door, the mentally challenged with a very confusing lisp sister. I kid you not with the lisp, I thought her name was Millie. There she stands, in her house dress with her traditional vacant smile and earnest expression.
" HI!"

I am bedumbed, " Hi Mary....."

She has stopped by to inform me that there are deer in my back yard and I should go look at them BUT to be VERY VERY quiet. VEWY VEWY QUIET!

She repeats this at least 5 times.

The upside to it being Mary at the door is that she seems to have not noticed my bedraggled appearance, anyone else and they surely would have wondered why, at 1 pm, I am still looking this sad.


The deer were very cute. and I was vewy quiet.

Daily Commute

It's not very green of me, I know, I burn easily a tank a week, if not more. It's only for two more weeks and then I'll be into a MUCH more reasonable 1/2 a tank a week or less but really it's just gratuitous. Not to mention the actual horror of commuting an hour each way through D.C. rushhour traffic, I can feel my blood pressure rising. I actually let loose a curse this morning of such virility that i somewhat shocked myself. I also think I must be upping my odds of potential car wreck, spending this much time on the road. That's how it works, right? I do know that i very nearly killed a pedestrian yesterday as he bolted across a four lane highway, highly unadvised behavior on his part. I also watched a truck sideswipe the car behind me this morning, good times on the beltway.

The upside to all this is that I'm thoroughly enjoying my book on CD, The Witches of Chiswick. It's bizarre and satirical and hilarious sometimes, narrated by the author it is full of dry humor and a truly ridiculous plotline. I find myself looking forward to my drive and bummed when i arrive home because i am hoping for the next chapter.

Good Morning

Let me just say how much I LOVE my shower in the morning. On days when I get the chance to shower during daylight, that is. It is flooded with warm yellow light and so bright that despite my exhaustion I cannot help but to feel as though the world is the most wonderful place and my day will glorious. The feeling doesn't last much further than the bathroom but it is EUPHORIC.

I am almost a week into HH being away in the UK and aside from a few sobfests, I'm doing ok. I do wish so much that I could be there, we conferenced this morning and since she has a laptop she took it to the window and showed me the view....beautiful of course. I love modern technology by the way. Conferencing makes me happy and terribly sad at the same time. I am so happy to see her face and hear her voice at the same time but also it just makes me feel the empty air around me that much more.

This weekend, I am a Domestic Dorothy. I have to :

1. stain the new bed frame
2. pull the weeds on the front walk
3. plant herbs in the backyard
4. lesson plan
5. knit the orange scarf
6. get birdseed
7. get window frosting stuff


Yep. Domestic Dorothy

You Said

One night as we were stumbling home in our heels and gucci boots, you said to me, " What will happen when we are too old to dance away our sorrow?" and I said to you, "Never. We will never be too old".

Now, you still do and I sit here feeling nostalgic and wondering, what do I do now? Because of course, I know it can't last forever and its time is gone but now what?

Because honestly, some nights, I want to put on my 4 inch red heels and my trashy and tight black shirts and dance until 6 am to whatever pop star is about to fall embarrassingly in the next six months until I can't remember why I am dancing. Until all I know is that sweat is running down my face and the back of my knees and I feel pure and burned out.

I miss that and I miss you.

Many others

are doing so you know...I'm a follower. A daily self portrait for 6 months to a year.

Winds of Change

Yes, my life is a tornado of rapid change and while it is very overwhelming some days, it also just feels right. I am moving tomorrow, into a lovely cape cod that I ADORE with neighbors named 'butterworth' and lovely rose bushes in need of pruning. I am starting a new position in about a month and a half and my brain is FULL of a storm of ideas, but it looks like they will have to be executed in paper and pencil since we have no budget and no supplies. Time to look into grants!

I am just so ready for this shift. I have spent 4 lovely years with the babies and learned a lot about myself and about running a household. I have slowed down emotionally and leveled out considerably. I have my time as a nanny/housewife to thank for that. I am grateful for the quiet suburban life I've led for the last 4 years. I am ready now to take on the challenge of the city and its poverty and grime and hopefully make a difference. I cannot wait to get into my new room and set it up for kids!!

I heart change!!