You may have discerned that my trademark drunk and disorderly behavior around town and Twitter has been noticeably scarce. Dear friends, this is happening:
That little blob is a KBO/OllyOllyO mashup, due February 2012. This ought to be interesting.
I’m so grateful for…
1. The garlicky smell of roasting pork in the oven.
2. A new sweater enveloping me from the persistent cold outside.
3. Seeing a seven-year-old’s eyes light up as she decorates a gingerbread house, making me, for the first time this year, happy for the holiday season.
4. T-shirt sheets. Holy shit, what have I been doing for the last ten winters? These are amazing. They’re stretchy like my favorite blend t-shirts and are perfect for creating a cozy cocoon. Every time I get into bed I get a twinge of delight.
5. Echostar, for inventing DVR technology which has enabled my addictions.
Chris and I went to Iowa for Thanksgiving. Despite the fact that our car had transmission problems that we’re going to have to rectify soon, we had a great time with my family. We drove up Thursday and had a chili and soup dinner, then did the whole turkey and fixin’ on Friday. We avoided the whole Black Friday nonsense and were able to run to the store and get last minute supplies if we needed them. We woke up late; my mom and grandma and I drank coffee in our robes and read the paper and gossiped. It was awesome. During the day, my mom, grandma, and sister-in-law and I played Scrabble and drank spiked cranberry slushies, which will probably end up being our new tradition. My sister-in-law is aces at Scrabble. My dad also got to go hunting; he got a deer, and we got part of the loin, which we ate last night. So good, by the way. The only bummer was that none of my friends were home for Thanksgiving, but I hope we’ll be able to meet up at Christmas. From now until the holidays, I’ll be crafting up a storm, trying to furiously finish my long-neglected classwork, working at Kitchen Conservatory, blogging, and reading in preparation for charter school programming.
How was your holiday? What are you looking forward to during the season?
I’ve been so scarce here as of late, and I apologize to my grandma and the seven of you who still care about this little blog. It’s not that I’ve nothing to write about; far from it. I’ve just little time or motivation because I’ve got about ten irons in the fire. God, how sick are my friends of hearing that? Everyone’s fucking busy, duh. I’m lucky as hell to be this busy doing things I really love: writing, working at a kitchen shop, and starting a school. I might be broke, but I’m lucky, lucky, lucky. Except for that dog that keeps eating my bras and glasses.
South City Prep is coming along, but not without some stumbles along the way. I’ll not get into details, only say that we’ve had two pretty substantial catastrophes in the past month that have forced us to rethink our plans. Opening next year isn’t a question, actually, we’ve just had some timelines altered and plans rearranged largely due to circumstances beyond our control. Yes, that’s cryptic, it’s just that things are still up in the air in a few key areas and I want to keep the details under wraps until those areas are 100% done deals, otherwise it’s just a big jinx and my soul can’t handle any more “surprises”, thank you very much, unless said surprise is winning the lottery.
That being said, I think we’re close to signing paperwork on a building, a building I love in a neighborhood I love, a building that could be our permanent home. We should know in the next two weeks or so if all the pieces will fall into place, so please keep our team in your thoughts and prayers. Finding a facility is our biggest challenge next to student enrollment, and we’ve got two backup options if this deal falls through. So many things can’t happen until our facility is finalized, and the time frame for completing any renovation is tight, so we really need good karma pushing our project forward. Once that happens, we can begin the process of actually getting down to the nitty-gritty of programming and recruitment, which is what I can’t wait to dive into. We’ve been so caught up in finding a building, securing financing, working with developers and architects and realtors and loan officers, running numbers over and over again, and trying to get our charter from the state that the actual work we get to do with kids has been on the backburner. I can’t wait until we get to focus on efforts on programming that will provide kids with a high-quality education. I can’t articulate how much I’ve learned, and continue to learn, through this process, both about education in general, but also education in the context of Missouri and how politics and regionalism impacts kids. The political climate in Missouri is not good for urban schools, period. I’ll save that for another day when all our deals are already done and my mouth won’t get others in trouble.
Because the work on the school is taking a lot of my time, probably more than I thought it would, and that time will only increase, so I’ve been considering where I have to scale back my efforts. Unfortunately, many of the things I love are things that don’t earn me a ton of money, so it ends up being hard decisions. I’m on indefinite hiatus from Draft Day Suit, which Sarah and Laurie were oh-so-understanding about. I love those women fiercely, incidentally, so you should continue to support the site and read their writing.
I was also quite frazzled because I was co-chair of a trivia night fundraiser for the Safe Connections Young Professionals Board, of which I am a member. It’s a little harder to plan a “real” trivia night, and by “real”, I mean, not in your backyard with your friend’s karaoke machine and your friends’ band in the garage rocking a smoke machine. Fortunately, the evening was a pretty big success in that we hit our target in terms of profits, and there were few major issues save running out of diet soda and running over on our allotted time at the rental facility because everyone was having a damn good time. But I’m glad it’s over.
Because we need money and I love food, I picked up a new gig at The Stir, writing for their food and party section thrice weekly. My first post is up, and it’s on how to cook perfect bacon because I am a whore for endearing myself to new audiences and pork usually does the trick. This all came about from a random business card exchange at a breakfast table at BlogHer in New York, which means I have actually successfully networked, although I can’t say it was intentional or skillful by any means. ANYWAY, yes, another blog I’m contributing to, but it’s well-paid and will help me stretch my writing and learn not to curse in every post I write. Huzzah!
Finally, my brother and sister-in-law came and visited for the very first time this weekend, and it was so awesome. It was the first time we’d done something just the four of us, and, outside of Iowa’s loss in football, we had so much fun that Andrew and Chris couldn’t take it and fell asleep at 11 PM Saturday night while Liz and I watched The Office and ate snickerdoodles. Most of my friends have moved away from Des Moines, so I feel like my brothers are my last little tether to my hometown, and whenever they give me a glimpse into adult life there, I get to feel home for a little bit. Sometimes, my life there feels like a dream. My sister-in-law and brother were at some social media networking event (Liz works in social media) and ran into my high school boyfriend. She didn’t know who he was, and when they met and that fact became known, I guess it was a little weird. He’s married now to another girl from our high school and has two kids and that just kinda blows my mind. Liz running into him just made me curious as to who he is now. I know I’m a radically different person than I was twelve years ago–is he? I just wonder if you change as much if you stay in town. Maybe you change more? I don’t know. I just wonder where everyone else from this different life of mine ended up on their meandering (or not-so-meandering) paths and if there’s anything left to say to some of these people who shared this common formative experience with me once a drunken buzz wears off. I guess it’s just interesting, and melancholy, to think about people with whom you share so much being strangers. Maybe I’d rather not know.
Tomorrow: this week’s Grace in Small Things, plus links to my interwebs writings this week.
My lovely friend Schmutzie created Grace In Small Things as a way to find joy in life. Since I’m usually railing against something in this space, I figured it would be good for my psyche to start documenting the tiny moments that are keeping me sane, lest I slowly morph into a bitter shrew. I’m going to aim for once a week.
1. New sheet pans, the first nice ones I’ve had, that are big and clean and flat and will last a long time. Thank you, work discount.
2. Seeing my breath for the first time this fall when walking the dogs.
3. Coming home from work yesterday to all the laundry done.
4. Asher sharing an almost-empty peanut butter jar with Neko.
5. The morning ritual of making coffee. I make one french-pressed pot every morning; I’ll never give up grinding my own beans.
It’s Monday. What’s keeping you sane today?
Please to excuse shitty phone picture. I'm lazy.
Neko got spayed on Tuesday because years of Bob Barker’s brainwashing has me fully committed to both Plinko and controlling the pet population. For all the pet Nazis who are all “What took you so long? You should have done that right after you got her, you puppy mill supporter”, she was on antibiotics for mites so she couldn’t be put under until those were over. I was really, really hoping this would calm her down a bit. When I picked her up after her surgery, she was woozy and drugged up and hobbled to the truck. She immediately curled up next to me and spent the rest of the night dozing on a bed we made for her in the living room. At bedtime, I put her in her bed in our room and pet her while she rested her head on my lap. I just kept thinking how she must feel betrayed that I took her to a place where they made her hurt and my soul ached. → continue reading
So my friend is getting married in the Catholic church, and, as part of the activities you have to complete in order to do so, she had to go to a natural family planning class. If you don’t live in the Catholic Capitol of the US, like I do, you might not know that NFP is like the Catholic version of birth control. You can google it if you want more details.
ANYWAY, apparently the class at this particular parish is led by a nice married couple who asked the class what were the three ways a couple could avoid conception. According to the people teaching the class on the sexin’, those methods are: → continue reading
We just spent a few days up at Clear Lake in northern Iowa with my family.We rented a house on the lake, just like we did in Blackduck, Minnesota two years ago, and cruised around on a pontoon while drinking beer and making pathetic attempts at catching fish (except for my dad; he caught fish). We didn’t get to town until almost midnight on Friday, as Chris had a workshop all day and we got caught in some crazy rainstorms that send many a less-fearless driver to the shoulder. Of course, we pull up, and Big Ed is waiting in the street to direct us in, despite the fact that I had received no less than three texts from my sister-in-law about Ed falling asleep in his camp chair. Midnight is really past Big Ed’s bedtime, for reals, but his love for directing parking is limitless. → continue reading
I was totally humbled and thrilled to be named a finalist in the Life category for this year’s BlogHer Voices of the Year contest. I may have peed a little. For those non-BlogHers, members submit posts in one of five categories that they feel were the best posts they’ve read over the past year. Each category is narrowed down to 20 or so finalists, then three are chosen to read at the Community Keynote at the annual BlogHer conference. → continue reading
Sunday I turned 30. Truth be told, I have relatively little anxiety about it. I was too damn stressed last Thursday and Friday, what with the complete failure of my hard drive on Thursday and (delayed) travel to school on Friday. I have a lot of friends who are older than me, which must be because I’m so mature I pronounce it matoor, so it just wasn’t that big of a deal. I’m lucky to have the life that I have; it’s a damn good one. And, I lost 15 pounds in the last three months. → continue reading
Upcoming: Part Two
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