Altered books, and other strange things

Poetry. That's the unit the 9th graders are working on in English right now, and it is all consuming. They have to create an altered book for their poems, and have been working on it for about a month now (mostly on my dining room table). What you do is: take an old hardbound book, glue the pages together in batches, and then decorate them like scrapbook pages with your poems on them. Well, since I have all the left-over supplies from teaching all those art classes, I ended up with many other kids here working on their books. There is paper, wire, chain, glue, tape, and lots of other strange miscellaneous stuff on my table, and I'm not touching it until the books are turned in - which is tomorrow. What has been cool is being able to read the poems, which are funny and sad and touching and silly and some heartbreaking. Dean actually wrote a poem about how hard it is to get up in the morning, and he has a line that says something like "my mom yells 'get up, you lout'", which is NOT true at all. When I asked him about that line, he said "yeah, but it rhymes", so apparently that was more important at the moment than truth. :) He wrote a haiku about coffee, which he loves, and one of his friends wrote a poem about tea, which he drinks because he hates coffee. Pretty funny. Anyway, then they have a Poetry Night on Tuesday, where each one reads one of their poems, and it is not only the freshmen, but also sophomores and a few juniors and seniors. It's a pretty big deal, and they publish a small book with many of the poems in it. So, Monday night, we pick up and reorganize all the stuff on the table, then put it away. I'll try to get a photo or two of the book and put it up for you all to see.

We went to the RVC play yesterday afternoon. They did Harvey (you know, Jimmy Stewart and the big white rabbit), and the kids did a fabulous job with it. Then we came home, some friends came over, and we had a feast of BBQed ribs, baked rice, garlic bread, beans, fruit, salad, and this fabulous chocolate/raspberry cake for dessert. We were stuffed! We had so much fun, just talking and laughing, and catching up, and it was in the mid 70s yesterday, so we sat outside and visited until about 8:00. Because the dining room table was covered with stuff (see above), we adults had the kitchen and the kids sat on the couch and watched a movie while they ate. Kinda hard to eat ribs on your lap, but nobody seemed to mind.

What to plan for a boy's 15th birthday, which is coming all too quickly? Any ideas?

What to tell you???

OK, I'm just as bad a blogger as I am a phone caller, so I'm sure there are lots of things to say. I have just been making my way through life and not sure what needs to be told. So, if you already know something here, just skip over it, OK?

Dean's basketball team finished with only one loss and solidly in first place. That's fun, but now it's over. He isn't joining the golf team after all, because we just couldn't manage the transportation issue. That's a bummer, because he really wanted to golf.

My new bosses are wonderful, and at my three-month review they agreed to adjust my hours. I am now working from 7:15 - 3:45 (officially), so I usually end up getting out of there by 4:00. I can actually get home in time to get dinner going and supervise homework, etc without feeling frantic. I was even able to pick up some kids at school last week and didn't have to rely on someone else to get them home. I am so grateful.

I'm trying to get the summer plans figured out, and that's always a bit difficult, but this year will be especially so. I'm actually starting to look forward to Dean getting his driver's license next year. (Please tell me I didn't just say that!) Calendar rearranging is going to be my biggest project this week.

I've been hating my office at home for a few years now, as it is not very efficient. So I've been trying to work out a new plan for it without spending a bunch of money on new furniture and stuff. I finally got it figured out yesterday, so am excited to just get some time to tear it apart and redo it. When it is done, it will be nice usable space, which will encourage me to keep it organized and discourage other people from just putting miscellaneous stuff in here. It will take a few weeks, I think, but my goal is to get it done before the end of April. That is a nice, long time away and it should be great when done. And the best part is that I need to get just a couple things and it won't cost much. Yahoo! Now if I can get something done with the yard this year, that would be a miracle!

Next Saturday Allen and I will have been married 17 years. There were times I thought that would never happen, and times I thought that our life was forever. Now I know that we just keep loving each other because we choose to, even when it's hard. Sometimes it's simply one day at a time, but here we are, all these years later, and I know some of you are shaking your heads. Amazing, isn't it? I better get taken out to dinner, though!

So, life moves forward, and days go by quicker than I think they should. If you are one of the many people I owe a phone call to, know that you are on my mind. I love you all.