Ooh La La... Paris!

Back in December I dropped by my school's tiny silent auction and placed the minimum bid for these Eiffel Tower earrings.

Tonight I will wear them to the big event for which our gym has been transformed to glow like the streets of Paris. The entrances are street markets with flowers, wine, and bread. At the center stands the base of the Eiffel Tower, reaching as high as the eye can see--well, there is a ceiling, which limits how high the eye can see, but the effect is stunning.

Tonight I'll work behind the big board, ooh-la-la-ing as the bids soar for riding lessons with Olympic Gold Medal winners; a designer chicken coop and heritage chickens; a flight in a civilian Marine Corps Fighter.

Then a quick dinner, and I'm off to run my Live Auction PowerPoint and record the bids for trips to the US Opens (Golf or Tennis, anyone?) to the Caribbean (Abaco, Anguilla, or Nevis?), to Molokai, Tuscany, Gascony, or the Kalahari.

By the time I drive my trusty Subaru back up the windy drive to our mountain chalet, I'll be ready to crawl into bed. Nothing makes me happier than doing a good day's work. This auction provides me with many opportunities--faculty development (including my trip to New York for the Reading and Writing Project Reunion), classroom equipment like our new SMART boards and our Elmo projector, and special programs all over our campus.

And this summer, John and I will take a dream vacation to Paris for a bike and barge adventure. We'll stay for a few days in the same apartment that someone will bid on in the Live Auction tonight. In about two months, I'll stand at the base of the Eiffel Tower. I'm smiling.

Et maintenant, ma robe noire...

Cool color

I'm fading fast. Long day. The morning was Grandparents and Special Friends Day at school. My 3rd graders performed 12 different puppet shows at 10 minute intervals, having written the scripts and drawn the scenery over the past two weeks since our trip to Williamsburg. Whew. Done.

These earrings were a gift from the parent of a student some years ago. The tarnishing silver seemed appropriate for the morning, and the color for my cool colored clothing, to match my desire for a calm, peaceful day.

I arrived home to discover my son enjoying the movie Zulu as he packed to leave for the summer. Together we watched our favorite scenes from this early Michael Caine film: Zulu warriors and Welsh soldiers singing to each other in challenge and tribute. An early mother's day gift, as my husband pointed out.

Now my daughter Phoebe has arrived safely home from Beach Week with a friend. Time for sleep.

A Lovely Gift

This pair of earrings was a gift from the young woman from Calcutta who lived with us for a couple of years in Savannah while she studied art at the Savannah College of Art and Design. She made me these earrings at the bead shop where I helped her to get a job.

I am so fortunate to have known kind and generous friends such as Lovely. I hope that life has been kind and generous to her.

Set Goals, and Carry On

April 10th is the 100th day of a non-leap year. This date became fixed in my memory two years ago when I taught a sweet and squirrelly boy named Cam, born on April 10th; I told him that I would always think of him on the 100th day of the year, and I will.

On April 10th, I started thinking about the next milestone in my year of earrings: one third of the year: the 122.33rd day. May 2nd was the 122nd day of 2011; May 3 was the 123rd. Although I'd been thinking about this milestone for almost a month, my number path and stink bugs distracted me. Today is the 124th day of 2011.

So today I chose celebratory earrings, enameled metal with etched silver. I love his pair, a gift from a student years ago. They are hanging from a knitting needle that my mother used to knit an afghan during the year she was hospitalized for TB treatment. I keep this pair of knitting needles next to my bed, as reminders of the determination and resilience I learned from my mom.

Before Nike, my mom lived the motto, Just Do It. Born in 1923, she grew up during the Depression and came of age during World War II. Keep Calm and Carry On was her mode of existence. When I was 4, she entered the hospital with the expectation that her surgery and treatment would last a year. She never talked to me about that year. I wonder if she marked milestones like 100 days, 122.33 days, 182.5 days...

My dad took this photo of me with my brother in the fall of 1960, soon after she left home, to take to her in the hospital. During the year she was gone, we moved into her dreamhouse, the one she had found after two years of persistent house-hunting. We had a series of housekeepers. I left preschool and started kindergarten. My mom arrived home on Halloween, 1961.

The four of us posed for this Christmas card photo soon after her return. How I loved getting home from school every day to find her at home. With half of one lung and a third of the other removed, doctors insisted she never exert herself. No one would have guessed. She just carried on, living the active life of the housewife and mother she had dreamed of being. Just do it.

Maintaining My Balance

I had a lot to balance at school today:

• keeping an eye on yesterday's number path,
• trying to have a "regular" day,
• organizing our mentoring project (3rd and 8th graders working together to "deadhead" hundreds of daffodils around the campus
• setting up my laptop to Skype on the SMART board with a student who is visiting family in Holland

• completing projects to be ready for Friday's Grandparents Day

I thought these earrings that I made last summer would inspire the right kind of balance--flexible, not rigid; moving, not static. When I got home, I wandered around in search of a good photo spot, and settled on the wisteria vine the climbs a post onto our deck.

As I snapped my photos, I was thinking about a joke I heard on the radio comparing wisteria with the Middleton sisters: attractive, sweet smelling, and climbing with determination. I don't envy either of them the balancing act they've undertaken.

But when I went inside, I discovered a whole new balance challenge. When John left this morning, he took our little shop vac with him, full of stink bugs for a colleague's middle school science project. I decided to set up soapy-water traps on our window sills and encourage the stink bugs to drop in.

In our bedroom, this is simple. The windows are easy to reach. And stink bugs are pretty cooperative: they avoid predators by flipping and dropping, often right into the waiting soapy water.

But our living room windows are high--maybe 16 feet from the floor. So this afternoon I found myself balancing high on a ladder (not too high... but high!), using a broom to sweep the bugs toward the bread pans containing soapy water. (They required some balancing, too: on the way up the ladder, on the window ledge, and moving the set-up from window to window three times before I gave up to cook some supper.)

I have a bucket full of stink bugs to dump in the morning.

Tomorrow when we get home, the windows will be full of stink bugs again.

Balance is key.

Mosaics in May

Mexican mosaics adorned my ears today. My husband bought this pair for me almost 20 years ago when he visited Mexico during a music conference in San Diego.

They were perfect for today! Not only was I leading a project in which 100 children made 100 mosaic stepping stones, but the people who made it happen were Hispanic immigrants, many of whom spoke no English but worked with good humor and kindness in a playground swarming with young children and their teachers.

Each child designed a stone during our 100th day of school. They counted the green gems to use in making their numbers, and the tiles to make a decorative circle around the edge of the stone. After two rain delays, we built the path today.

Each stone is a 15 inch circle of concrete, made in a plastic form. I got home and realized that I should have taken a photo of my earrings on a stepping stone, but had to settle for this one of a prototype that I made back in February.

After my third graders finished their own stones, they helped younger students complete theirs. We plan to use the stones in math, allowing children to skip count by jumping along the path.

My hope is that the children will remember this experience and be able to revisit their stones over the years. I will always remember the amazing men whose labor enabled us to build our path.

May Flowers

Bling and I are strangers. Once upon a time, when I was two or three, it's possible that I liked to dress up and wear make-up. But since I have no such recollection, I think I can honestly say that I've never liked glam.

Among the many earrings I've been given, some bling with glam. If invited to the right occasion, I might wear them, I think. This pair is blue, given to me because I love blue. But since showing them off when I got them as a birthday present, I've never worn them out of the house, and I doubt I ever will.

Today is May Day, when many cultures celebrate the arrival of spring with festivals of flowers. I'm celebrating at home, on another rainy day. This pot of blue blossoms adorns my front deck, reminding me of their wild cousins that will be in bloom when I launch my kayak in the Clarion River to celebrate the beginning of summer.

A few years ago, I paddled near the bank and saw these delicate blue flowers. "I know I've looked those up before," I muttered to myself. "What on Earth are they called?"

When I got back to our cabin and looked in my wildflower guide, I shook my head in amusement. "Forget-Me-Nots. I guess now I'll never forget."

And now I'll always associate this pair of bling-glam earrings with one of my favorite wildflowers. Odd bedfellows spotted in this flower pot today!