mommy's back-to-school outfit

julie selected the dress for me online.  i tried to make it work and weather appropriate.

the good thing about teaching is that you get two back-to-school outfits a year, a fall and a winter selection.

readers, it's hell out there.  eleven degrees, air like pea soup--my eyes, ears, throat, chest and nose are itching, burning and watering.  and i'm not sick.  people who don't live here think that the worst thing about living here is the mormons.  it's definitely not.  the people who do live here will tell you:  it's the very air you breathe.  we're trying to get by until wednesday, when a storm will hopefully clean out the muck.  pray for us.

so with all the heavy, cold air out there, i awoke feeling, as aretha says, "so uninspired," with no idea what to wear.  this is what i came up with.  i'm not saying that it's the most amazing outfit in the world, but this:  you haven't beaten me into submission yet, soul sucking pollution.  i'm standing, and i'm wearing an outfit, complete with earrings, cowboy boots, and lipstick.

one more thing:  i'm really inspired by julie's specific goals for writing this week.  i hope she won't mind if i copy her and put this week's writing goals down for bloggerly accountability:

1) write X and Y poems for gentian.
2) make copy edits in gentian document (i've already done the edits by hand)
3) print out draft of complete edited gentian manuscript to bring to writer's group on thursday.

(i've had a goal to do these three things for months now.  let's see if putting it on the blog motivates me to get it done this week.)

anyone else out there have goals for the week?

excellence & equity

a follow-up to last night's post:

this seems like such a radical proposition.

why is that?

why has this part of the discussion receded so far into the back ground that it's become inaudible?

it's time to start talking a lot louder about equality in education again.  i don't think we can afford to drop it.

read the entire article here.

and here's a teaser:

"It is possible to create equality. And perhaps even more important -- as a challenge to the American way of thinking about education reform -- Finland's experience shows that it is possible to achieve excellence by focusing not on competition, but on cooperation, and not on choice, but on equity.

The problem facing education in America isn't the ethnic diversity of the population but the economic inequality of society, and this is precisely the problem that Finnish education reform addressed. More equity at home might just be what America needs to be more competitive abroad."

thursday: a list

back porch at salon.  it was standing room only, so audience had to sit on the porch.  cecily took the photos last night, and due to her shortness, could only get my outfit in three parts.

for the second time in three weeks i missed a post--the only two times i've missed a day since january first.

things have really gotten intense, but it's good.  i have a couple of longer posts ready to write, but no time at all this week.  tomorrow is my catch-up day, so hopefully i can get back on track.

so, for today, i guess a short one is better than none at all.  better ones are waiting in the wings, trust me.

today's happenings:

1)  woke at 5.30 and got dressed for work.  struggled to find a cute outfit, but i think i finally succeeded, at least that's what the sales person at h & m told me tonight.

2) left the house at 6.25 a.m. with eva, anna and d.j.  we were all barely awake after the salon went so late last night.

3) wrote morning pages and prepped for class.  gave a quiz and worked with students on rhetorical analysis--specifically moving from "what" to "why" to "how."  trickier than you might think.

middle part of outfit.

4) ate too much 7-layer dip, a guilty pleasure, for lunch.

5) read wordsworth's essay, supplementary to the preface to the lyrical ballad's.  went to 18th C. seminar.

5) went to grad student creative writing meeting.

6) shopped at h&m with eva while waiting for the rush hour traffic on i-15 to go away.  got complimented on today's outfit.  eva's such a fantastic bargain shopper.  i was inspired by her diligence and creativity.  it also helps if you look fantastic in literally everything.

7) eva and i had dinner at shanghai.

bottom of the outfit:  zippered ankle boots & fishnets.

8)  listened to joe biden's "muscular" (as james carville called it, and i agree) talk at the convention on the radio while driving home.

9) got home in time to kiss kids' goodnight and watch most of president obama's speech.  and to admire the first lady's dress.  loved the one shoulder slightly off-shoulder thing.  oh, yeah, and felt inspired to be less cynical.

10) talked about how inspiring last night's salon was with christian.  seriously.  the performances were amazing.  more details on this later.

thursday night

and i'm so relaxed after such an intense week that i'm having trouble finding one last ounce of adrenaline left over to write this post.

so great having the little kids back in school.  routines at last.  everyone's happier.

just starting haywire.  soderbergh always has the best music.

here's a rundown on the day:

1) left the house at 6.30 a.m.

2) taught class #1, wearing dress julie gave me.  i always get lots of compliments in that dress, including once in nyc from a woman on the street, which is like two compliments.

3) prepped for next week's classes.

4) read in-class essays from class # 1.  for my own personal reasons, designated writers "E" for emerging (i.e. not ready for college writing yet), "P" for proficient, and "A" for advanced.  don't know why i did that.  just got the urge.

5) taught class #2.

6) went to seminar, discussed habermas, byron, abrams, and the rise of the mass reading public.

7) commuted home.

8) printed out copies of a creative non-fiction piece i've been working on for writer's group.

9) went to walden back to school picnic in southfork.

10) brought warm peach cake to writer's group.  thanks to ingrid for making it.  it was one of the best cakes i've ever eaten.  custardy and peachy.

11) new writer's group!  more on that later.  i'm excited.

12)  watching haywire with c.  so looking forward to several hours of writing time tomorrow.

back 2 skool.5

getting dressed at the crack of dawn for back to school.

first day of school for me, moses & cecily.

next week, christian starts teaching and ingrid heads back to bryn mawr.  for the first time since pre-school, eva won't be going back to school this fall.  weird.  & good.  one kid done with college!

a couple of things about 2K12's first day back:

1) every tuesday i'll be in class for 420 minutes.  teaching for 160 of those minutes.  in poetry workshop & seminar for the rest.  i'm so grateful to have this opportunity, and so grateful for state schools that provide an education for so many students of such diverse backgrounds.  here's to even more diversity among college students in the future.

back to school duds.  big sister ambiguity.

2) moses and cecily are so adorable.  i'm grateful we live in a safe neighborhood with a great school, and that they can walk to school.  every child should have this.  i will continue to do everything in my power to make this happen some day.

3) lula made fresh peach ice cream today.  she's still waiting for her school to start next week.  the first days of walden always involve a walkabout--three days worth of backpacking in the mountains.  i'm so grateful for walden.  the teachers are amazing and dedicated and the students get so many enriching experiences.  yay progressive public education!

4) i'm really excited to be in poetry workshop again, and grateful to be able to work with a really interesting poet.  she is asking for a lot of new poems from us, which i love, and i was so excited when she talked about valuing aesthetic diversity amongst the poets of our program.  i'm totally down with that, and glad it's so fundamental for her.  also, so grateful that, against all odds, people continue to devote their lives to poetry.

back to school eve dinner.

5) our back to school dinner last night was:  roasted teriyaki salmon and mushrooms, green beans, corn, and my favorite koshihakari rice, with peaches & cream for dessert.  i'm so grateful for utah peaches and corn.

6)  i thought i was going to have to wear an old dress today, but ingrid and anna thrifted a snakeskin calvin klein sweater dress for me yesterday.  so even though i had to get up at 5.30 a.m. to get ready for school, i was grateful to have a fun dress to wear.

7) class ended early tonight, so i had time for a relaxing dinner with eva and d.j. at red iguana in salt lake.  i'm grateful for red vinyl mexican table cloths, pink doors with yellow walls, and chile verde.  & also grateful to have eva living so close to me after four years on the east coast.

late summer roses.

8) i'm grateful to aunt bonnie for taking care of my rose bushes.

9)  i returned to a clean kitchen, folded laundry, and fresh peach ice cream.  i'm grateful for ingrid, lula, and christian for keeping everything together, and more, at home in my absence.

lift ride and back to school outfits

a few more hikes, a few more swims

here in utah we get out of school right after memorial day and go back mid-august.

it feels like the summer's winding down, though we still have a good month of heat, corn, peaches & tomatoes.

i'm itching to get back to a schedule, to poetry workshop and live college teaching, to kids in school all day, to sweaters and tights.

(do you remember, julie, the seventeen back to school issue?  i was always sad that we wore shorts to school in az. for months, and it was almost never cold enough for a preppy wool sweater.)

so, although i'm starting to look forward to fall, my favorite season, and i'm loving the back-to-school outfit videos cecily has been working on,  i'm also trying to embrace summer and not end it before it's over, if you know what i mean.  trying to fit in the outdoor movies and theatre, a little more pool time, a picnic and a hike or two.

tonight we took the sundance moonlight chair lift ride for our date night.  it's only held a couple of nights a month in the summer when the moon is full. sundance is so beautiful.  i think it's the most beautiful of the utah resorts.

(i had to close my eyes going down on the lift on the super steep part, & also, to block out the envy, when i saw the sundance screenwriting lab residents with their lanyards allowing them entrance into certain areas "not open to the public"--why was i not one of them? what was going on in those off-limits areas?)

i'm also trying to plan my own first day of school outfit.  it's a little trickier than it once was.

what's everyone wearing this year?

i have no idea!

julie turley, what will the trends be in nyc?