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What's A Girl To Wear?: A School Story And A Jew Story

The Story:
This Friday at school we will celebrate the Jewish holiday of Purim, which as opposed to me describing I would prefer you Google if you are interested in any sort of explanation.  The PG-rated version basically involves getting dressed up and playing all day, while the R-rated version includes getting wasted off your ass until you cannot tell two people apart from one another--a mitzvah I accomplished last year the night before Purim while attending the Matisyahu show at Ruby Skye, damn that made it very difficult to go to school the next morning while still drunk but I sure had a hot costume--and cross-dressing.

A chronology of my recent Purim costumes:
2002: can't remember, possibly also a doctor but that would make 2003 really lame
2003: doctor
2004: fairy princess with ballgown, wings, tiara and magic wand
2005: Old McDonald, yes the farmer--not hot but comfortable in overalls
2006: Austin Powers go-go dancer complete with short-ass skirt, blacklight-friendly fishnets, and neon chartreuse wig

Of course as the teacher it is overwhelmingly important to have the best costume in the class, but this year I am a little stumped.  I have a few outfits from previous non-school Purim celebrations that I could recycle, most notably Miss America from the Purim shpiel (musical story) at temple two years ago--black evening gown, sash with glitter letters, huge presentation bouquet of red carnations, elbow-length gloves and again with the tiara--but I think I might take Ms. Bat up on her offer to borrow her kimono-esque ensemble from the years she spent teaching in Japan, including sash and sandals.  Culturally inappropriate as it might be, I think I would look hot as a geisha.  I'd just have to look online for examples of hair and make-up and I'd be all set.

The Lesson:
What do you think I should be for Purim?  All suggestions welcome but I only have until Friday.

No School: A School Story

The Story:
Today is President's Day and there is No School.  I am glad not only because I don't want to teach but also because I feel very unsettled in my mind and heart about my plans for the rest of this year and for next year, I want to spend some time running in the park and cleaning up my house and shopping at Trader Joe's and creating order in the parts of my life that I can because other parts seem kind of chaotic right now.

The Lesson:
Some of my teacher friends do not have school all WEEK.  That would be fabulous right about now, a week's vacation between report cards the past two weeks and Open House two weeks from now?  But, no...sadly no such luck for me.  Although there is a faculty development day tomorrow, so no kids, and then a professional day on Thursday to prepare an upcoming workshop some colleagues of mine and I will be presenting.  Not a whole week off, but only two days of teaching--I suppose I cannot really complain.

I do have a lot of writing to catch up on so I am guessing there will be more here to read in the next few days...

Laundry: A Neighborhood Story

The Story:
In my building there is a laundry room, downstairs, off the back yard and garden.  The laundry room has one washer and one dryer, coin-operated, which is kind of a mixed blessing.  On the one hand, there is actually laundry here (unlike at the House of Flowers where I lived before this) which prevents the need to go to the, as I heard a fellow patron once call it, "wash house" down the long side of the block on the next corner.  On the other hand, the mathematics of one washer and one dryer does not work out since drying takes twice as long as washing and so if more than one person is trying to do laundry, or one person is trying to do more than one load, there can be a significant back-up of wet clothes.

Such was the case tonight when I went down to put what I had hoped would be the first of two loads for tonight (no such luck).  A woman was putting her clothes into the washer, and also had a large wicker basket full of other, dry things to go in next.  The dryer was also whirring right along, giving me every indication that it would be awhile before my darks got a turn in the Maytag.  "Excuse me, can I just sneak past you to put my bag in the corner?" I asked, planning to leave my dirty clothes down there until it was my turn to use the washer instead of hauling them all back upstairs. 

The woman glowered at me, moving aside but saying nothing.  Weird.  Whatever.  I went upstairs to my apartment, returning an hour later to check on the situation.  The dryer was silent and there was a washer full of clean wet laundry.  I assumed this made it my turn and so I removed the things from the washer and put them on top of the dryer so that when their owner returned it would be easy to transfer them into the second machine.  Once the washer was empty I put my clothes into it and was just adding soap and quarters when the same woman came down again.  Seeing her things piled up on the dryer she gave me an awful look just as I tried to explain.  "The washer was done so I hope you don't mind, I took out your things," I said but she ignored me and yanked the dry clothes out of the machine, shoving the wet clothes in after them and then slamming the door for emphasis before adding quarters and leaving to go back upstairs.

The Lesson:
Why be so crabby about someone who is trying to be neighborly, why?  I know that we Midwesterners can be disarmingly, almost to the point of distressingly, friendly in our forthrightness but that does not mean you have to scowl at us in return.  Really.  We are just trying to be helpful.

Day 100: A (100-Word) School Story

The Story:
There is a new holiday, perhaps so fresh you haven't even heard of it!  It is the popular Day 100, a celebration with which I was not at all familiar until I began teaching in California.  It is an observance of (what else?) the 100th day of school and is marked by doing, well, one hundred of lots of different things.  In Pirate Girl's Kindergarten class they did a class activity in which each of the students wrote their name as many times as they could in 100 seconds and then as a group they made a bar graph out of the information.  In P.E. they did 100 jumping jacks and basketball bounces and beanbag tosses. 

In Third Grade, I told my class that we were going to use the information we've learned about both a) story structure and b) adding detail to our writing to create individual stories exactly one hundred words long.  I did a whole-class shared writing example with them first to demonstrate the techniques of starting with just three sentences--one each for the beginning, middle, and end--then counting up the word total and adding in details as necessary to bring the count to an even century.

Here is the story we composed together:

Miss Nelson was walking on the beach two Fridays ago.  It was just before Shabbat.  She saw a smooth rock so she picked it up.  The rock was grey and big.  It weighed a lot and it was round.  It had a few cracks that looked like the trail of a shooting star.  A week later she gave it to her class and they used it as the talking rock for Morning Meeting.  In Morning Meeting we do not throw it or roll it to each other.  We hand it to the next person.  Everyone in Morning Meeting liked it.

The Lesson:
We added a title, "Something New In Third Grade," which we decided did not have to be included in the 100-word limit.  Count 'em and weep, friends.  Not bad for a group of kids who still need reminders that playing War is not something one should do during Writer's Workshop while waiting to edit with a teacher.

Alef's Quote Of The Night: A True Story

The Story:
When some people have cooking questions, they call their mothers.  This would work for me if a) my mother was awake past 6 p.m. local time, and b) my mother had more than a limited sense of how to cook successfully.  So, instead of calling my mother in moments of culinary uncertainty I call Alef.  She is the best cook I know and she always has an answer to my questions.

Tonight's question was about eggs.  I do not myself eat eggs but they were a necessary ingredient for the muffins I was making so I bought half a dozen and figured I'd take the rest to school and give them to Ms. Song, or Pirate Girl, or someone.  The recipe said to add the egg to the 1 cup of water and 1/4 cup of oil (which Alef and I briefly discussed replacing with applesauce but decided against it since although we had both heard of this technique, neither of us was really sure how to do it so I just used the standard canola--an interesting entry to read on Wikipedia, incidentally, if you ever have time) and I was unclear on whether or not the egg should be washed.

As washing an egg does not take much time, I would have just gone ahead and done it without asking except for the fact that I was already on the phone with Alef anyway so just went ahead and inquired about her opinion.

me: So what do you think, should I wash the egg off before I mix it into the batter with the other stuff?

Alef (snorting): No, what?  You do not have to wash off the egg.  It's fine.

me: Okay, who knows?  You're supposed to wash citrus before you slice it because of the whole e. coli thing so I just thought I'd check.

(pause)

Alef, in best First Grade Teacher voice: Zelda--you do know that the part of the egg that you're using for this recipe is the inside part, right?  You have to open it first before you put it in the bowl.  The outside is not food.  Okay?

me, miffed: YES I know the inside part is what goes in the bowl. 

Alef: Okay, I thought so, I just wanted to make sure you knew before you put the mixer into the bowl and started beating it all together because the bits of eggshell would be hard to pick out of the batter at that point.

The Lesson:
Instead of asking I should have just washed the egg in the first place and been done with it, although I do actually very much appreciate Alef's guidance because she definitely my More Competent Peer when it comes to culinary matters.

Service: A Love Story

The Story:
One of my former housemates, a strong brave woman in recovery, taught me about the concept of Service.  Not just with a lower-case s, like table service or room service or in-flight beverage service, but Service with a capital S, the idea of helping others.

In her twelve-step program (and maybe in many or most or all, to be honest I don't so much know from twelve-step programs) Service was a big deal, something to be done all the time and especially when feeling shitty about oneself.  Service took the form of stacking chairs after meetings, giving one another rides to events, and the like.  She was all about how much better Service makes one feel and she liked to do all kinds Service not just for people in her program but for us in our household too.

The Lesson:
Tonight I am doing the Service of baking muffins to take to school tomorrow because I am in a bad mood and have a heartache and I thought maybe if I made food for other people (such a Jewish way of coping with stress and anxiety) they would feel really pampered and cared for, and I would feel better too.  It kind of didn't work, because I still have a heartache, but it kind of did because now I feel like my friends will know I was thinking about them and that they are important to me.